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3/6 - The Unknown Pioneer

Ray Mears dons his snowshoes tonight to retrace the steps of one of his heroes, the little-known explorer Samuel Hearne. Hearne was a redoubtable pioneer who caught the attention of the Hudson's Bay Company in Canada (a century before it was even called "Canada"). After being sent to the British-run company's most remote outpost, Hearne led a gruelling 1769 expedition to find a copper mine. A clearly entranced Mears, whose enthusiasm is infectious, yomps through the lovely, isolated boreal forest in Hearne's footsteps, stopping off to demonstrate a nifty bit of bushcraft along the way. He makes a cooking pot out of birch bark that is such a thing of beauty and practicality it wouldn't look out of place on the shelves of any upmarket kitchenware shop. Pouring rain and vast tracts of snow do nothing to deter Mears, who cuts a confident, yet isolated figure as he toils through the wilderness.