P. G. Downes

P. G. Downes

Prentice G. "Spike" Downes (1909-1959) was an American school teacher and author, who travelled by canoe to explore the Great Barren Lands and learn the ways of the Cree and Dene people. Downes' journals record a disappearing people, and a landscape unknown to all but the Canadian natives at that time. His daughter Annie Downes Catterson said of him that he traveled a great distance "in order to learn the things of long ago."