This glorious map turns up as endpapers in Dead Reckoning: The Untold Story of the Northwest Passage. It was drawn by Dawn Huck, one of the principals at Heartland Associates in Winnipeg. I love the way it captures the discovery of the original Northwest Passage in three essential expeditions. The first, led by John Franklin, got halted by ice off King William Island. In the British (Royal Navy) version of exploration history, it stands alone, the culmination of a centuries-long search. The second highlights a profoundly Canadian moment that arose out of the fur trade. Here we find an Orcadian Scot, an Inuk, and an Ojibway -- John Rae, William Ouligbuck, and Thomas Mistegan -- locating the final missing link in the Passage: Rae Strait. The third expedition is that of Norwegian Roald Amundsen, who succeeds in completing the Passage by diverging from Franklin's route and sailing through Rae Strait.
This map is one of half a dozen in Dead Reckoning, which launches on September 27, when I return from voyaging Out of the Northwest Passage
with Adventure Canada. But books may start trickling into bookstores mid-month, and I want to give faithful readers a heads-up: early copies from the first print run include a map-related glitch that will turn those books into collectors' items. Most readers won't notice, and the glitch disappears from later printings and won't be found in the ebook. But for Arctic history buffs, it will identify that book as coming from the earliest printing. So, if you collect Arctic history or you are buying for a collector, you might want to pick up a copy sooner rather than later. Just saying!

HarperCollins Canada in September, the work encompasses both naval and fur-trade explorers, but also such figures as Thanadelthur, Akaitcho, Tattanoeuck, John Sacheuse, Ebierbing, Hans Hendrik, Tulugaq, and Tookoolito.

In Stromness, Orkney, the John Rae Society will unveil a plaque this afternoon (Sept. 30) at the Hall of Clestrain on the occasion of Rae's 202nd birthday. Born in 1813, yes! the explorer lives on. Awarded by Historic Scotland, the National Commemorative Plaque recognizes Rae for having solved the two great mysteries of 19th-century Arctic exploration.  He discovered both the fate of the Franklin expedition and the long-sought final link in the first navigable Northwest Passage. The nay-sayers are with us still, of course. But I told the story in Fatal Passage (2001), and that work has confounded its critics and Rae's detractors. In the photo above, we find antiquarian Cameron Treleaven, Inuk historian Louie Kamookak, and Our Hero in 1999, placing a plaque beside the cairn that Rae built in 1854 to mark his discovery of Rae Strait. To the right, we see the Hall of Clestrain (Rae's birthplace) as it appeared in 1998, when I saw it first.  Some basic preservation has been done, but the Society is striving to raise funds to restore the Hall to its original splendor:  www.johnraesociety.com.  Meanwhile, if you happen to be in London on Sunday Oct. 4, an evening service will be dedicated to Rae at Westminster Abbey, starting at 6:30 p.m. John Rae lives!