Is Mount Royal University ready for this?
This may or may not be a photo of Mount Royal University. Guaranteed: it IS a photo taken within a couple of hundred kilometres of that august institution. The rationale? Our Hero will get out into these hilly environs next March, after spending a week at MRU as writer-in-residence. He just signed a contract, undertaking…
Read MoreJohn Rae sweeps Our Hero into the Polish Times
You can read the whole story of John Rae at Westminster Abbey by clicking here — but only if you read Polish. Me, I can read, in the highlight paragraph, not just my own name but the book title Fatal Passage. I find this noteworthy because we have two grandchildren, ages five and two, who…
Read MoreOrcadian poet commemorates John Rae’s arrival at Westminster
After the dedication ceremony at Westminster Abbey, back at the Scottish office in Dover House, Orcadian poet Harvey Johnston read a wonderful, Burnsian poem entitled Rae in the Abbey. He graciously agreed to let me publish part of it. The final four stanzas run as follows. I have no photo of Johnston, but the above…
Read MoreEyewitness report from Westminster Abbey: John Rae lives!
–> LONDON, England – The ledger stone is brilliantly placed. It reads: “John Rae / 1813 – 1893 / Arctic Explorer.” Newly installed in Westminster Abbey in the heart of London, it is situated directly beneath the elaborate bust of Sir John Franklin. The effect is one of completion. Given the privilege of offering “a…
Read MoreCanada’s Scottish architects designed a pluralistic, postmodern nation
When Maclean’s magazine invited me to ruminate on why Canadians should care about the Scottish referendum, I discovered that, yes, I did have a few thoughts. The piece runs around 1,100 words, and can be found here in its entirety. It begins like-so: In uptown Toronto, if you look east across the street from the…
Read MoreNew edition sheds light on explorer who discovered the Fate of Franklin
Hats off to the folks at Touchwood Editions. They’re launching this new edition of John Rae’s Arctic Correspondence on the same day, September 30, as Rae is to be welcomed into Westminster Abbey. Yes, these are author’s copies. I contributed a Foreword to this edition. While you can pick up a used copy of the…
Read MoreHow Lady Franklin led Charles Dickens to disgrace himself
In Lady Franklin’s Revenge, I devote 130 pages to showing not only how Lady Franklin orchestrated the search for Sir John Franklin, but how she manipulated public opinion after explorer John Rae returned with the first news of the fate of her husband’s expedition. In this excerpt, we find her getting Charles Dickens involved. .…
Read MoreThe woman who launched the search for Sir John Franklin
“Denied a role in Victorian England’s male-dominated society, Jane Franklin (1791–1875) took her revenge by seizing control of that most masculine of pursuits, Arctic exploration, and shaping its history to her own ends.” This clarification went missing during my own final edit of the book, to my lasting mortification. So it’s great to see it…
Read MoreThe Franklin discovery is not about what, but where
Published Wednesday, Sep. 10 2014 You’ve got to love the above headline, which introduced Our Hero’s think-piece in today’s Globe and Mail. You can read the whole by clicking here. Probably you will want to do that after sampling this excerpt? First, a bit of extra background. 1. In 1854, the Inuit who spoke to…
Read MoreJohn Rae enters Westminster Abbey, redeems Sir John Franklin
With a Canadian search expedition scouring the Northwest Passage for the Erebus and the Terror, several Arctic historians have turned their backs on Sir John Franklin’s claim to fame. By insisting that “a substantial section” of the Passage remained undiscovered well into the 1850s, these would-be guardians of exploration orthodoxy repudiate Franklin’s claim to discovery…
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