Mina Benson Hubbard

Mina Benson Hubbard (April 15, 1870 - May 4, 1956) was a Canadian explorer and was the first white woman to travel and explore the back-country of Labrador. The Nascaupee and George River system were first accurately mapped by her in 1905. She was the wife of Leonidas Hubbard who was famous for his ill-fated expedition to Labrador in 1903.

Early life Mina Adelaine Benson was born on an apple farm near Bewdley, Ontario. Her father was James Benson, an Irish immigrant, and her mother was Jane Wood, from England. She was the seventh of eight children and received a primary education in the village school before teaching in Cobourg for two years.

After graduating as a nurse in 1899 from the Brooklyn Training School for Nurses,

In 43 days of travelling, the Hubbard expedition confirmed that the Nascaupee, Seal Lake, and Lake Michikamau were in the same drainage basin and that the Northwest River and the Nascaupee were, in fact, the same. In addition, Hubbard made extensive notes on the topography, geology, flora, and fauna of this unknown wilderness.

Her book, A Woman's Way Through Unknown Labrador, and her diaries provide descriptions of her encounters with the Naskapi and Montagnais Indians, and of the last great herds of Labrador's caribou.

Together they had three children but divorced in 1926.

She returned to Canada in 1936 to accompany George Elson on a canoe trip down the Moose River in northern Ontario.