Mina Benson Hubbard

Mina Benson Hubbard, Labrador Expedition in 1905

Mina Benson Hubbard (born April 15, 1870 on a farm near Bewdley in Ontario , Canada , † May 4, 1956 in Coulston , Great Britain ) was a Canadian explorer who was the first white woman to cross the Labrador and the Nascaupee-George River system for the first time mapped.

Life

After training to be a nurse , which she completed in 1899, she worked in a New York hospital, where she met Leonidas Hubbard in 1900 , who was a patient there because of typhoid fever . They were married on January 31, 1901. Hubbard worked as a journalist for a magazine that mainly covered adventure travel, trekking tours, and research trips. Hubbard's goal was to write about a journey of discovery of his own. Under the influence of the discoveries in the Arctic , he planned to cross Labrador, which at that time was still relatively unexplored. For expedition team with which he began in June 1903 to Labrador, were his friend Dillon Wallace , a New York lawyer, and George Elson, who for half Cree - Indians descended and the Hudson's Bay Company worked.

The expedition failed. The three explorers paddled and paddled up a wrong river in the Canadier at the beginning of their journey and lost their way in the rough terrain of Labrador. As they were inadequately equipped and encountered little game that could be hunted, their food supplies ran out prematurely. Hubbard died of malnutrition. Wallace and Elson survived because they were found by four Labradorians in time.

Mina Hubbard asked the surviving Wallace to record the expedition's experiences in order to keep her husband in memory. She was not satisfied with the result, however, as she felt that Wallace was placing too much of the blame for the failure of the expedition on her dead husband. Despite her objections, Wallace published his book Lure of the Labrador Wild , which created a deep rift between her and Wallace. However, the book was a huge hit in the US. Mina Hubbard began to believe that Wallace was responsible for her husband's death.

In 1905 Wallace wanted to bring the 1903 failed expedition to an end. Mina Hubbard saw this as another attack on her husband's memory and decided to start her own expedition. She convinced George Elson and three other men from Labrador to join her on her expedition. The two rival expedition teams were followed with great attention in the New York press, and the question of which of the two would cross Labrador first was discussed.

Both expedition teams started in June 1905 in the settlement "North West River"; Mina Hubbard's team was the more successful. She had adequately stocked her expedition team, while Wallace again relied on game hunting in his planning, which resulted in much slower progress. Hubbard reached their destination in September 1905, the Hudson's Bay Company's branch at the mouth of the George River. Wallace didn't get there until six weeks later, on October 16, 1905.

Both Mina Hubbard and Wallace published books on their respective expeditions, with Wallace's becoming the more commercially successful. From a scientific point of view, however, Hubbard's expedition was more successful: Your cartographic records of the course of the Naskaupi and the George River were taken over by the " American Geographical Society " and the " Geographical Society of Great Britain". Hubbard was also able to show that the Naskaupi and the North West Rivers were the same river. Her records also included observations on the migrations of the caribou herds on Labrador and the hunting techniques of the Naskaupi and Montagnais Indians.

In 1908 Mina Hubbard married the wealthy English Quaker Harold Ellis, whom she had met at a lecture series in Great Britain. The marriage had three children. In 1926, Ellis and Hubbard divorced.

Mina Hubbard died at the age of 86 when she was hit by an approaching train while crossing a railroad track.

Fonts

• Mina Benson Hubbard: A Woman's Way Through Unknown Labrador. 1908
• The woman who mapped Labrador: the life and expedition diary of Mina Hubbard , edited by Anne Hart; Roberta Buchanan; Brian Greene, McGill-Queen's University Press, Montreal 2005, ISBN 0-7735-2924-1

literature

• James West Davidson; John Rugge: Great Heart: The History of a Labrador Adventure. McGill-Queen's University Press, Montreal 1988
• Alexandra Pratt: Lost Lands, Forgotten Stories: A Woman's Journey to the Heart of Labrador. HarperCollins, Toronto 2002
• Wendy Roy: Maps of Difference: Canada, Women, and Travel. McGill-Queen's University Press, Montreal 2005
• Randall Silvis: Heart So Hungry: The Extraordinary Expedition of Mina Hubbard into the Labrador Wilderness. Knopf, Toronto 2004

Web links

• "First Lady of Labrador" by Matthew Jachson (engl.)
• Discount at the Queen Elizabeth II Library (Engl.)
• Hubbard in The Canadian Encyclopedia