Fort Confidence, located at the mouth of the Dease River on the eastern tip of the Dease Arm of

Great Bear Lake Great Bear Lake ( den, Sahtú; french: Grand lac de l'Ours) is a lake in the boreal forest of Canada. It is the largest lake entirely in Canada (Lake Superior and Lake Huron are larger but straddle the Canada–US border), the fourth-largest ...

Northwest Territories The Northwest Territories (abbreviated ''NT'' or ''NWT''; french: Territoires du Nord-Ouest, formerly ''North-Western Territory'' and ''North-West Territories'' and namely shortened as ''Northwest Territory'') is a federal territory of Canada. ...

, was a

Hudson's Bay Company The Hudson's Bay Company (HBC; french: Compagnie de la Baie d'Hudson) is a Canadian retail business group. A fur trading business for much of its existence, HBC now owns and operates retail stores in Canada. The company's namesake business div ...

establishment (not a trading post), built in 1837 by

Peter Warren Dease Peter Warren Dease (January 1, 1788 – January 17, 1863) was a Canadian fur trader and Arctic explorer. Biography Early life Peter Warren Dease was born at Michilimackinac (now Mackinac Island) on January 1, 1788, the fourth son of Dr. ...

and

Thomas Simpson Thomas Simpson Fellow of the Royal Society, FRS (20 August 1710 – 14 May 1761) was a British mathematician and inventor known for the :wikt:eponym, eponymous Simpson's rule to approximate definite integrals. The attribution, as often in mathe ...

as a base for their exploration of the Arctic coast. It served as a quarters for two winters. The structure was a log building, and burned down a short time later. In 1848, the post was rebuilt by John Bell and used by Sir John Richardson and Dr. John Rae as a base of operations during the search for famous explorer Sir

John Franklin Sir John Franklin (16 April 1786 – 11 June 1847) was a British Royal Navy officer and Arctic explorer. After serving in wars against Napoleonic France and the United States, he led two expeditions into the Canadian Arctic and through ...

, who went missing along the

Arctic Coast The Arctic Ocean is the smallest and shallowest of the world's five major oceans. It spans an area of approximately and is known as the coldest of all the oceans. The International Hydrographic Organization (IHO) recognizes it as an ocean, a ...

. These buildings were still standing in 1902, but had again been destroyed by fire by 1911 when George M. Douglas's expedition to the

Coppermine River The Coppermine River is a river in the North Slave and Kitikmeot regions of the Northwest Territories and Nunavut in Canada. It is long. It rises in Lac de Gras, a small lake near Great Slave Lake, and flows generally north to Coronation Gulf, a ...

passed through the area. The remains of this fort consist of four stone and clay chimneys. Fort Confidence was featured in

Jules Verne Jules Gabriel Verne (;''Longman Pronunciation Dictionary''. ; 8 February 1828 – 24 March 1905) was a French novelist, poet, and playwright. His collaboration with the publisher Pierre-Jules Hetzel led to the creation of the ''Voyages extraor ...

's book ''

The Fur Country ''The Fur Country'' (french: Le Pays des fourrures) or ''Seventy Degrees North Latitude'' is an adventure novel by Jules Verne in The Extraordinary Voyages series, first published in 1873. The novel was serialized in ''Magasin d’Éducation et ...

''.

Photo gallery

File:Fort Confidence1.jpg, Photo of 1902, with buildings still standing File:Fort Confidence2.jpg, Photo of 1911, with only four chimneys remaining

External links

Fort Confidence
at the

Prince of Wales Northern Heritage Centre The Prince of Wales Northern Heritage Centre (PWNHC) (''Centre du patrimoine septentrional Prince-de-Galles'' in French) is the Government of the Northwest Territories' museum and archives. Located in Yellowknife, Northwest Territories, Canada, the ...

The Great Bear Lake: Its Place in History
* CHAPTER IX. Transactions at Fort Confidence^ winter 1837–8. — Death of Peter Taylor, — Winter Discoveries and Surveys. from Narrative of the Discoveries on the North Coast of America, effected by the Officers of the Hudson’s Bay Company, during the years 1836—39 by Thomas Simpson Hudson's Bay Company forts Ghost towns in the Northwest Territories Buildings and structures in the Northwest Territories

Confidence Confidence is a state of being clear-headed either that a hypothesis or prediction is correct or that a chosen course of action is the best or most effective. Confidence comes from a Latin word 'fidere' which means "to trust"; therefore, having ...

Former populated places in the Sahtu Region 1837 establishments in Canada