Sir John Franklin and the British Admiralty explorers also left vivid accounts of this vast land, its rivers, and its peoples. One of the first missionaries, an Oblate named Father Petitot, traveled for years with the Dene in the Mackenzie Valley, and in the 1860s made the first effort to write down the languages we now use on northern television, radio and on the web. Prospectors on their way to the Klondike traveled the old river routes and found lead-zinc near the mouth of the Slave River in 1898. Oil was located at Norman Wells in 1911, near tar seeps the Dene had used for centuries. Radium was found at Great Bear Lake in 1930, and gold, at Yellowknife on Great Slave Lake, in 1934.
Gold bricks represent mineral wealth, and the white fox recalls the fur trade.
Oil and gas were found in vast quantities on the shores and in the shallows of the Beaufort Sea in the 1970s, hastening completion of the Dempster Highway to Inuvik. Today, gold is still a staple of our mining industry and diamonds glitter in our future. Early northern aviators helped found the airlines we fly today. Flying in small planes and big jets is as familiar to us as bus service is to city dwellers. Aircraft link most of our communities and carry the milk, the mail, and the cable television repairman.