Mark Kalluak’s Traditional Stories from Arviat

Mark Kalluak’s Traditional Stories from Arviat

by Mark Kalluak

Iqaluit and Toronto: Inhabit Media, 2024.

Reviewed by Kenn Harper

 

It's hard to believe that Mark Kalluak passed away 13 years ago. He was a dominant presence in the Inuit cultural world for decades.  

Mark Kalluak (1942-2011) was a community leader and, in his quiet way, a cultural activist in his home community of Arviat (formerly Eskimo Point) on western Hudson Bay. Throughout his 68 years he was active especially in issues related to language and culture. He worked variously as an interpreter, translator, and teacher, as well as editor of a bilingual regional newspaper, The Keewatin Echo. Somehow he managed to find time to also serve his community as mayor for some years.

When I wrote a special issue of Inuktitut magazine , “Writing Systems and Translations” (Inuktitut, no. 53, September 1983), I was honoured that Mark agreed to write the introduction. Modestly, he wrote about the eventual realization by Inuit that a revision to the syllabic writing system was needed “to make improvements to include certain Inuktitut sounds not covered by the old system”, noting that Inuit Tapirisat of Canada (as Inuit Tapiriit Kanatami was then known) set up a Language Commission “to bring about the solution–the dual orthography–that is in use today.” Mark was far too modest to mention that the Language Commission drew heavily on work that he and Armand Tagoona (an Anglican minister with a passion for language) had already done, in devising the revised orthography.

Inhabit Media has put together an attractive hardbound collection of some of Mark’s stories from Inuit culture. Most of the selections have been published before, one by Nunavut’s Department of Education in 2004, and a number in two volumes published by Inhabit Media as Unipkaaqtuat Arvianit (Volumes 1 and 2) in 2009 and 2010.

But the last quarter of the book, entitled Inuit Beliefs, comprises stories not previously published. In introducing that section, Mark wrote that the “traditional belief system was linked to every area of life, affecting how they [Inuit] worked, how food was harvested and used, how water was used, how relationships were formed and maintained––it affected all areas of life.” In this book, he wrote about how some of those beliefs were “taught, learned, and practised.”

In “Showing Kindness to Orphans,” Mark told in abbreviated form part of the well-known story of Kaugjagjuk, an orphan who was cruelly mistreated by his community members, including his own family. He points out the lesson to be learned from the tale, that “we must always show kindness to people who (sic) we consider to be less fortunate than us, because they can rise up to become more powerful than us, and we ourselves may require their help someday… We are to offer them kindness and help. This is a precious thing to build our memories on.”

Most of the other stories in that section also convey lessons for living. Some are “Avoid Being Stingy About Food,” and “Treating Elders Kindly.” In “Avoid Whistling at the Northern Lights,” he reminds people – all Inuit know this – “We were told to avoid whistling at the northern lights, because if you whistle they will get closer, and the northern lights could cut your head off and play with it like a soccer ball.” Less well-known are two other beliefs about the northern lights: “People believe that if they rubbed their fingernails together, the sound would make northern lights go away,” and “When people wished the northern lights to go farther away, they would call out, ‘I piss on you,’ to try to drive away the northern lights.”

The introduction, by respected Inuit linguist, Jaypeetee Arnakak, points out that Mark had polio as a child and spent many years away from his family in a southern hospital where he had to learn a new language. He drew on his reserves of humility and patience and “decided that he would learn from this experience. This response would serve him well when he got out of the hospital. Because he had learned English while away, he felt he was now able to help both Inuit and qallunaat (white people) to communicate with each other.” How refreshing, in a time when so many Indigenous Canadians want to adopt the role of victim, to read about a man who refused to let life’s adversities conquer him and who instead chose to play the hand he was dealt and become a leader of his people and an inspiration to all.

In introducing some of his stories, Mark is careful to point out that some have many versions told in different places in the Arctic. He often makes a disclaimer, like, “This version of the story is taken from the Hauniqtuurmiut.” The Hauniqtuurmiut, an inland group of Inuit in the Kivalliq region (the area west of Hudson Bay) are his mother’s people, and many of his stories come from them.

Modern Inuit make much of Inuit Qaujimajatuqangit, sometimes translated as “traditional knowledge.” As Jaypeetee Arnakak points out, “Mark Kalluak lived and personifies the Inuit Qaujimajatuqangit principles authentically and genuinely; he was humble, thoughtful, and very caring towards his family, his community, his language, and his culture.”

Mark collected, wrote, translated, and illustrated this book. He began collecting stories, first from his mother, Helen Paurngat Kuugaq, and then from a wider sampling of community and regional elders. A few of the stories he heard from elders from other regions.

The book is lavishly illustrated with Mark’s own drawings. The type is large, and the paragraphs alternate between Inuktitut in syllabic orthography and English translations. The volume is an easy-to-read yet detailed introduction to Inuit traditional beliefs for the general reader, tales told well by a masterful story-teller.

The Ministry of Time

The Ministry of Time

by Kaliane Bradley

Simon & Schuster, $28.99 / £16.99

Reviewed by Russell A. Potter

A richly-detailed historical past and a wholly hypothetical future don't often meet in the same story. Of course, there are those episodes of various Star Trek franchises where the pricipals go back into the "past," being careful to avoid trampling the butterflies of time-travel infamy, but eventually of course the holodeck is invented and saves them the trouble. Novels, our oldest technology of immersive reality, fulfill, in a sense, the same purpose, making our hearts beat faster at imaginary perils -- and pleasures.

Kaliane Bradley's The Ministry of Time is one such, and simply as an immersive, delightful "escape" from our troubled timeline, it shines. Bradley's adroit and fresh way of putting things seems capable of making almost anything -- even London weather -- newly vivid, as when she describes the Christmas season making the city look as though it were "painted by a lesser impressionist." But beyond the glittering language, beyond the slow-burning romance, beyond the tightly-plotted espionage-filled main plot, Bradley's novel is anything but an escape -- on the contrary, it holds our darkness up to ourselves like a spattered mirror, and insists that we not look away.

How to explain the last two centuries -- how to account for the horrors, and our collective ability to repress and forget them, even to "double-down" (as the phrase goes these days) on our worser selves -- to a person who arrives to them as a tabula rasa? Well, not really entirely rasa, as Graham Gore did lead a life, ensconced by the ideological reassurances of his age, but complete with war, slavery, and mortal peril. It's just that he's skipped ahead a few hundred pages, and yet arrives in a world where his "bridge" -- the novel's unnamed narrator -- has the dreadful responsibility of deciding what to tell him, and when.

In the midst of reading about this conundrum, I found myself the somewhat odd position of knowing almost too much about the "real" Graham Gore and his role in the pereptually "ill-fated" Franklin expedition. Not only that, but having read every known piece of fiction inspired by its demise (thirty-two at last count), I initially readied myself for some new take on the tale. Which there was, of course, but that was not the point, dear reader, not the point at all. If considered as a "Franklin fiction," The Ministry of Time moves further from its source than any of them, further into the essential problems of human existence -- and by doing so, becomes the one book that fully captures the expedition's spirit.

And it does so with a narrative capable of the lightest of touches, the gentlest of humors, happily free from the lugubrious self-seriousness which possesses most other Franklin fictions. For, as Terry Pratchett -- in a quote that Bradley is fond of, observed:

The problem is that we think the opposite of funny is serious. It is not. In fact, as GK Chesterton pointed out, the opposite of funny is not funny, and the opposite of serious is not serious … humor has its uses. Laughter can get through the keyhole while seriousness is still hammering on the door. 

I can say with assurance that the Graham Gore we meet with in this book's pages is a fully realized individual, so alive, indeed, that it seems his breath might fog the glass. And his perplexity at the twenty-first century and its accoutrements is so genuinely described that it almost makes us a little embarrassed for ourselves. As the story progresses, the reader, too, is liable to a sort of disassociation, sometimes disconcerting but at othe moments quite delightful. I can see why many readers, on completing the book, begin it all over again, much as Commander Gore can't let go of Geoffrey Household's Rogue Male, the one volume in his new "present" which engages both the man he was -- and the man he will be.

And he's not even necessarily the most remarkable of the "expats" -- the Ministry's double-edged euphemism for those they've plucked from time -- my personal favorite was Margaret Kemble, picked up on the cusp of the Great Plague (and the Great Fire) of London, who dismisses Facebook as "soft oats and whey" but takes to online dating like a stroke of lightning. They, and the narrator, are caught up in two webs -- that of the Ministry and its politics, and that of the vagaries of modern life -- even before a third, the time-traveling espionage one -- gets a hold of them. I loved the novel's "middle parts," the calm before that storm, but its denouement is adroitly plotted, and despite all manner of role-switching revelations, there's a space at the end for hope.

And that's where the underlying seriousness of the story finds its perfect context. In Bradley's words:

 "Life is a series of slamming doors. We make irrevocable decisions every day. A twelve-second delay, a slip of the tongue, and suddenly your life is on a new road."

Which is as true for us today as it was for Graham Gore in 1847. We catch only glimpses of the lost Expedition, and that's as it should be -- because, for him, it happened in "real" time, and even traveling across time doesn't really change that.

An Inuk Hero

An Inuk Hero in Rupert’s Land 1800-1834

by Renee Fossett

Regina: University of Regina Press, 2023

$36.95 CA Paperback

$89.00 CA Hardback

 

Reviewed by Lawrence Millman

 

 Augustine Tataneuck is hardly a familiar name even to Arctic experts.  He was an Inuk, specifically a Kivallirmiuq, who began his Hudson Bay Company apprenticeship in August (hence his first name) of 1812 and continued to work for the Company until his death in 1834.  Among other things, he did household chores, planted cabbages, served as an interpreter, and helped Qallunaat live in various austere habitats.  He also served as an interpreter-guide for Sir John Franklin’s two overland expeditions, winning the admiration not only of Franklin, but also of doctor-naturalist Sir John Richardson, a man whose Arctic expertise considerably surpassed Franklin’s.

In an effort to excavate details about Augustine Tataneuck’s little-known life, author Renee Fossett delved into the archives of the Hudson’s Bay Company, and in most cases she came up empty-handed or found only a drive-by mention of his name.  I can imagine Ms. Fossett saying, “This might result in a paper, but not in a book, so I’ll give my research a broader context.”  Thus a goodly part of The Life and Times of Augustine Tataneuck doesn’t mention Augustine at all, but discusses the HBC trading post at Churchill or the Franklin expeditions.  Indeed, almost 1/3 of the book deals with the Franklin expeditions, and Augustine appears only when his skills as a translator or an Arctic survival expert are required.  By the way, the subtitle is a little misleading: along with the overland Franklin expeditions, several of the book’s primary locales are either east or west of Rupert’s Land, which consisted only of the Hudson Bay drainage basin.     

Concerning that subtitle, Augustine seems rather too complicated an individual to be called simply a hero.  Yes, he was an excellent interpreter-guide, but he also delighted in “spiritous [sic] liquors,” wrote HBC trader Walter Harding.  Another trader wrote that he “was very happy to be issued a blue serge jacket and other items resembling what seaman with the Royal Navy wear.”  Yet another said he was too “arrogant” to do certain kinds of work (perhaps emptying slop buckets?).  Might he have been a Qallunaat wannabe?  

With respect or perhaps disrespect to the Qallunaat, Augustine provided his fellow Inuit with all sorts of items such as mirrors, rings, bells, whistles, and medals — I dare say his generosity in this regard might have been a detriment to their traditional culture.  Ms. Fossett writes “Nothing…sets him [Augustine] apart from other indigenous people at the beginning of the 19th century."

Many recent books have been written about the Arctic by individuals who never went there, so it’s a pleasure to come across a book whose author spent a considerable amount of time in the Arctic.  In addition to her field research, Ms. Fossett spent ten years as a community teacher in various Inuit villages.  In fact, she occasionally steps out of her narrative and purveys lore that she probably acquired from the Inuit themselves.  An example: she mentions the designs a seamstress was obliged to put into her clothing.  Any mistake on that seamstress’s part “could be misinterpreted by a person other-than-human [powerful spirit] and bring disaster on a hunter and his community.”  Sometimes I wish she had stepped out of the narrative in a different way and compared the past with the present…indicating, for example, that Churchill has now become the tourist mecca known as the Polar Bear Capital of the World.

For those readers who are looking for a book fraught with high drama, I would not recommend The Life and Times of Augustine Tataneuck.   But for readers who want a highly detailed, more or less scholarly book that focuses on the history of the Canadian North, I would recommend it highly.

Passage: A Novel

Passage: A Novel

by Angus Wardlaw

Daredevil Books, 2013, $31.95

Reviewed by Russell A. Potter

Many times in these columns we've reviewed fictional works based in whole or part on Sir John Franklin's Arctic expedition of 1845. It's a subject that has fascinated novelists almost ever since Franklin first vanished; among the luminaries drawn to the story one can count Jules Verne, Mordecai Richler, Sten Nadolny, Margaret Atwood, Richard Flanagan, and of course Dan Simmons. Among the works to spring from this story are poems, plays (including one by Wilkie Collins), an Australian musical and a German opera, not to mention numerous novels -- more than two dozen by my count.

Novelistic treatments of Franklin tend to fall into two camps: one within which some deep symbolic stirrings of his story branch and leaf out into strange new worlds of possibility, some of them traveling far in time and space and style from the expedition itself; among these are the intertwined pseudohistories of William T. Vollman and Ed O'Loughlin, or the pensive meditations of Dominique Fortier or Lindsay Simpson. The others tend to some more realistic (though speculative) extension of what we know, an imagining of what came before and after the expedition's fateful final note; among these one can count John Wilson, Robert Edric, or Nancy Cato.

Wardlaw's novel falls mostly into this second category; interweaving known historical documents, characters, and incidents with fictionalized sequences which bridge wider and wider gulfs of unknowing. As a (collateral) descendant of Francis Crozier, Wardlaw brings a certain special gravitas to the undertaking, and it's also clear that he has spent many years carefully researching many aspects of the story (in a number of which, in the spirit of full disclosure, he and I corresponded over a period of years). There is also, however, a kind of dark, fanciful aspect to the story, in which characters we thought we knew twist and morph under pressure, bending and eventually breaking as the narrative progresses to its inexorable end.

There is a challenge in all historical fiction, though, and that is to capture something of the spirit and language of the era, One can't of course imitate nineteenth-century speech directly; such an effort would produce a very wooden and imitative text, but a fully modern tone would jar as well. One needs, in the words of novelist David Mitchell, to come up with something in-between the old and the new that evokes the older tone to readers of today, a tone he calls "bygonese."

Wardlaw's novel, in my personal view, doesn't quite manage this feat. The insertion of historical documents at many junctures, mostly quotes from Franklin's sailing instructions from the Admiralty, certainly helps, and it's clear that Wardlaw has done extensive research into the history of nautical terminology and jargon, but the speech of his characters sounds too modern to my ear. It becomes more so as circumstances become more dire, with the men swearing and cursing at one another in language that (as my grandmother might say) would "make a sailor blush." Wardlaw also adds odd peculiarities to some characters to make them stand out, including giving Ice Master James Reid a stutter, which seems especially wrong.

The narrative parts are much stonger, however, and the author's descriptive passages are quite evocative, with some brilliant turns of phrase scattered throughout. Having been through the Northwest Passage myself several times, I can affirm that the physical descriptions of land and ice are faithful ones, and paint a rich and detailed picture of the frozen regions that echoes what Franklin and his men would have seen from their ships -- and later, from their sledges.

I also have a slight quarrel with Wardlaw's portraits of the senior officers. Franklin -- who is inaccurately referred to as "the Commodore" throughout -- comes off as an ineffectual duffer who doesn't really have the respect of his subordinates. This is clearly contradicted by his and the men's letters home (though to be fair, Warlaw was writing much of his novel before the collection of letters I co-edited was published). More surprising still is the portrait of his ancestor Francis Crozier, who comes off as a drunken ego-driven man, though (as happens in The Terror television series) he eventually sobers up and becomes and effective leader of the expedition's last efforts at survival). It's also a bit jarring to hear him and J.C. Ross refer to each other as "Frankie" and sometimes even "Jimmy" when the record shows they used "Frank" and "James" for one another. But of course this is a work of fiction, and a novelist enjoys an absolute right to imagine the story in his or her own terms.

I won't give away the book's somewhat unusual hypothetical reconstruction of the expedition's last days -- readers ought to find that out for themselves -- but I will say that it's an original one, and that it certainly makes use of a great variety of historical research that lends it a believeable quality. In the end, Wardlaw's novel is a striking new contribution to the long literary tradition of tales that take up and evoke the deep and resonant tragedy of the Franklin story.

Tracking the Franklin Expedition

Tracking the Franklin Expedition of 1845: The Facts and Mysteries of the Failed Northwest Passage Voyage

by Stephen Zorn

McFarland & Co., $39.95

Reviewed by Russell A. Potter

The history of those who've written about about the Franklin expedition includes a long list of people who, while motivated by their fascination with the story, didn't "quit their day jobs." From Richard Cyriax (public health officer), to May Fluhmann (musician and telegraph operator), to Stephen J. Trafton (banker), most of those who have contributed to the larger story have been true amateurs -- that is, lovers of their subject -- rather than academically-trained historians.

To this list we can now add Stephen Zorn, a lawyer and journalist, as well as a former government official in Papua New Guinea. His book is different from most of its precursors, though, in that it does not propose any new single all-explaining theory of what happened -- on the contrary, it seeks rather to suss out the probable from the plausible, the established facts from the speculations, and (among the speculations) which stands on firmest ground.  Zorn bases his approach on what he calls a "quantum theory of history," one which readily allows that there are some uncertainties that simply can't be resolved. And, while I know of no Franklin-related mystery that is quite as uncertain as is Schrödinger's hypothetical cat (which is both alive and dead at the same time), it's a provocative model for an approach which takes uncertainty as a given, and resists (for the most part) the urge to hypothesize it away.

Zorn begins with the "known knowns" (a wry reference to the late Donald Rumsfeld's word salad about certainty), as good a brief summary of the whole Franklin mystery in a nutshell as any I've read. And then, one by one, it's on to a more detailed account of the same, giving important background on each figure in the expedition, and all that we know thanks to more than a century and a half of searching. He organizes the next few chapters around the classic cruxes: did Franklin consider sailing to the east of King William Island (or was he even aware that such a route existed); what routes Crozier considered as he reached his decision to desert the ships; whether or not they returned to them and when; and lastly the possible causes of their eventual demise. In that, I think that he's quite right that starvation and exhaustion, with a little help from their friends scurvy, lead poisoning (a factor certainly in the illness of some if not an all-encompassing explanation), along with exposure to the elements, were more than sufficient causes.

It's an excellent précis and guide to the full spectrum of the known unknowns of Franklin's last expedition, and it has the great advantage that it draws from and cites the large body of new work and understandings that has come from members of online communities such as the Remembering the Franklin Expedition Facebook group (also acknowledged in McGoogan's new book), as well as the latest archaeological and forensic studies. This makes it an excellent starting point for the newfound Franklinophile, to whom I would almost unreservedly recommend it.

My only caveat there is that, at several junctions in the narrative, Zorn goes out of his way to discredit Franklin personally, at one point referring to him as "the most lethal commanding officer in the history of the Royal Navy's Arctic service." He also asserts, quite incorrectly I feel, that Crozier's expressed reluctance to go to Erebus to dine with Sir John was a sign of personal animosity of some kind, and from which he also infers (again, incorrectly) that "Sir John was less than universally respected." The collected letters of the officers -- which Zorn draws from elsewhere -- clearly refute such a view; every single officer, and several other men of lower rank, speak with unstinting praise of his command, Crozier prominent among them. When, earlier in 1845, Crozier learned from James Clark Ross that he would most likely sail as second-in-command to someone else, he replied "I am quite ready to go second to our kind friend Sir John – with none else save and except yourself and Captain Parry would I go." There's nothing in any others of his letters to suggest that his view of Franklin changed.

Still, setting that issue aside, Zorn's book is in every other respect a breath of much-needed fresh air in a room in which sometimes, not out of ire but out of the great passion for the subject we Franklinites share, the discussions become too heated.

Searching for Franklin

Searching for Franklin: New Answers to the Great Arctic Mystery

By Ken McGoogan

Toronto: Douglas & McIntyre

$38.95 CAD

Reviewed by Russell A. Potter

Readers of the Arctic Book Review will be familiar with Ken McGoogan's many books that touch upon aspects of the Franklin expedition, perhaps most notably with Fatal Passage, a book which singlehandedly revived the reputation of Dr. John Rae, the brilliant Scottish surveyor and explorer who discovered the first direct evidence of Franklin's fate. Since then, both with Lady Franklin's Revenge and Dead Reckoning, McGoogan has greatly expanded our understanding not only of some of the behind-the-scenes maneuvering behind the heroic veneer of exploration, but also of the significant and lasting role of Indigenous peoples as guides and explorers in their own right.

So it would be an understatement to say that Searching for Franklin has been keenly anticipated by all who have taken an interest in the many and varied aspects of that famously lost explorer, the present reviewer among them. The approach of the book is somewhat different from what I'd initially expected, but by the end it succeeds in offering compelling new insights into the mindset of Franklin and other explorers of his era, along with a suggestive hypothesis as to the demise of his final expedition.

The book opens in conversation between McGoogan and Louie Kamookak, the late Inuit historian and friend to both of us, as well as to many others who went to King William Island in search of insight into the fate of Franklin and his men. It's great to hear Louie's voice again, resonating with that of his people and their ancestors, and lively with an often-humorous irony about the assumptions and obsessions of the various "Franklinites" he'd met through the years.

From there, we proceed to a lively retelling of events from Franklin's departure in 1845 through to Rae's and McClintock's discovery of what were to be, for a time, the final known traces of his lost men; it's a story that will be familiar to readers of McGoogan's earlier books. This sets the scene for the central portion of the book, which focuses not on Franklin's last command but his first, the Coppermine Expedition of 1819-22. The main theme here is of Franklin as 'the man who wouldn't listen' -- at least when it came to advice from his Dene guides -- which is surely a fair criticism. Of course, Franklin's deafness was not his alone; the entire apparatus of the British Admiralty and the Empire in general was quite hard of hearing when it came to Indigenous voices and knowledge.

The following chapters touch on several sundry aspects of the Franklin mystery, from the box dug up from under the Paddy Gibson memorial in Gjoa Haven (which some believed held Franklin records, but turned out to be full of sand), some chapters from the peculiar career of Franklin searcher Charles Francis Hall, and then finally to the discoveries of Franklin's ships in 2014 and 2016. After a brief detour to Jens Munk ('the second-worst disaster' of Arctic expeditions), we return to the Coppermine expedition and its key figures, particularly the Dene leader Akaitcho. Franklin, of course, comes off none to well in these histories -- I'm reminded of why, in his novel A Discovery of Strangers, Rudy Weibe has the Dene give Franklin the nickname "Thick English" -- but it was a bit frustrating as a reader to see so many of the remaining pages turn without a return to the story of the 1845 expedition.

It's just then, though, that McGoogan offers his own theory as to the surprising loss from among their numbers that clearly affected Franklin's men in their icebound ships: that eating improperly-prepared polar bear meat led directly to their death and disappearance. While it's entirely plausible, there's no direct evidence of the expedition having killed or eaten a bear --- indeed, they seemed poorly equipped for hunting of any kind. McGoogan cites an example of a bear killed by Akaitcho and eaten by Franklin's men in 1821; the Dene themselves did not eat bear meat. And yet the Inuit certainly do, and have for millennia; I've enjoyed it myself at a community feast in Clyde River. As long as the meat is well-cooked, the risk of trichinosis is relatively low, though of course one can't eliminate it entirely.

In his concluding chapter, McGoogan offers a sharp rebuttal to those who have, over the intervening years and today, hailed Franklin as a polar hero. He certainly had his flaws and limitations -- but then so do most "heroes" when you look closely at them. His sins seem in large part to be the common ones that nearly all Royal Navy commanders shared, among them insufficient trust in Indigenous knowledge, while his merits -- such as the love and loyalty he inspired in his men -- were his own. That said, I'm sure his reputation can stand a little correction; as Margaret Atwood once wryly observed (in a quote mentioned in the book), "every age has created a Franklin suitable to its needs." Perhaps this is the one for ours; only time will tell.

The Search for Franklin: An Irish Connection

The Search for Franklin: An Irish Connection

By Kevin Cronin

Reviewed by Frank Michael Schuster

Appearing at first glance as a coffee table book due to the unusual landscape format and the quality of the cover and the printing in general, Kevin Cronin’s book turns out to be a self-published book of no more than 75 pages, but with excellently reproduced illustrations, photographs, maps and charts on almost every page. The book is clearly a labour of love.

In it, the author describes concisely but ironically -- and very appealingly -- his experiences in the Arctic in general, and on the trail of Sir John Franklin's last expedition lost in the ice in particular. The Dublin-chartered accountant discovered his love of the sea early, spending his holidays as a child with his grandfather in County Cork, Ireland, at and on the sea. In the mid-1980s, he accompanied Irish adventurer Paddy Barry on his Atlantic crossing in a Galway Hooker, a historic cargo sailing vessel.

 

After this adventure, in 1997 he and Paddy Barry and Jarlath Cunnane attempted to repeat Ernest Shackleton's legendary 1916 crossing (not 1913, as stated in the book) from Antarctica to South Georgia in a converted boat of the Endurance, which had sunk in the Antarctic ice. The undertaking came to an end when the replica of the James Caird capsized in the stormy polar sea. That didn't stop Cronin from continuing to embark on polar adventures with them, circumnavigating the North Pole from 2001-2005. In the process, he passed through both the Northwest and Northeast Passages in the sailing vessel Northabout, which was built by Cunnane. Irish filmmaker John Murray, who was there for the crossing of the Northwest Passage, filmed this as part for a film about John Franklin's expedition. This brought Cronin into contact with that story, which obviously fascinated him. 

They had met Dave Woodman and Tom Gross on King William Island during their transit of the Northwest Passage. Since the Northabout, after reaching Alaska, cruised in the North Pacific in 2002-2004 before taking on the Northeast Passage, Murray and Cronin decided to join the next expedition planned by these two well-known Franklin searchers and researchers in search of Franklin's missing ships. The two set off from Dublin via London, Edmonton and Yellowknife to Goja Haven in 2002 with little besides their camera equipment as hand luggage.  After Tom Gross had received them, the journey was to become even more adventurous, as they continued with two snowmobiles. Driven by two local Inuit, one pulled a sled with the tents and the rest of the equipment, the other the box of the magnetometer with which they wanted to scan the frozen sea in Willmot & Campton Bay west of Skull Island, because Dave Woodman was convinced after his analysis of Inuit tradition that one of Franklin's ships must have sunk in the vicinity. 
There was actually not enough room for Cronin, Gross and Murray. They therefore sat down in the box, which turned out not a great idea.

 

“The journey was bone-crushing”, Cronin writes:

The space in the caboose was not adequate for three people, and on one of our rest stops I examined the other gear-laden sled to see if we had another option. With some adjustment to the cargo I found that I could make a groove along the top of the sled that could accommodate me lying corpse-like on the top of the load. […] Tom helpfully pointed out that if the sled tipped over, I would be squashed. […] I had ample time to contemplate how and why I was finding myself in this mad situation as the sled heaved and roled under me and the wind and snow pummeled me unmercifully. Shur, what else would you be doing? (pp. 21-2)

This passage is just one example of the author's lively and amusing style. One certainly learns more about the results of this expedition from Woodman's field reports (for example), but here the expedition's everyday life comes alive. Caribou hunting or the building of igloos are described briefly but very vividly, as is life in a tent, which is anything but easy. How a night on King William Island in a tent designed for Irish rather than Arctic weather becomes an adventure the moment nature calls and you need to pass water, for example, Cronin also tells us. These are things you don't find in the classic expedition naratives of the 19th century, and hardly ever today. 

The search with the magnetometer in 2002 and the subsequent closer examination of the hotspots found in the recordings in 2004 did not lead to the discovery of HMS Erebus, because she lies on the seabed not to the west but to the east of Skull Island, and therefore remained undiscovered for another decade. They later found that the expedition's camp was scarcely a mile away from where Erebus sank -- within sight, so to speak.

Nevertheless, Kevin Cronin remained passionate about the Franklin Expedition even after the discovery of the two ships in 2014 and 2016, and he joined Tom Gross' search for Sir John Franklin's grave in the summer of 2018. After his previous experiences on the subject of getting around in the Arctic, he decided to prepare himself and practice driving an ATV (all-terrain vehicle) in advance. Therefore, he signed up at a Quad Adventure Centre in March 2018.

“I found the experience hair-raising but valuable. […] I consoled myself by imagining that the actual terrain on KWI could not be as bad as this artificial course that was especially designed to be as demanding as possible. It was worse!” (p. 49)

The way he writes about his expedition is fun to read, even if Franklin's grave has not been found, neither then nor later.

Those who are hoping for new insights into the Franklin expedition may wish to look elsewhere, but those who enjoy beautiful, amusing and entertaining books and are looking for a first-person idea of what it's like to travel through the polar regions will greatly enjoy reading this modest publication.

Coming soon!

A banner season for books on the #FranklinExpedition this fall -- and we'll be reviewing all of them! pic.twitter.com/zwDXW7hvku

— Arctic Book Review (@ArcticBookRev) October 11, 2023

Wanderlust

Wanderlust: An Eccentric Explorer, An Epic Journey, A Lost Age

by Reid Mitenbuler

New York: Mariner Books, 2023

495 pp: $45.00

 

Reviewed by Lawrence Millman

Arctic explorers often tend to be of a predacious breed.  Give them a destination like the North Pole or the Northwest Passage, and they go into veritable overdrive in an effort to reach it.  Consider Admiral Robert Peary.  “Mine at last!” he exclaimed upon attaining (or not attaining) the North Pole, as if he had just engineered a corporate takeover.

By contrast, the Danish polymath Peter Freuchen was not (in the words of his biographer Reid Mitenbuler) “a swashbuckling explorer type.”  Rather than venture after some sort of Grail, he wanted to experience the Arctic on its own terms, greeting its rough integrity with a rough integrity of his own.  He became anthropologist Knud Rasmussen’s assistant at the Thule trading post not because he wanted to trade with the Greenland Inuit, but because he wanted to live with them…and live with them he did, through proverbial through hell and high water.  That he died of a heart attack just prior to a televised overflight of the North Pole may be the Arctic’s revenge on him for having an actual goal.  

Mitenbuler documents Freuchen’s wanderlust, which took him not just to the Arctic, but also to the Amazon jungle,. Nazi Germany, Soviet Russia, Holly-wood, and the White House.  Although all of these travels occurred in the first half of the 20th century, Freuchen often seems like he’d be a broad-minded contemporary.  For instance, he issued a warning about climate change as long ago as 1931.  He also championed civil rights, environmental stewardship, and animal rights.  He put his support of the Inuit not only into his books, but also into the 1933 film Eskimo, for which he ought to be considered the auteur.  Yet pretense was not his bailiwick.  Quite the contrary.  He lost his leg to frostbite and ended up with a prosthesis.  Writing to his artist friend Rockwell Kent, he said, “I’m doing just as well with my wooden leg as I did with my old meaten one.”

It’s hardly surprising that Wanderlust is the first biography of Freuchen in English.  After all, Freuchen himself wrote detailed accounts of his life in books like Vagrant Viking and Arctic Adventure, and potential biographers might have felt he’d already said what should be said about that life.  They might not have wanted to compete with his talent for storytelling, either.  Dare I say that his talent for embellishment makes his stories seem even better?

Mitenbueler’s biography is primarily a “just the facts, ma’am” sort of book.  

To get his information, the author dug into numerous archives, letters, and diaries as well as consulted Arctic experts like Kenn Harper and Dave Welky.  Who would have known that the Netsilik asked Freuchen whether Greenlandic Inuit had whiskers like his? And who would have known that Freuchen hoisted Hollywood actress Jean Harlow above his head to indicate his weight-lifting prowess? The result is what’s typically referred to as a page turner. 

On the other hand, the reader familiar with the Arctic might be a bit miffed by the book’s errors and anomalies.  For example, Mitenbuler says that no one lived in East Greenland at the time of Fridtjof Nansen’s 1888 ice cap crossing, a statement that’s obviously untrue. He commonly uses the ungrammatical phrase “Inuit people” to describe the Inuit and also says “Inuit man” rather than “Inuk.”  He refers to dire wolves and mammoths as being relatives of muskoxen when in fact these species are contemporaries rather than relatives.  And he describes one of Freuchen’s lady friends as living “northwest of Hudson Bay, not far from the current village of Rankin Inlet” — a geographical error, since Rankin Inlet is in the middle of western Hudson Bay.  The book contains no maps, so the reader can’t look at them and correct the blunders in the text.  No maps? How odd for a book whose subject traverses a goodly part of the world…

Its errors notwithstanding, Wanderlust brings to the reader’s attention one of the most enlightened as well as perhaps the most eccentric of all Arctic explorers.  None of the others assisted Jewish refugees during World War II or correctly answered a $64,000 question.  Nor did any of the others eat rock ptarmigan fecal matter cooked in seal oil and compare its flavor to Roquefort cheese.

Big Wolf

Big Wolf: The Adventurous Life of Frederick G. Schwatka

by Douglas W. Wamsley

Staunton, VA: American History Press, $28.95 (paper) $48.95 (hardcover)

Reviewed by David Woodman

Douglas W. Wamsley has established himself as a skilled biographer of nineteenth-century American explorers. In his last book, Polar Hayes: The Life and Contributions of Isaac Israel Hayes, M.D., Wamsley demonstrated meticulous research and attention to detail, often using obscure and rare primary sources to bring his subject and world to life. Most readers of this publication are familiar with Frederick Schwatka from his Arctic work and his valuable leadership of the Franklin Records Search Expedition of 1879. Wamsley’s new book, Big Wolf – The Adventurous Life of Lieutenant Frederick G. Schwatka, similarly brings the fuller details of this remarkable man’s life to a broad audience.

Wamsley starts his recounting with Frederick’s parents, industrious and energetic survivors, with the 4-year-old Frederick, of the rigours of the Oregon Trail. Growing up in the then-frontier lands near Astoria gave young Frederick character traits that later served him well – hardihood in, and love for, challenging outdoor pursuits and a hardworking determination to see his efforts through to completion. His experience with the local first nations peoples also fostered an acceptance and respect that would set him apart from many of his contemporaries. Companions described the young Frederick as “a gregarious gun-loving, ruddy-faced boy with a streak of independence” who was noted for his boyish pranks and self-deprecating humour.  

Next, Wamsley traces the young man’s development as a fledgling writer employed as a “printers devil” in his brother’s publication, where he “gained a sound schooling in the newspaper business” that would be useful in his later career. His restless ambition for a more active life led him to pursue a place at West Point Military Academy, where he graduated in the middle of his class and with an average number of disciplinary “demerits” (many resulting from “pranks” and “misplaced laughter.”) This mixture of writer and outdoorsman would become a core element of his later life.

After graduation, Schwatka spent seven years as a cavalry lieutenant on the western frontier. His physical endurance and cheerful personality were well suited to conducting long patrols in testing country, and he became inured to hardship while serving in isolated and often comfortless posts. Intellectually restless, Schwatka was granted extended leave to pursue law and medical degrees, which he completed successfully in 1875-6. Wamsley rightly concludes, “[a]t the age of 26 he had accomplished more than most persons would in a lifetime … [he] had succeeded as a student, soldier, outdoorsman, lawyer and physician.”

Not all of his military service was tedious. Returning from college, as part of General Crook’s division, Schwatka fought in battles at Tongue River and the Rosebud and led the cavalry charge at the Battle of Slim Buttes. His commanders mentioned his courage under fire; his former commander Anson Mills stated, “He could not speak well enough of the young lieutenant’s bravery in the field and his other soldierly qualities.” A soldier who served with him remarked, “A better or braver man never existed. He was kind-hearted and generous to a fault.” 

Unlike the prevailing attitude toward the enemy Indians as “savages,” Schwatka’s interest in, and respect for, the skills and culture of those he encountered are evident in his writings. His understanding, easygoing nature and diplomatic skills made him a frequent intermediary between the army and Sioux and Cheyenne leaders. He was welcomed into two tribes, and the Sioux gave him the name that serves as the title of this book (his later Inuit-given name, “Big Spectacles,” does not have the same impact.) 

The labour for which Schwatka is most famous was the Franklin Records Search of 1878-80. This expedition is covered in five of the book’s seventeen chapters. The main details of this expedition are well recorded in the contemporary accounts of his companions Gilder and Klutschak, but unfortunately, Schwatka’s private papers were lost during the San Francisco earthquake of 1906. Luckily, a draft article about the expedition was rediscovered in 1965 and edited by Edouard Stackpole as The Long Arctic Search. Wamsley’s skillful retelling, weaving the main elements of these three accounts, should become the first reference for the general reader. Wamsley supplements these with other rarely-referenced sources, including newspaper accounts and speeches.  These, especially an interview given within days of his arrival with the New York Tribune, add helpful context and interesting details to enlighten even those familiar with the standard source material. Informative ethnological discussion and biographical asides of Schwatka’s companions are interspersed throughout and offer pleasant diversions from the straightforward chronological narrative.

The inclusion of modern Inuit traditions of the expedition, collected by David Pelly, augments the value of his treatment. His use of current scientific work on the wrecks of Franklin’s ships, and Dr. Douglas Stenton's recent terrestrial archaeological work, brings the story up to date. However, Wamsley scrupulously avoids speculative editorializing or analysis concerning these, as his purpose is not to attempt to solve this enduring mystery but as a biographer to recount his subject’s contribution.

On his return from the Arctic, Schwatka, having burned his bridges with the military establishment through his almost-continual leaves of absence and frequent bouts of binge drinking, unsuccessfully pursued a pension, which forced him to seek other revenue sources. Most men, having attained international fame as an explorer by age 31, would have settled down. With a new wife and daughter, he could have enjoyed a comfortable domestic life by falling back on his medical or legal training, but it was not in Schwatka’s nature. His post-Franklin life followed his established pattern of “a small cohesive group, combined with Indigenous peoples’ assistance, sound decision-making, and calculated risk-taking.” These consisted of unlikely business ventures and adventurous endeavours, resulting in many books, popular at the time but now largely forgotten, public-speaking events and a prodigious amount of often self-serving journalism. Despite his substantial writing output and public appearances, Schwatka’s self-promoting pursuit of fame and fortune was only mildly profitable. His far-flung business interests and busy schedule of cross-country public appearances rendered him a largely absentee husband and father. 

To maintain his fame and public interest, Schwatka fell back on his skills as an outdoorsman. His most significant exploration took place on the new American frontier - Alaska. Using his position as the personal aide to General “Bearcoat” Miles, the two men organized a military reconnaissance to the newly-acquired territory that would be a significant focus of Schwatka’s later career. He surveyed the Yukon River in 1883, followed by an unsuccessful assault on Mt. St. Elias two years later and a final expedition in 1891 to the unexplored White River valley deep in the Alaskan interior. His writing about these travels offers an interesting prequel to the Klondike gold rush that would overtake the region in 1896. As a contract explorer-with-a-pen, Schwatka pursued or created many opportunities, including a winter trek in Yellowstone Park and travels in northern Mexico.  These produced little more than grist for his publicity mill.  Many of Schwatka’s “discoveries” were controversial, as he largely followed in the steps of others and rarely gave credit to them. His later reputation would also suffer from his tendency to exaggerate and over-dramatize his accomplishments.

Throughout the book, Wamsley sympathetically explores Schwatka’s complex personality – hardy and adventurous, an organized and inspiring natural leader, friendly and amusing, yet self-promoting and prone to exaggeration. He retained his admiration of indigenous cultures and people but occasionally agreed to their sensational exploitation when it served to enhance his public appearances. From his time as a hard-drinking cavalryman Schwatka also, except when actively involved in strenuous activity, was prone to alcohol and substance abuse. His coverage of the events leading up to Schwatka’s untimely early death by overdose is the most complete treatment I have read.

One regrets the lack of Schwatka’s private correspondence, which would have helped illuminate this complex man's inner life. Reliance on contemporary writings about him, pro and con, is rarely given by those who knew him personally and is usually coloured by the writer’s bias. Schwatka’s prodigious published output is journalistic, sometimes offering insight into his humour and self-deprecating nature but mainly leaving his personality opaque (not a bad attribute in a journalist.) It must be remembered that, unlike personal letters, his writings were intended for publication and were penned to serve his professional interests. 

The most trustworthy assessments come from those who shared trials in challenging situations. After his death, a fellow cavalry officer recalled, “The officers and men in the regiments in which he served loved him, and none more so than the lowliest private, for he was always kind and considerate.” Klutschak credited the success of Schwatka’s Arctic expedition to his “wide knowledge, good judgment [sic], energy and correct handling of his men.”  The Sioux, learning of the death of their adopted brother, held ceremonies of remembrance.

The book features adequately-reproduced illustrations, and maps of Schwatka’s travels, although these are smaller than desired and often challenging to follow. The endnotes are well done, offering a means to check on provenance and occasionally offering extended context or information that would have disrupted the flow of the main text. A complete bibliography and index both provide value.

Like his work on Hayes, this book becomes the standard biography for another often-neglected American explorer. It is a welcome addition to the Arctic and Alaskan exploration literature. It should also interest those interested in late nineteenth-century frontier life, Manifest Destiny, or simply in tales of fascinating characters. It is highly recommended.