Looking astern

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 25/11/2023 (695 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Two names are synonymous with exploring the Arctic: John Franklin and Ken McGoogan.

English explorer Franklin lived from 1786 to 1847, making three major expeditions in search of the Northwest Passage, the third one proving to be fatal. Guelph, Ont., author McGoogan (born in 1947) has devoted much of his life to learning about Arctic exploration and passing his knowledge on through books, articles and workshops.

Searching for Franklin is McGoogan’s sixth book about the Arctic. While there are references to Franklin’s disappearance on his third expedition and the searching that was undertaken to find him, the title can best be seen as referring to McGoogan’s attempts to determine what kind of man Franklin was.

The book is not organized chronologically. That, and the shifts in style and point of view, may bother some readers. There are maps included, but they could be better connected with the text.

One of the many strengths of the book is the bringing to life of men who accompanied Franklin: George Back, a midshipman and artist; Robert Hood, a midshipman and writer; Dr. John Richardson; Pierre St. Germain, interpreter, hunter and canoe repairer; as well as Indigenous men such as Chipewyan Dene leader Akaitcho. The contrast of leadership styles — Franklin’s and Akaitcho’s — is a major highlight of the book.

McGoogan presents amazing details of the treks Franklin and his men made over ice, snow and rocky hills, how they attempted to stay warm, how they froze, how they carried the heavy supplies. Not being able to carry a lot of wood and equipment, they built snow huts for overnight resting. They often had to repair a canoe which had smashed into ice or rock; sometimes that meant remaking a wrecked large canoe into a small one. The men carried supplies of food meant to last months. Most welcome after an exhausting and chilling day was the tea they made, as well as beer and liquor.

It was usually necessary to kill animals for fresh and substantial meat. Often, there was not enough — or nothing at all when the weather was terrible — and the men became weaker. One morning, “the men tried to go forward, but ‘we were too feeble,’ Back writes, ‘to oppose the wind and drift, which blew us over’ and, despite their best efforts, drove them backward. They sat out the storm in a small clump of pines and ate ‘a gun cover and a pair of shoes (moccasins) for our meal.’” Adds McGoogan: “George Back could scarcely stand upright.”

McGoogan draws on the research he did for his 2001 book, Fatal Passage: The Untold Story of John Rae, the Arctic Adventurer Who Discovered the Fate of Franklin: “Rae reported the unvarnished truth that would resonate throughout the British Empire… ‘From the mutilated state of so many of the corpses and the contents of the kettles,’ Rae wrote, ‘it is evident that our wretched countrymen had been driven to the last resource — cannibalism — as a means of prolonging existence.’”

McGoogan ties to this what he learned about Franklin’s highly respected wife, Lady Jane, for his 2005 book, Lady Franklin’s Revenge: A True Story of Ambition, Obsession, and the Remaking of Arctic History: “John Rae’s allegations of cannibalism threatened her husband’s reputation and so her own. They could not be allowed to stand.”

She turned for help to none other than popular novelist Charles Dickens. He was happy to help her by publicly denouncing Rae for taking the word of “savages” — the Inuit people in the North. “He presented an argument that, from the vantage point of the 21st century, can only be judged profoundly racist,” McGoogan writes. “Time has proven his two-part essay to be a tour-de-force of obfuscation, self-deception, and wilful blindness” — but it did ruin Rae’s reputation.

After showing Franklin’s decisions and actions throughout, McGoogan reminds the reader of two facts that help explain Franklin: “he was a Royal Navy man from head to toe,” and “he was an evangelical Christian with a mission.”

Searching for Franklin is a book to wallow in, best read in a warm room with a hot drink by your side.

Dave Williamson is the Winnipeg author of 10 books and was once invited to read in Fort Smith, N.W.T., where, at the time of his departure, his hosts transported him to the airport by dog team.