The Beothuk (/biːˈɒtək/ or /ˈbeɪ.əθʊk/; also spelled Beothic, Beothick, Beothuck)[1] were one of the historical aboriginal peoples in Canada. The small group of people lived on the island of Newfoundland at the time of European contact in the 15th and 16th centuries. With the 1829 death of Shanawdithit, a woman in her late twenties who was the last known living Beothuk, the people became officially extinct as a distinct ethnic group.[2] However, there are people of the Mi'kmaq tribe which claim to have Beothuk ancestry and there are scientists trying to prove the tribe is not completely extinct as previously thought.
Anthony Henday (fl. 1750–1762) was one of the first European men to explore the interior of the Canadian northwest. Henday was from the Isle of Wight, he may have been baptised in Shorwell on 24 December 1725.[1]His explorations were authorized and funded by the Hudson's Bay Company (HBC) because of their concern with La Vérendrye and the other western commanders who were funnelling fur trade from the northwest to their forts. Henday volunteered to undertake an expedition into this territory. A convicted smuggler,[2] he joined the HBC in 1750 as a net-maker and labourer. Henday had gained some experience in inland travel after arriving at York Factory. On June 26, 1754, he set out with a group of Plains Indians. It is documented that they passed the French Fort Paskoya where he may have met La Corne, the western commander at that time. In October 1754 he and his group came to what is now Alberta from York Factory with a mission to meet the Blackfoot and perhaps trade with them.
John Cabot (Venetian: Zuan Chabotto; c. 1450 – c. 1499) was an Italian navigator and explorer whose 1497 discovery of parts of North America under the commission of Henry VII of England is commonly held to have been the first European encounter with the mainland of North America since the Norse Vikings visits to Vinland in the eleventh century. The official position of the...