Swaddle, Thomas W.

ARCTIC

English

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REVIEWS • 319MOUNT LOGAN, Volume 1. By GERALD HOLDSWORTH.Calgary, Alberta: The Arctic Institute of North America,2000. ISBN 0-919034-95-0. Single CD-ROM, com-prising text with bibliographic references, colour andb&w photographs, maps, sketches, and video/audiosequences. Cdn$45.00 + s&h.Mount Logan, at 5957 m Canada’s highest mountain andsurpassed in height in North America only by Denali (Mt.McKinley), is one of the world’s largest massifs and theepitome of the high-altitude arctic alpine environment.Besides being a world-class mountaineering objective, itdescriptions of fur trade routes along the Saskatchewanand Churchill Rivers and over the Methye Portage, focuseson the evolution of the York boat and its relationship to thecanoe. Chapter Eight shifts north to spin familiar talesabout John Hornby, George Douglas, John Franklin, J.B.Tyrrell, George Grinnell, and others who have put thecanoe to good use. In the next chapter, when the focusshifts to the Bow River, Raffan explores the way the canoehas been used to market commodities as diverse as theCanadian Pacific Railroad, beer, and tourism. Chapter Tenlooks at the construction and historical development of theHaida canoe, with considerable attention paid to BillReid’s involvement in the revitalization of that craft in the1980s. This chapter also briefly addresses the Dragon BoatFestival, often associated with Chinese populations inVancouver. The final chapter shifts north once again toconsider the arrival of aboriginal peoples from Asia, and toexplore what notions they brought with them about canoedesign.This skeletal outline should give prospective readersnot only an idea of how the book is structured, but also asense of the interesting variety of approaches. Raffan’sbreadth of information about canoes and related subjects isapparent, and his enthusiasm is contagious. In fact, hisdescription of recanvasing his 16-foot Chestnut Pal nearlycaused me to attempt the same on my own Pal, until I putthe book down and came to my senses. It is probably worthpointing out here, however, that Bark, Skin, and Cedar isnot an instructional book. It does not explain how to buildor recanvas a canoe; it does not describe how to load orhandle a canoe in turbulent water; nor does it explain suchbasic differences in design as those between a river and alake canoe. Rather, the book is designed to entertain andinspire those who are already enthusiastic and relativelywell informed about this traditional vessel. In this respect,Bark, Skin, and Cedar falls in line with a few other titles,notably Nastawgan: The Canadian North by Canoe andSnowshoe (Hodgins and Hobbs, 1985) and Canexus: TheCanoe in Canadian Culture (Raffan and Horwood, 1988),which have a similar objective of promoting the sorts ofexperiences associated with canoes and canoe travel. Thosebooks, however, are collections of essays, whereas Raffan’snew book has the advantages of a sustained and focusedaccount by one voice.Raffan has done an excellent job of pulling togetherdiverse bits of information—some historical, some techni-cal, some creative. As is often the case when one reachesso widely, errors are inevitable. Susanna Moodie andCatharine Parr Traill were Samuel Strickland’s sisters, nothis daughters (p. 73). The Gander River is not “named afterits abundance of geese” (p. 5), but after a figure in theBritish Colonial Office. “Redwoods” do not grow in Brit-ish Columbia (p. 209 and 214). And no matter how hardone tries, a 26-foot Haida canoe cannot be paddled fromthe Queen Charlotte Islands to Prince George (p. 217). ButI do not think Bark, Skin, and Cedar was intended as ascholarly work: in spite of its rather substantial endnotes,it contains neither bibliography nor index, suggesting atarget audience in search of entertainment, information,and inspiration. Certainly Raffan provides those.The book’s subtitle and the cultural realm it addressesare perhaps not as fulfilling as is the author’s obviouscommand of lore about the canoe itself. There is noquestion that the canoe has been instrumental in the eco-nomic development of Canada, and it indeed remains awonderful recreational vehicle for five or six months of theyear in Shield country, especially in the Kingston/Peter-borough area. Yet, enthusiastic as I am about canoes, thepleasures they can evoke, and the importance they bear toCanada’s traditions, I cannot help but wonder how muchthey continue to embody modern Canadian experience.True, many of my neighbours have a canoe stored in someout-of-the-way passage alongside the house or gardenshed, but even more of them have a mountain bike or twoin the garage. Calgary is a long way from the CanadianShield and all the fantastic paddling opportunities it offers,but Canadians immigrate to Calgary in huge numbersevery month. Canada has grown increasingly urban, anation populated by people with no cultural ties to theFrench voyageurs who portaged the canots du nord or theOrkneymen who rowed the York boats. Canada has beenseeking a unifying image for many generations, and whilethe canoe might have been a strong contender in the past,I am doubtful that it will serve as a useful icon very far intothe twenty-first century.REFERENCESHODGINS, B., and HOBBS, M., eds. 1985. Nastawgan: TheCanadian North by canoe and snowshoe: A collection of historicalessays. Toronto: Betelgeuse Books.RAFFAN, J., and HORWOOD, B., eds. 1988. Canexus: The canoein Canadian culture. Toronto: Betelgeuse Books.Richard C. DavisDepartment of EnglishUniversity of CalgaryCalgary, Alberta, CanadaT2N 1N4320 • REVIEWSwas also the site of the High Altitude Physiological Study(HAPS). Very few people, however, have even seen (letalone set foot upon) the 50 km long Logan massif. It lieshidden within the remote St. Elias Range in the extremesouthwestern corner of the Yukon Territory and remainslittle known even to the mountaineering community.Whether as a consequence or as a contributing cause of thisobscurity, no major book has hitherto been written aboutMt. Logan as such. Until now, mountaineers and scientistsalike have had to seek information on Mt. Logan in scat-tered journal articles of variable quality.Dr. Gerald Holdsworth’s Mount Logan remedies thissituation in splendid fashion, making commendable use ofcurrent electronic technology. Volume 1, the first of aprojected set of two CDs, covers topographical, historical,and mountaineering aspects in five chapters (plus addi-tional features). The forthcoming second volume willcontain five further chapters dealing with the geology,geophysics, meteorology, climatology, glaciology, andbiology of Mt. Logan, together with an account of the HighAltitude Physiological Study.Playback of the CD-ROM requires a computer with aminimum of Windows 95, 98, or NT, Pentium166 MHz, 20MB disk space, 32 MB RAM, 16-bit colour and sound, andan 8× CD-ROM drive (the original plans to produce aMAC version are reported to have been shelved). A high-quality, wide-screen colour monitor is desirable to showthe many magnificent photographs and detailed maps tobest effect, but my Dell Latitude 166 MHz notebook withits 12-inch TFT screen ran the CD very nicely and deliv-ered exciting colour images. More detailed instructions oninstallation might be helpful to those of us who are lessthan fully “computer-literate.” The required version ofQuickTime should be downloaded from the CD itself, asversions currently available from Apple seem not to work.I encountered minor glitches when browsing through theextensive and fascinating Archives section—frames wouldoccasionally hang up, and video sequences sometimesdeclined to run.Dr. Holdsworth, a research associate of the ArcticInstitute of North America, is uniquely well qualified towrite this definitive Mt. Logan compendium. He is notonly an experienced mountaineer whose accomplishmentson Mt. Logan include the first ascent of the CentennialRidge, but also a professional glaciologist who has mademany important contributions to the scientific knowledgeof this great mountain. He knows personally many of thepeople who have been involved with Mt. Logan. He dedi-cates his “book” to the memory of Dr. Walter A. Wood andthe pilot Philip P. Upton, who were central to the successof the Icefield Ranges Research Project based at KluaneLake and through whom Dr. Holdsworth first becameinvolved with Mt. Logan in 1964. In 1986, Holdsworthtravelled to New Hampshire to seek out and interviewNorman “Squab” Read, at that time one of the last twoliving members of the 1925 first ascent party. Read, appar-ently undeterred by the near-death experience of the43-day climb in 1925, returned to Mt. Logan in 1950 tomake the second ascent with André Roch, who provides anavant-propos for the CD. Hans Gmoser, another famousLogan veteran, has written a foreword.Dr. Holdsworth contends that history or science withoutart is dull, and indeed the CD launches on start-up into apoetic Prelude by Lama Anagarika Govinda, accompa-nied by appropriate music and a sequence of 59 gorgeousphotographs of Mt. Logan in its many moods. In addition,there is an interactive panoramic view, shot from near theWest Summit, that will thrill any Loganeer. The essence ofthe CD, however, is in the five chapters and their severalsections. Throughout the text, scholarly references can berecovered from the Archives by clicking on citationshighlighted in green; photographs, maps, sketches, etc.,can be called up by clicking on red codenames; and clearexplanations are similarly available for any technical termsshown in blue.Chapter 1 deals with the history and prehistory of“Majestic Mountain” up to 1892, with attention to theeffects of the Ice Ages, human occupation of the coastalstrip, and the activities of explorers, culminating in the1890 Russell expedition. Chapter 2 is an appreciation ofSir William E. Logan, the “Father of Canadian Geology”and first director of the Geological Survey of Canada, forwhom Canada’s greatest mountain was so appropriatelynamed by the American geologist, Israel C. Russell. Chap-ter 3 covers the Alaska-Yukon boundary survey and asso-ciated politics, and also the epic 1925 MacCarthy-Lambartascent of Mt. Logan.For mountaineers, Chapter 4, which covers all signifi-cant ascents from 1950 to the present and is fully supportedby superb photographs, references, and maps from theArchives, will alone be well worth the price of the CD.Included are historic video sequences of the Read-Rochsecond ascent and the fast 1959 ascent of the classic EastRidge by a Canadian team. In addition there are two first-person accounts: one of the 1950 ascent, by André Roch,and the other of the only complete ascent of the Humming-bird Ridge, taken directly from John Evans’ diary. Achilling counterpoint to the latter is provided by LloydFreese’s photograph of a section of the same ridge near the“shovel traverse,” showing a rimed fixed line, a tent, anda pack—the only clues to the Cheesmond-Freer tragedy of1987.Chapter 5, “In Which the Tao of Geomatics is Re-vealed,” traces the convoluted but entertaining story ofgeodetic and topographical surveys of Mt. Logan. Inter-estingly, the 1992 expedition, which used GPS technol-ogy, came up with essentially the same height for the MainSummit that J.E. McGrath had proposed a century be-fore—but which had been largely ignored!My only disappointment regarding Mount Logan is theabsence of either a comprehensive index or a mechanismfor searching the content. One of the great advantages ofcomputer-based documents is that they are readilysearchable if the appropriate software is available. It isREVIEWS • 321hoped that future editions of Volume 1, and particularlythe forthcoming Volume 2, which will focus on scientificmatters, will come equipped with a search tool.For mountaineers the world over, Volume 1 of MountLogan is essential viewing. General readers will find thisCD to be well worth its price as a fascinating source ofinformation on a variety of Arctic topics, and scientistswill be particularly interested in acquiring it as the com-panion disk to the forthcoming Volume 2. The publicationof the latter is eagerly awaited.Thomas W. SwaddleDepartment of ChemistryUniversity of CalgaryCalgary, Alberta, CanadaT2N 1N4SEARCHING FOR FRANKLIN: THE LAND ARCTICSEARCHING EXPEDITION. JAMES ANDERSON’SAND JAMES STEWART’S EXPEDITION VIA THEBACK RIVER, 1855. Edited by WILLIAM BARR. HakluytSociety, Third Series, no. 1. London: Hakluyt Society,1999. xvi + 292 pages, 9 maps, 4 illus., index, bib.Hardbound. £45.00.During the 1990s, journals about the nineteenth-centuryexpeditions in search of a Northwest Passage or in searchof the missing Franklin expedition of 1845 continued to bepublished, some for the first time. The decade ended withanother editorial contribution from William Barr, who hadpublished Frenchman in Search of Franklin: De Bray’sArctic Journal, 1852 – 1854 in 1992 and, with GlyndwrWilliams, the two-volume Voyages to Hudson Bay inSearch of a Northwest Passage 1741 – 1747 in 1994 and1995. This latest volume is an edition of journals by twoHudson’s Bay Company men, Chief Factor James Anderson(1800 – 67) and Chief Trader James Green Stewart (1825 –81), who were sent down the Back River in search ofFranklin’s ships and sailors. It takes Barr back to thecontinental mainland, territory that he had covered inediting and translating Heinrich Klutschak’s account ofthe search expedition led by Frederick Schwatka, whichappeared in 1987 as Overland to Starvation Cove: With theInuit in search of Franklin, 1878 – 1880. Just as he hasproved himself adept as a translator of languages otherthan English, and in both Arctic and Antarctic expeditions,so Barr has again proved himself an authority on expedi-tions that remained on the continent rather than in thearchipelago. No one has done more to find Franklin textu-ally than William Barr has.As Barr notes in his preface, versions of Anderson’sjournal have been published twice before, 60 and 80 yearsago. This volume marks the first publication of excerpts ofStewart’s journal. Their canoe trip was the Hudson’s BayCompany’s response to an Admiralty request after ChiefFactor Dr. John Rae published news of artefacts found byInuit whom Rae met at Pelly Bay in 1854. While inconclu-sive, the trip confirmed Rae’s findings and, as Barr argues,“significantly narrowed the search area for the subse-quent, entirely successful search expedition mounted byCaptain Francis Leopold McClintock in the steam yachtFox in 1857– 9” (xii; repeated p. 257). This view of the 88-day return trip from Fort Resolution justifies this edition.But it is only fair to warn readers that Barr has filled out hisvolume by scouring archives, and by assembling a historyof previous searches, correspondence with Lady Franklin,post-expedition newspaper reports, citations, and accounts,and assessments by later expeditions and others of theAnderson expedition’s achievements. Barr decided not toprint Stewart’s journal in its entirety, opting instead toquote excerpts of it in footnotes where it amplifies ordiverges from Anderson’s. Other readers might find thiseditorial decision slightly disappointing, as I did. It isdefensible in principle, especially as a certain amount ofrepetition already arises in the volume because variousprincipals—Lady Franklin, Eden Colvile, and Sir GeorgeSimpson, for example—repeat information in letters andreports to different correspondents. However, as discussedbelow, justification for this editorial decision ought tohave been offered.Barr uses a first chapter to set the stage for this effort byAnderson, Stewart, and 14 HBC men. He pays particularattention to Rae’s discoveries in the previous year, and hereprints three of the letters Rae delivered upon his returnto England. One of these is his letter to the Admiralty,which was printed in The Times on 23 October 1854, andin which Rae mentioned the Inuit view that “our wretchedcountrymen had been driven to the last resource—canni-balism—as a means of prolonging existence” (p. 20).These letters are not new, of course, but the context theyprovide is welcome. Regrettable, however, is that spacewas not made to reprint, or at least refer readers to, Rae’stwo-part reply in Household Words to the righteous anderrant contribution by its editor—Charles Dickens—to thetide of “intense interest” in England over Rae’s observa-tion. It marks a great moment in the annals of Arctichistory and, indeed, in the history of English prose, towitness this explorer relieving a novelist of his rhetoricaltrousers, so to speak (Household Words X [23 December1854]:433– 437; [30 December 1854]:457 – 459). (It isalso a credit to Dickens that he had the fortitude to printRae’s reply in his own periodical; of course, as a conse-quence of printing it, he probably sat back and watched theChristmas and New Year’s issues sell like ... well, theDickens.)One understanding that the documents assembled byBarr bring into sharp focus is just how quickly the HBC’slines of communication could function in the mid-1850s.Given that the public concern over Rae’s charge wassparked in the third week of October 1854, it is trulyremarkable that men were already signed up for the expe-dition and departing Red River on 26 December. In addi-tion, three Iroquois “boutes” (expert bowsmen or steersmen)

Mount Logan, Volume 1, by Gerald Holdsworth

Thomas W. Swaddle

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Mount Logan, Volume 1, by Gerald Holdsworth

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