Was the Northwest passage ever found?

Yes, but not during the period of exploration in the 1600s and 1700s. There was no ice-free path through the frozen Arctic islands of northern Canada, and several expeditions were caught by the pack ice and lost. Explorer Henry Hudson, for whom Hudson Bay is named, suffered a mutiny and was never seen again.

The route across North America to the Pacific and Asia was finally opened by heavy icebreaker ships (similar to their use in northern Russia). Eventually the Arctic warming of the 2000s created a brief period of open sea each August.