Warburton Pike
Warburton Mayer Pike was a British explorer of British Columbia and the Canadian Arctic. Pike was born in Wareham, Dorset, in 1861 and he committed suicide in the sea at Bournemouth (UK) in 1915 after being refused entry into the army. He was named after his grandfather's friend Jacob Warburton of New Hall Pottery. His father (John William Pike) a ball clay merchant died in 1869, making Warburton and his siblings orphans. His mother was Mary Mayer (1827–1866), daughter of Thomas Mayer of Longport Pottery. Warburton attended Rugby School and then Brasenose College Oxford University, where he became a close friend of Douglas Haig, the future Field Marshal and First Earl Haig. Pike inherited a fortune as a young man. He was often not the first European to visit an area but was often the first to write about the areas that he traveled. Pike's prose travelogues of the places he visited were widely read. There is a mountain named for him on Saturna Island near Vancouver Island. There is a memorial to him at Dease Lake near Cassiar on the British Columbian mainland. His grave is under a plain little stone cross in a Bournemouth (UK) public cemetery. There is also an historically important portage between Great Slave Lake and Artillery Lake in Northwest Territories, Pike's Portage, named after him.
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