The Big Ship: An Autobiography

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On the first commercial vessel to transit the North West Passage.

Cold Burial: A True Story of Endurance and Disaster.

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An account of a disastrous winter in the Barrens of the Northwest, of three patrician adventurers, led by a rather irresponsible John Hornby. All three died of starvation in 1927.

“English Writings about the New World”

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p. 38: At least by the nineteenth century, most expeditions of exploration considered a well-stocked library an essential component of their cargo. Obviously, those in ships could afford a greater tonnage; just how many men on Franklin’s two land expeditions hauled books and charts over portages and across the tundra remains a nice question. Certainly, when the first expedition was reduced in the fall of 1821 to a straggling line of men marching back from Bathurst Inlet to the hoped-for refuge of Fort Enterprise, a copy of Samuel Hearne’s A Journey from the Prince of Wales’s Fort, in Hudson’s Bay, to the Northern Ocean, the only book then available about the region, remained part of the load. The party of twenty men lost their way more than once. Were they consulting the charter in the inferior but lighter-weight octavo edition of Hearne’s book, issued in Dublin in 1796? It would have made a more logical traveling companion than the larger quarto first edition (London, 1795). Yet the map in the octavo showed Hearne’s return route across the Barrens differently from the first edition’s map. The discrepancy could have confused Franklin, whose men suffered more than one delay, and contributed to the number of deaths. Certainly, the matter of a book’s size bears materially on this dramatic possibility.

Roughing It in the Bush; Or, Life in Canada.

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Mrs. Moodie (nee Strickland) sailed on an immigrant ship of mainly Scots headed to Canada in 1832. She writes with a refreshing candour about the trials and tribulations of life in the Canadian bush, direct enough to warrant a Norton Critical Edition in 2007, with extensive supporting material about her life and work.

The Village at the End of the Iceberg.

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p. 3: Russian Orthodox priests gave way to Jesuit missionaries, who left an even greater impression, not least in the diseases they brought. A flu epidemic in 1900 halved the native Alaskan population in just three months. The old church we are using as a dormitory is lined with books on Jesuit theocracy. Local names, like Peter John, Stanley Tom, Margaret Nickerson, are all Jesuit impositions that now take preference over their native Yup'ik names (Peter John's traditional name is Miisaaq, but he rarely uses it). Other artefacts of the Jesuits are the Bible on Peter John's table and his Hohner Special 20 harmonica. He was given the instrument and taught how to use it by the missionaries. He plays it for us, starting with hymn music and then segueing into the Forties classic 'You Are My Sunshine'.

The Shipping News.

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A fictional reading experience from her novel about northern Newfoundland, in this instance a conversation on a remote island off the northern coast, where all members of its 5 isolated families could read and write: My father taught all his children to read and write. In the winter when the fishing was over and the storms wrapped Gaze Island, my father would hold school right down there in the kitchen of the old house. Yes, every child on this island learned to read very well and write a fine hand. And if he got a bit of money he’d order books for us. I’ll never forget one time, I was twelve years and it was November, 1933. Couple of years before he died of TB. Hard, hard times. You can’t imagine. The fall mail boat brought a big wooden box for my father. Nailed shut. Cruel heavy. He would not open it, saved it for Christmas. We could hardly sleep nights for thinking of that box and what it might hold. We named everything in the world except what was there. On Christmas Day we dragged that box over to the church and everybody craned their necks and gawked to see what was in it. Dad pried it open with a screen of nails and there it was, just packed with books. There must have been a hundred books there, picture books for children, a big red book on volcanoes that gripped everybody’s mind the whole winter—it was a geological study, you see, and there was plenty of meat in it. The last chapter in the book was about ancient volcanic activity in Newfoundland. That was the first time anybody had ever seen the word Newfoundland in a book. It just about set us on fire—an intellectual revolution. That this place was in a book. See, we thought we was all alone in the world. The only dud was a cookbook. There was not one single recipe in that book that could be made with what we had in our cupboards. (p. 170)

Danish Greenland: Its People and Its Products

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p. 168: on training of indigenous boys: The author cannot omit adding one instance to illustrate this. Once he took such a boy with him to Denmark, where he stayed only one winter as apprentice in a printing-office, and acquired a skill in book-printing, lithography, and bookbinding, of which he has afterwards given proofs by managing, all by himself, without the least assistance, a small office in Greenland, the productions of which will be mentioned by and by. This young man is by no means a rare exception; perhaps one out of ten may be found to be equally highly gifted. It cannot be denied that the half-breeds seem to surpass the original race as regards such perfectibility.

Tales and Traditions of the Eskimo, with a Sketch of Their Habits, Religion, Language and Other Peculiarities….

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Rink’s second volume of Eskimo Tales with his introductory sketch on their culture, based not on ornaments, weapons and other remains: But the time will certainly come when any relics of spiritual life brought down to us from pre- historic mankind, which may still be found in the folk lore of the more isolated and primitive nations, will be valued as highly as those material remains. In this respect the Eskimo may be considered among the most interesting, both as having been almost entirely cut off from other nations and very little influenced by foreign intercourse, and also as representing a kind of link between the aboriginals of the New and the Old World (p. vi). It is a fascinating collection of tales, with brief introductions noting the sources of the stories. Here are a few examples:

Son of the North.

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A fictional romance of North Canada about immigrants from Scotland, with a few reports of reading incorporated into the novel.

Glimpses of the Northland: Sketches of Life among the Cree and Salteaux Indians.

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p. 28: At God’s Lake the work of teaching a school was of a different character. No missionary or teacher had been stationed there, and parents and children were alike totally ignorant of the nature of a school. I arrived at God’s Lake in early September and at once commenced work. The church was a slimsy structure, very cold, and the roof leaked so badly as to render it untenable in rainy weather. There were no desks, chairs or black boards. A few books and slates I brought from Oxford House. A number of children were orphans. I plainly announced in the preceding Sabbath services that only children of school age, that is, from six to fourteen years, would be received, and that I did not conduct a nursery, nor did I want a wife, and therefore grown-up girls could not attend the school, for their sole object in coming was to impress the school-teacher with their charms and thus win a husband if possible.

Ice Pilot: Bob Bartlett.

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A juvenile audience intended here, but a good overview and a few things wrong.

Life Aboard: The Journals of William N. and George F. Smith.

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Diaries of typical 19th-century voyages by New Brunswick ships to all over the world, usually carrying timber. Nothing polar about it (mostly St John to Liverpool), but an interesting example of a seaman’s journals.

. Arctic Manual

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p. xi: Describes use of Stefansson’s library of over 15,000 books, pamphlets, and manuscripts in preparing his report on living and operating conditions in the Arctic, and also the preparation of this Manual ( 1935-43).

Journal of Transactions and Events, during a Residence of Nearly Sixteen Years on the Coast of Labrador; Containing Many Interesting Particulars, Both of the Country and Its Inhabitants, Not Hitherto Known

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Townsend took six voyages to Labrador over sixteen years and this is his personal account of his experiences. Throughout the journal are many references to reading prayers to his family, sometimes twice a day.