Click on the above title and look to the right to see how our mystery-box story looked when it turned up on The National . . . All that's left is the Great Reveal, which should happen around Sept. 29 . . .

VIDEO: 3:06

* Franklin Expedition box unearthed An Inuit family says a box that was hidden for more than 80 years in the Arctic contains logbooks linked to the doomed Franklin Expedition, the CBC's Jay Legere reports.


Read more: http://www.cbc.ca/technology/story/2010/09/07/franklin-records.html#ixzz0z2IEgp3M

So here's a follow-up article that has been picked up across Canada from Montreal to Vancouver.

By Ken McGoogan
Special to the Gazette

An old wooden box excavated from beneath an Arctic cairn is being flown unopened to Ottawa Monday from the Nunavut hamlet of Gjoa Haven.

The Nunavut-government launched the excavation after an Inuit family relayed oral history suggesting that the cairn contained records from the ill-fated 1845 expedition led by Sir John Franklin in search of the Northwest Passage.

But Canadian historian Kenn Harper, who has spent months researching the cairn, says the box will prove to contain records left in 1905 by explorer Roald Amundsen during the first-ever navigation of the Passage.

The box, which measures 14.5” x 11” x 6.5”, will be opened and its contents preserved at the Canadian Conservation Institute.

Harper, author of the best-selling Inuit biography Give Me My Father’s Body, and also Honorary Danish Consul in Nunavut, says the box contains papers that Amundsen buried after spending almost two years in Gjoa Haven tracking the movements of the North Magnetic Pole.

He began investigating the cairn after learning of the claim by descendants of George Washington Porter II, a Hudson’s Bay Company manager based in that hamlet on King William Island.

Harper says that Eric Mitchell of the HBC, the senior man in the territory, dug up the Amundsen records in 1958, with the help of Porter II. The two men found documents that had first been discovered in 1927 by William “Paddy” Gibson, an HBC inspector who reburied them.

By Ken McGoogan


Special to the Gazette

GJOA HAVEN, King William Island, Nunavut –

The search for the logbooks of the ill-fated Franklin expedition -- the Holy Grail of Arctic exploration history – has taken on new life.


An Inuit family based in Gjoa Haven, the only settlement near the spot where the 1845 expedition got trapped in the ice, is promising to unearth those logbooks on Saturday (September 4).

Researchers and historians have been searching for the logbooks since the 129-man expedition led by Sir John Franklin disappeared while searching for the Northwest Passage.

The expedition got trapped in pack ice at the northwest corner of King William Island, roughly 160 km from Gjoa Haven. In 1847, 105 sailors endured a horrific march down the west coast of the island before succumbing to scurvy, starvation and lead poisoning. The final survivors resorted to cannibalism.

Wally Porter and Ken

Descendants of George Washington Porter II, a Hudson’s Bay Company manager, say they will excavate the logbooks from beneath a cairn in the centre of Gjoa Haven (pop. 1,100). “Timing is everything,” said family spokesperson Wally Porter. “And the time has come to show the world these logbooks.”

Porter said in a recent interview that his grandfather, Porter II, buried the documents beneath the cairn when it was rebuilt in the late 1950s or early ’60s. The cairn had deteriorated since it was erected in 1944 to commemorate William “Paddy” Gibson, an HBC inspector who had died in a plane crash two years before.

Down through the decades, historians have often speculated that the Inuit on King William Island discovered the logbooks. But until now, the story has been that they scattered the pages to the wind.

Hitting the Road

Thirteen of Canada’s leading writers pick essential stops on a cross-country literary tour.

It’s summertime. Time to strap on the seat belts and go exploring, across all of this country’s provinces and territories. And we will need some great reading matter to help eat up the kilometres and tell us something essential about the land we are crossing. Thirteen of Canada’s best writers have volunteered to act as literary guides for a patch they’re particularly familiar with in this enormous quilt we live on, so let’s get moving. In honour of Vancouver 2010, we have decided to follow the route (more or less) of the Olympic Torch.

BERN -- Start with practicalities, say the transit system. Nothing but gorgeous, hi-tech trams, two or three cars long, bright red, zooming along on schedule to the minute. To the minute! This is the clockwork efficiency you hear so much about. And, okay, what about those public toilets? I am mortified to imagine what the Swiss must think when they go into a urinal at a Canadian railway station, or even at an airport. These places are CLEAN. SPARKLING CLEAN, like they are in your own home and you have guests coming over. The level of maintenance of all things Swiss is impressive, even astonishing. I mean, many of these houses and buildings date from the sixteen or seventeen hundreds, and yet here they stand, erect, entirely usable, fully functioning. In Switzerland, too, as elsewhere in Europe, you can't miss the history . . . . and, indeed, the respect for all things cultural: artists, writers, intellectuals. Respect and, yes, even reverence. Go figure. As for beggars in the street, if you hunt really, really hard, maybe you can find one. In this country, somehow, they keep people from falling fall through the cracks. Do I love Switzerland?

A recent story in the London Free Press shows why authors are wondering about the way ebooks are rolling into libraries. The future is now, the story tells us, and more and folks are "taking out books electronically, downloading titles from the comfort of their own computers."
At the London Public Library, which is just an example of a trend, the use of ebooks is growing exponentially, with more than 1,000 titles in the electronic catalogue, a number that may very well double in the next year.