John Douglas Moodie. (1848 - 1947)

John Moodie was born in Edinburgh, Scotland and lived in Ottawa and Rapid City, South Dakota, before joining the North-West Mounted Police (NWMP) in 1884. He served in the Riel Rebellion and was then stationed out of Calgary in 1886-1887.¹⁾ Clifford Sifton ordered the NWMP to explore an all-Canadian route to the Klondike, as suggested by Inspector Constantine. Sifton wanted a route that could be opened as a pack trail/wagon road to the Yukon. Commissioner Lawrence Herchmer assigned the task to Inspector John Moodie and thought he could go and come back in one winter.²⁾

Inspector Moodie left Edmonton on 4 September 1897 with Constable Francis F. Fitzgerald and three special constables, Richard Hardisty, son of the Senator and former Hudson's Bay Company Chief Factor, Frank Lafferty, and Henry Tobin. The latter were both graduates of the Royal Military College. They had twenty-five pack animals and six riding horses under Metis packer Baptiste Pepin. Moodie did not consider Pepin to be competent. They reached the HBC post of Fort St. John on 1 November and Hardisty stayed there. Moodie hired a First Nation guide who knew the route to Fort Graham but he left after a month and returned to Fort St. John. Shortly after Christmas, the party ran out of food and they killed the horses for meat. They arrived at Fort Graham on 18 January 1898 and stayed there until the spring. The party left Fort Graham on 1 April and headed for Stuart Lake. They reached the Pelly River and purchased a leaky folding canoe which they replaced as soon as they could. They were stopped by solid ice on 22 October. They cached their supplies and proceeded on foot for another thirty miles to Fort Selkirk. Moodie sent Henry Tobin to Dawson on the last steamer of the season with a message reporting their safe arrival. Moodie submitted a report recommending that the Edmonton route not be used considering the ease and speed of the Chilkoot and White Pass.³⁾

Frank Lafferty had been offered a permanent force commission in the military which he had postponed to accompany Moodie and so he returned to his military pursuits. Tobin stayed some time in the Yukon and then volunteered for service in South Africa. Frederick Wade sent Sifton a letter recommending Tobin for a commission in Lord Strathcona's Horse. Moodie's bag of field notes got left behind in Skagway and he was told that he would probably never see them again.⁴⁾

Moodie and his party followed some existing trails between settlements, and for some of the way followed a trail put in by Klondike stampeders. The Edmonton Board of Trade had sent out P.D. Campbell and J.R. Trenton on 31 August 1897 to find a route to the Yukon. Years later, the Alaska Highway did not follow Moodie's route but generally went the way that Edmonton had championed. (J. G. MacGregor, The Klondike Rush Through Edmonton 1897-1898. Toronto: McClelland and Stewart Ltd., 1970: 39, 45 - 46, 202, 209-211.) Moodie had reported the route unfeasible but in 1905 Commissioner Perry received orders from Ottawa to construct the road. Major Constantine put in a headquarters at Fort St. John. His supplies got frozen in on the Peace River, but his command of thirty-two Mounties armed with axes. By the end of the first season, the Mounties had driven the road ninety-four miles from Fort St. John. The work was taken up again next spring by Inspector F. J. Camies and Commissioner Perry was able to inspect 375 miles of road in the fall. The British Columbia government refused to share the cost of pushing the road beyond the Stikine and it became the Road to Nowhere. The project was discarded, and the Fort St. John barracks was abandoned.⁵⁾

Moodie was posted in Medicine Hat (1887-1888) and then Lethbridge (1888-1889) in Alberta. In Saskatchewan he was posted to Maple Creek (1889-1891), North Battleford (1891-1895), and Maple Creek again in 1899. He fought in the South African War, and then returned to the NWMP serving in Dawson, Yukon (1903-1906).⁶⁾

In 1904, the Canadian Polar Expedition, under the command of Joseph Elzear Bernier, was diverted from a three-year expedition of maritime approach to the North Pole. He and his vessel, the Arctic, was placed under the command of Superintendent J. D. Moodie and sent to serve as a base for patrols and treks through the Arctic Archipelago. The “Eastern Arctic Patrol” left plaques and cairns to show Canada's ownership of the area before the initiative was cancelled in 1911.⁷⁾

Moodie was in the Hudson Bay area from 1906 to 1909; Chesterton Inlet, NWT; and Churchill, Manitoba. Moodie retired to Maple Creek in 1915 and moved to Duncan, British Columbia in 1933 and Calgary, Alberta in 1943. ⁸⁾