“Hard Travel: Alex MacKenzie from Canada by land 22d July 1793”

by Richard Van Loon

Date and Time: 7pm (EST) Thursday, November 5 online on Zoom

Over 6000 years the St Lawrence and Ottawa valleys formed the major highway leading to the interior of North America. This talk, the second in a series that started in May 2019, will focus on the travelers and traders who moved west, with the support of First Nations, in the 18th century culminating in Alexander MacKenzie’s epic voyage to the Pacific in 1793.

Richard Van Loon is past president of Carleton University and past chair of the Council of Ontario Universities. He holds a BSc in chemistry and an MA in political science from Carleton and a PhD in political studies from Queen’s University. He joined Carleton in 1970 as assistant professor of political science and has held faculty positions in the School of Public Policy and Administration at Carleton where he is now professor emeritus and in the Faculty of Administration at the University of Ottawa. He was associate deputy minister of Health Canada and of Indian Affairs and Northern Development and held several assistant deputy minister positions in the Canadian federal government. He was the first Carleton alumnus to become president of the university.

Dr. Van Loon’s current research interests include federal-provincial relations, particularly related to post-secondary education, quality assurance and instructional methodology in post-secondary education and the history of the Ottawa River.