A French Canadian author and explorer of the Pacific Northwest, Franchère joined the Pacific Fur Company as a merchant apprentice, arriving at Fort Astoria on the Tonquin. After Astoria was sold to the North West Company, Franchère returned to Montréal overland in 1814, crossing the Athabasca Pass on May 14. He was employed for a time by John Jacob Astor in Montréal. He wrote Narrative of a Voyage to the Northwest Coast of America, published in 1819:

On the morning of the 14th of May we began to climb the mountain, which is very steep. Fortunately the preceding night had been cold and the snow was frozen hard enough to carry our weight. We had to rest every few minutes, the climb being very difficult and the exercise exhausting. Finally after two or three hours of unbelievable effort and fatigue we reached the summit and followed in the footprints of those who had gone before us. Our route lay between two high mountains and soon became tiring because of the depth of the snow, which being softened by the sun’s rays, could no longer bear our weight as it had done in the morning, so that we had to walk in the footsteps of those ahead of us, sinking up to our knees as if putting on an enormous pair of boots at each step. At last we came to a hollow that our guide said was a small lake, though we could not recognize it as it was covered in snow, and we stopped there for the night. These lakes (for there are two) are situated at the summit of the face of the mountain [1].

(The lakes are the Committee Punch Bowl.)

Kane was an Irish-born Canadian painter, famous for his paintings of First Nations peoples in the Canadian West and other Native Americans in the Columbia Departmentof the fur trade.

A largely self-educated artist, Kane grew up in York, Upper Canada (now Toronto), and trained himself by copying European masters on a “Grand Tour” study trip through Europe. He undertook two voyages through the Canadian northwest in 1845 and from 1846 to 1848. The first trip took him from Toronto to Sault Ste. Marie and back. Having secured the support of the Hudson’s Bay Company [founded 1670 – dissolved 2025], he set out on a second, much longer voyage from Toronto across the Rocky Mountains.

On October 6, 1846, Kane left Edmonton for Fort Assiniboine, where he again embarked with a canoe brigade up the Athabasca River to Jasper House, arriving on November 3. Here he joined a large horse troop bound west, but the party soon had to send the horses back to Jaspers House and continue on snowshoes, taking only the essentials with them, because Athabasca Pass was already deeply snowed in that late in the year. They crossed the pass on November 12 and three days later joined a canoe brigade that had been waiting to take them down the Columbia River to Fort Vancouver (present-day Vancouver, Washington) and Fort Victoria (present day Victoria, British Columbia).

On both trips Kane sketched and painted First Nations and Métis peoples. Upon his return to Toronto, he produced more than one hundred oil paintings from these sketches. The oil paintings he completed in his studio are considered a part of the Canadian heritage, although he often embellished them considerably, departing from the accuracy of his field sketches in favour of more dramatic scenes.