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5 unusual facts about John Macoun


Doug Owram

Owram elaborates on the problematics associated with settling Palliser's Triangle and the work of John Macoun; an individual who's interpretation of the Triangle caused many hardships for future settlers.

John Macoun

By 1860 he was teaching school in Belleville, and had established correspondence with botanists such as Asa Gray, Sir William Jackson Hooker, George Lawson, and Louis-Ovide Brunet.

Macoun's reports from west attracted the notice of Alfred Richard Cecil Selwyn, director of the Geological Survey of Canada, and in 1879, the Government of Canada took the unusual step of officially appointing him "Explorer of the Northwest territories".

This allowed him in 1868 to secure a faculty position as a Professor of Botany and Geology at St. Alberts College in Belleville.

Macoun was born in Magheralin, County Down, Ireland in 1831, the third child of James Macoun and Anne Jane Nevin.



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