Douglas, George Mellis

George Mellis Douglas was born in Halifax, Nova Scotia in 1875. He moved with his family in 1883 to Northcote Farm on the shore of Katchiwano Lake north of Lakefield, Ontario. In 1900 George went to work for his cousin, James Douglas, who was president of the American Institute of Mining Engineers. In 1911, at the suggestion of his cousin James, an expedition to the Coppermine River and Arctic Sea was planned, and George Douglas along with his brother Lionel and Dr. August Sandberg made the trip. The purpose of the expedition was to search for minerals in the watershed of the Coppermine above the Arctic Circle. What George and his associates discovered were huge copper deposits. Although it was known that the deposits existed since the 18th century, they were much larger than was suspected. George was also one of the first Barren Land explorers to extensively photograph the North-West Territories and the Inuit who lived in the region. Over the following thirty years, Douglas led copper explorations to the shores of the Arctic Sea and around the edges of the Great Bear and Great Slave Lakes. George also wrote about his explorations in the Arctic. He published articles in several professional journals and in 1914 he wrote "Lands Forlorn", an account of the 1911-12 expedition. George Mellis Douglas died at his home near Lakefield, Ontario in 1963.