In the spring of 1820, Lieutenant John Franklin spent four months at Fort Chipewyan trying to hire French-Canadian voyageurs willing to paddle him toward an unmapped Arctic coast. Some agreed. Some refused — sensibly, since a North West Company crew had recently been killed in the same country. And in July, before the party went north, Franklin discharged three Canadians and paid them off. He named the sixteen who went. He did not name the three who didn't, and one line in a company ledger may be all that survives of one of them.

Part of the Storyline Genealogy series: From Research to Story