Jean Steinbruck

Steinbruck immigrated to Canada from Germany in 1778 as a mercenary soldier to fight on the side of the British in the American War of Independence. In 1783, when the war ended, he travelled north as a voyageur, eventually joining Alexander Mackenzie on his well-known trip on the river we now know as the Mackenzie River.

Steinbruck was later recruited to help the North West Company establish the first trading posts in the Northern interior. Steinbruck was posted at several forts in the Great Slave Lake area: Slave Fort, Lac LaMartre Fort, Yellow Knife Fort and finally a fort at Great Bear Lake. It was here, in 1804, that he was shot by a rival XY Company employee, John McDonald.

Unfortunately, because of difficulties posed by extreme distances and methods of communication, neither Steinbruck nor McDonald knew that the North West Company and the XY Company had amalgamated that very month.