Posts Tagged ‘Sir John Franklin’
The Franklin Story is Coming to Television
Does anybody remember my review of The Terror by Dan Simmons? OK, I didn’t think so. It ran in the Globe and Mail almost six years back. I declared the novel a tour de force, and lauded the way it transformed the fate of the lost expedition of Sir John Franklin into a supernatural, hell-bent…
Read MoreMore Arctic Journals of John Rae . . .
An expert review here of . . . The Arctic Journals of John Rae Selected and Edited by Ken McGoogan Victoria, BC: TouchWood Editions, 2012 312 pp. , $19.95 Reviewed by Russell A. Potter The welcome publication of the journals of Dr. John Rae, the man who filled in the last crucial blanks in the…
Read MoreWhy John Rae and NOT Sir John Franklin
So folks are (still!) debating the accomplishments of John Franklin and John Rae over at Russell Potter’s blog, where I have been driven to offer the following thoughts . . . .:http://visionsnorth.blogspot.ca/2012/09/a-navigable-northwest-passage.html Greetings, Russell. Nicely done. But we do not yet see eye to eye. We agree, I think, that John Rae discovered Rae Strait.…
Read MoreWe’re looking for Arctic history in the wrong places
The June issue of the Literary Review of Canada finds Yours Truly responding to an LRC article published last month under the headline What Does Franklin Really Mean? This August, sailing with Adventure Canada, I am hoping to return to the site that marks John Rae’s discovery. Adriana Craciun is right to question the wisdom…
Read MoreThe Nervous Breakdown Interview
Our hero turns up at The Nervous Breakdown, a wonderfully edgy site based in California. Here, besides the self-interview (punch that link) and the travel yarn below, you can find excerpts and more links. Hey, you gotta love it! HISTORY Following in the Wake of Elisha Kent Kane by KEN MCGOOGAN BEECHEY ISLAND 10 March…
Read MoreOnce more into the Northwest Passage
This one, which turned up in the National Post, finds our hero sailing in the High Arctic with Adventure Canada. You gotta love the podcast, which becomes accessible through the link . . . . High Arctic: Travelling to the top of the world So this was the view that greeted explorer Samuel Hearne in…
Read MoreBeechey Island Blues
Our hero frets about the Arctic in today’s Globe. . . By Ken McGoogan The late Pierre Berton liked to describe how in 1853, when Arctic explorer Leopold McClintock was searching for the lost expedition of Sir John Franklin and travelling across spongy, summer-time tundra, he chanced upon cart tracks so fresh that he thought…
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