Sir Alexander Mackenzie

Sir Alexander Mackenzie
Alexander Mackenzie painted by Thomas Lawrence (c.1800), courtesy National Gallery of Canada
Born	1764 Stornoway, Lewis, Outer Hebrides, Scotland
Died	12 March 1820 (aged 55–56) near Dunkeld, Scotland, United Kingdom
Cause of death	Bright's Disease
Occupation	Explorer
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Sir Alexander Mackenzie (or MacKenzie, Scottish Gaelic: Alasdair MacCoinnich, 1764 – 12 March 1820) was a Scottish explorer. He is known for his overland crossing of what is now Canada to reach the Pacific Ocean in 1793. This was the first east to west crossing of North America north of Mexico and preceded the Lewis and Clark Expedition by 12 years.

In 1764, Mackenzie was born at Luskentyre House in Stornoway on the Isle of Lewis. He was the third of the four children born to Kenneth 'Corc' Mackenzie (1731–1780) and his wife Isabella MacIver, from another prominent mercantile family in Stornoway. When only fourteen years old, Mackenzie's father served as an ensign to protect Stornoway during the Jacobite rising of 1745. He later became a merchant and held the tack of Melbost; his grandfather being a younger brother of Murdoch Mackenzie, 6th Laird of Fairburn.

Educated at the same school as Colin Mackenzie, he sailed to New York City with his father to join an uncle, John Mackenzie, in 1774, after his mother died in Scotland. In 1776, during the American War of Independence, his father and uncle resumed their military duties and joined the King's Royal Regiment of New York as lieutenants. By 1778, for his safety as a son of loyalists, young Mackenzie was either sent, or accompanied by two aunts, to Montreal. By 1779 (a year before his father's death at Carleton Island), Mackenzie had a secured apprenticeship with Finlay, Gregory & Co., one of the most influential fur trading companies at Montreal, which was later administered by Archibald Norman McLeod. In 1787, the company merged with the North West Company.