Our Hero says goodbye to the magic of Orkney
Our Hero says goodbye to the statue of John Rae, erected in the heart of Stromness on Sept. 30, 2013 to mark the explorer’s 200th birthday. Yes, Rae lives on in the hearts of many. This statute will be the first thing you see when you get off the ferry from mainland Scotland, which is…
Read MoreLimited edition whisky says Happy Bicentenary!
What you see here, from as close as you are likely to get, is a gorgeous bottle of Highland Park single malt scotch whisky. It comes from a limited edition of 30 bottles created to mark the bicentenary of the birth of John Rae. The Scottish Orcadian explorer was born 200 years ago today. After…
Read MoreThe Hall of Clestrain will rise again!
Here in Stromness, we filled in some blanks while visiting the Hall of Clestrain, John Rae’s boyhood home. The wealthy Honeyman family, descended from an early bishop of Orkney, built the place in the 1760s. They had just returned from a trip to Italy, where symmetry and balance were all the rage, and applied those…
Read MoreBritish MP is taking John Rae into Westminster Abbey
STROMNESS, ORKNEY – A John Rae plaque is going into Westminster Abbey. Alistair Carmichael, MP for Orkney in the British House of Commons, announced this evening that in 2014, a plaque will be mounted in the Abbey recognizing the Orcadian explorer as “the discoverer of the final link in the Northwest Passage.” Carmichael made the…
Read MoreStill searching for Franklin? These metal scraps will make you wonder . . .
Searchers for the two lost ships of the Franklin expedition, which disappeared into the Arctic in 1845, have been struggling for decades to keep hope alive. Experts have suggested that even if both ships got crushed by ice, the metal engines, boilers, and pipes will have survived intact at the bottom of the sea. Magnetic…
Read MorePortrait of the colourist in Orkney . . . with dog
Sheena Fraser McGoogan “is a colourist, but a colourist on steroids,” the art critic writes. “Her work reminds me in a way of L.S Lowry, but on acid. Her paintings leap off the wall at you. They demand to be noticed. They are bold to the point of fearlessness, using bright colours to make a…
Read MoreCliffside scramble dates back beyond the Vikings
We almost didn’t tackle the climb. But the idea of seeing a ruined medieval chapel dating back to before the Vikings — we’re talking the mid-900s, more than 1,000 years ago — well, who could resist? We climbed the narrow, rocky path that leads to the top of the Brough (pronounced Brock) of Deerness. This…
Read MoreThe real magic happens at the Ring of Brodgar
People get excited about visiting Stonehenge, that remarkable series of standing stones just off a major thoroughfare in the south of England. But the real magic happens here in Orkney at the Ring of Brodgar. These standing stones are between 500 and 1000 years older than Stonehenge. And as you can see from Sheena’s photo,…
Read MoreExploring Orkney with a celebrated story-teller
Here’s Our Hero at the Broch of Borwick in Orkney, shortly after a visit to the Brough of Bigging. Both initial B-words are pronounced the same, but the Broch is an iron-age round tower, while the Brough is a fortified headland difficult of access. I say these things on the authority of our expert guide,…
Read MoreDoes anybody recognize this man?
The one in buckskin, standing with Our Hero? He’s proving elusive. As you can see, I managed to lay an arm on him the other night at McMaster University. Fabulous event, by the way, organized by HAALSA (Hamilton Association for the Advancement of Literature, Science and Art). Superb dinner beforehand at a restaurant called Il…
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