George M. Douglas (1875-1963)

Abstract

George M. Douglas (1875-1963), engineer and explorer, died at his home in Lakefield, Ontario, Canada earlier this year. He was born in Halifax, N.S., Canada and received his education in Canada and Great Britain. During a long career as engineer and consulting engineer in Mexico and Arizona, U.S.A. he led five expeditions into the regions around Great Bear and Great Slave lakes in the Northwest Territories of Canada. He was mainly interested in copper and other mineral deposits and on his first expedition went as far afield as Coppermine River, where he found that the copper deposits, which had been known since the 18th century, were larger than had been suspected. He did mainly pioneering work in these areas, which formed the foundations for later explorations. Besides articles for professional journals he wrote "Lands Forlorn" (G. P. Putnam's Sons, New York, 1914), an account of the expedition in 1911-12. In 1949 he was elected a Fellow of the Arctic Institute and he was also a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and the American Geographical Society, a member of several professional societies and of American and Canadian clubs.