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Who really discovered the Northwest Passage?


Gotta love the latest issue of Canada's History. Check out the portrait of Arctic explorer John Rae by contemporary artist David Seguin. The question they asked me was: Who discovered the Northwest Passage? Editor Mark Reid writes that, in answering that question, I have "set the record straight" and sorted "the contenders from the pretenders, once and for all." Dagnabit, I do believe he's right. The piece begins like so . . . .

The ledger stone is brilliantly placed. It reads: “John Rae / 1813–1893 / Arctic Explorer.” Made of red sandstone from Orkney, it was installed last September at Westminster Abbey in London, and is situated directly beneath an elaborate bust of Sir John Franklin, which has stood there since 1875.
            The effect is one of completion, since John Rae completed the collective work to which Franklin had made a considerable contribution — the discovery of a navigable Northwest Passage. The story behind the centuries-long quest for that passage has been attracting renewed attention since last autumn, when a Canadian expedition located the Erebus, one of Franklin’s lost ships.
            In 1846, Sir John sailed that ship and one other, the Terror, south down Peel Sound from Parry Channel. At the northern tip of King William Island, he turned west and got trapped in the perennial pack ice. According to Inuit testimony, the Terror was crushed by ice and sank off King William Island. Over the next two or three years, the pack carried the Erebus south and then east into Queen Maud Gulf, where it sank.
            The Erebus was not seen again until September 2014, when Canada’s Victoria Strait Expedition located it on the sea floor with an underwater search vehicle in one of the most significant archaeological discoveries made in Canada. This finding has already changed how we reconstruct the fate of the Franklin expedition. But it offers no answer to the question, who discovered the Northwest Passage? . . . .
To read the rest, you will have to pick up the June-July of Canada's History.

          
Ken McGoogan
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1 comment:

Season Osborne said...

Terrific! Can't wait to pick me up a copy.

Before turning mainly to books about arctic exploration and Canadian history, Ken McGoogan worked for two decades as a journalist at major dailies in Toronto, Calgary, and Montreal. He teaches creative nonfiction writing through the University of Toronto and in the MFA program at King’s College in Halifax. Ken served as chair of the Public Lending Right Commission, has written recently for Canada’s History, Canadian Geographic, and Maclean’s, and sails with Adventure Canada as a resource historian. Based in Toronto, he has given talks and presentations across Canada, from Dawson City to Dartmouth, and in places as different as Edinburgh, Melbourne, and Hobart.