John Rae was born on September 30, 1813, in Orphir, Orkney Islands, Scotland, where his father, John Rae (1772-1834), M.D., LL.D, was the local agent for the Hudson’s Bay Company.

He was a surgeon, fur trader, explorer, and author. He received his education at home from a private tutor. As a boy, he learned to sail, shoot, and he spent lots of time outdoors on expeditions to the hills, moors, and sea cliffs. He studied medicine in Edinburgh and qualified as a licentiate of the Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh in 1833. He was appointed surgeon to the HBC ship Prince of Wales for the voyage from England to Moose Factory, Ont., where he spent the next ten years as both a clerk and surgeon. He learned from the Cree their methods of travelling and hunting and became an expert in snowshoeing. In 1846-1847, he explored the Gulf of Boothia northwest of Hudson Bay. In 1848-1851, he explored the Arctic coast near Victoria Island. In 1854, he went from Boothia to the Arctic coast and learned the fate of the Franklin expedition. He moved to Hamilton and became a founding member of the Hamilton Scientific Association, which became the Hamilton Association for the Advancement of Literature, Science and Art. In 1860, Rae worked on the telegraph line to America, visiting Iceland and Greenland. In 1864, he made a further telegraph survey in the west of Canada. In 1884, he again worked for the Hudson's Bay Company as an explorer of the Red River for a proposed telegraph line from the United States to Russia. In 2013, The John Rae Society was formed in Orkney to promote Rae's achievements.

In 1860, he married Catherine Jane Alicia Thompson (1838–1919). He died on July 22, 1893, in London, England, and is buried in Kirkwall, Orkney Islands, Scotland.

The geologist and explorer George Mercer Dawson was born in Pictou, Nova Scotia, and moved to Montréal in 1855 when his father, John William Dawson, became Principal of McGill. At the age of eleven, he contracted an illness which resulted in permanent spinal deformity and the stunting of his growth, but he vigorously resisted the role of invalid and completed his education under private tuition.

After a year as a partial student at McGill, he enrolled in the Royal School of Mines, London, whence he graduated in 1872 with highest honours and the title of Associate. After a brief period surveying mines in Nova Scotia and teaching chemistry at Morrin College, Québec, he was appointed geologist and botanist to the British North American Boundary Commission, and made his first surveying trip to the Canadian West.

His travels were even more extensive after 1875, when he became geologist with the Geological Survey of Canada; they resulted in numerous published reports and articles, primarily on the mineral resources of the Prairies, northern British Columbia and the Yukon, but also on the botany, geography, and ethnography of this region.

In 1883, he became assistant-director and, in 1895, Director of the Geological Survey of Canada, which he headed until his death in 1901. He assisted in negotiating treaties affecting natural resources, notably as Commissioner in the Bering Sea seal inquiry of 1891-92, for which work he was awarded the C.M.G. A member of numerous scientific associations, Dawson was President of the Royal Society of Canada in 1893.