Alexander Mackenzie

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Mackenzie, Alexander

, Canadian political leader

Mackenzie, Alexander, 1822–92, Canadian political leader, b. Scotland. Emigrating (1842) to Canada, he worked first as a stonemason in Kingston, Ont., and then as a builder and contractor in Sarnia. In Lambton he became editor (1852) of a Liberal newspaper. Elected (1861) to the Canadian Legislative Assembly, Mackenzie supported the confederation movement and the Liberal leader, George Brown. A member of the first dominion House of Commons (1867), Mackenzie headed the Liberal opposition to Sir John A. Macdonald's government; upon its fall (1873) as a result of the Pacific scandal he became the first Liberal prime minister of the dominion. In 1878, Macdonald came back into power, and Mackenzie, who remained in Parliament until his death, led the Liberal opposition until 1880. During his ministry the courts and provincial governments were strengthened, trade expanded, and immigration, especially to the western provinces, was encouraged.

Bibliography

See his life and times by W. Buckingham and G. W. Ross (1892, repr. 1969).

The following article is from The Great Soviet Encyclopedia (1979). It might be outdated or ideologically biased.

Mackenzie, Alexander

Born 1764, in Stornoway, Lewis Island, Scotland; died Mar. 12, 1820, near Dunkeld, Scotland. Scotch merchant and traveler; agent for the North West Company, a Canadian fur-trading company.

In 1788, Mackenzie established a trading post on Lake Athabasca. In 1789 he went down the Slave River, explored Great Slave Lake, and discovered the Mackenzie River (from the source to the delta), the Mackenzie Mountains, and the Franklin Mountains. In 1792 and 1793 he traversed North America from the Gulf of St. Lawrence to Queen Charlotte Sound and followed the entire course of the Peace River; he crossed the Rocky Mountains and the Coast Range, discovering between them an interior plateau and the upper course of the Fraser River. In 1793 and 1794, Mackenzie returned eastward along the same route, crossing the continent a second time.

WORKS

Voyages From Montreal on the River St. Lawrence Through the Continent of North-America … , parts 1-2. London, 1801.

REFERENCE

Magidovich, I. P. Istoriia otkrytiia i issledovaniia Severnoi Ameriki. Moscow, 1962.

I. P. MAGIDOVICH

Mackenzie, Alexander

Born Jan. 28, 1822, in Perthshire, Scotland; died Apr. 17, 1892, in Toronto. Canadian statesman.

Beginning in 1842, Mackenzie lived in Canada, and in 1867 he was elected to the House of Commons there. He was the leader of the Liberal Party in the 1870’s. From November 1873 to October 1878 he served as prime minister of the first Liberal government of Canada, holding at the same time the post of minister of public works. The Mackenzie government conducted a policy of free trade.

REFERENCE

Thomson, D. C. Alexander Mackenzie: Clear Grit. Toronto, 1960.

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References in periodicals archive ?

"You would think roses with names like Alexander Mackenzie, Henry Kelsey, David Thompson and the rest, would have the wherewithal to thrive in a Canadian winter without any special preparation at all," I commented.

In the bleak midwinter: God uses the good times to prepare us for the bad

Al explains, "I hope that our clients will pick up some of Canada's rich cultural and natural history as we travel along these mighty northern rivers." That we will come to know who Alexander Mackenzie is and what he did.

The challenge: from the bow seat of a canoe in the NWT's Mackenzie watershed, Alternatives editor-in-chief Nicola Ross explores the relationship between knowing a landscape and protecting it

He details how Alexander Mackenzie became the first European explorer to cross from the Atlantic to the Pacific a dozen years before Lewis and Clark.

Relentless implacability: one ethnic group has its fingerprints all over this place

The Board stated that this was the first railroad in the Canadian West, as well as the first section built of the water and rail route to British Columbia proposed by Prime Minister Alexander Mackenzie in 1874, as an alternative to Sir John A.

Commemorating the first railway in Western Canada

His discussion of women's dresses contains some very interesting and valuable quotes from such early 19th century sources as the journals of Alexander Mackenzie, Alexander Henry the Younger, and the Long Expedition.

Costumes of the Plains Indians

OVER the course of three summers, the author followed in the wake of 18th-century explorer Alexander Mackenzie and his French "voyageur" crew the 2,000 miles from Lake Athabasca in central north America along a trail of rivers and lakes to the Pacific Ocean using the same traditional native American method of travel as Mackenzie 200 years before.

EXPLORATION

That honor goes to Alexander Mackenzie, a Scottish fur trapper and explorer who traveled from Montreal to the Pacific Ocean by canoe a decade before President Thomas Jefferson sent the Corps of Discovery up the Mississippi River.

Why all the fuss over second-place finishers?

I would describe it as a smorgasbord, with 65 authors discussed--beginning with Jonathan Swift and ending with Sir Alexander Mackenzie's voyage to Dean Channel from deep in Athabasca in 1793--and there is food for all here.

Alan Twigg. First Invaders: The Literary Origins of British Columbia

1789: Alexander Mackenzie loses his way on the "River of Disappointment" while seeking the Pacific Ocean.

Northern pipe-dreams, northern nightmares: the second coming of the Mackenzie Valley pipeline

We are now the training delivery agent for the in-school portion using facilities at Alexander MacKenzie Secondary School in partnership with the Lambton Kent District School Board.

Apprenticeship: Ontario colleges lead the way

Lester Pearson (the man, not the airport) and John Diefenbaker seem almost as remote from the political discourse of the present day as do Louis-Joseph Papineau and Alexander Mackenzie.

The Canadian Federalist Experiment: from Defiant Monarchy to Reluctant Republic

Alexander Mackenzie, a Scotsman-turned-Canadian hero who died nonetheless a proud Scot, was in fact the first European to cross the continent from the Atlantic to the Pacific north of Mexico.

Beating a passage to the pacific: more than ten years prior to the celebrated expedition of Lewis and Clark, a little-known Scotsman completed the first coast-to-coast trek across the continent