Cavell, Janice

English

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426 • REVIEWSthe editors of this volume, Heidt and Lackenbauer, most creatively, used it and other Taylor records to create the present volume and draw attention to an extraordinary gap in Canada’s polar history. At the end of his manuscript, Taylor wrote (p. 395):It is probably true to say that no government-sponsored expedition to the Antarctic ever set forth from its country of origin so unostentatiously as Operation Tabarin had in 1943 because our entire mission was shrouded in secrecy. The quietness of our return, however, exceeded that of our departure. A knot of people stood alongshore on that dreary afternoon, but they had come to see friends and relatives from the Ajax’s crew. Half an hour after the cruiser docked, a handful of government officials arrived, including J.M. Wordie of the Scott Polar Research Institute. We struggled to procure money for our party at that particular time of the English week, but the Ajax’s paymaster, Commander Bennett, obliged us by cashing a personal cheque of mine. With these funds in hand, I doled out sufficient money for each man to last through a rather lean weekend. The lack of prearranged reservations made locating hotel rooms difficult, and three of our group spent their first night back in England, stretched out with their luggage in one of London’s derelict air raid shelters. I was fortunate in deciding to remain on board the deserted Ajax for one night.They had been forgotten!The editors conclude their volume with an account of Andrew Taylor’s career until his death in 1993. His manuscript was not picked up in North America or Britain. He and his colleagues received no real recognition for their pioneering work, which laid the foundations for a British presence in Antarctica after the war when the United States, the Soviet Union, and South American nations became very active there. He received a grudging Polar Medal from Britain many years after the expedition. His promotion in the Canadian Army was slow. He continued to work in cold weather science and engineering and received recognition for this work in Canada (e.g., the Order of Canada, a Northern Science Award, and an honorary degree from his alma mater, the University of Manitoba). The citations for these well-earned honors stressed his Arctic, not his Antarctic work.Canadian colour in the book includes Andrew Taylor’s comment that their first Antarctic winter was warmer than Winnipeg and that he led his dog team on snowshoes. There is remarkably little comment on the war, but Taylor does suggest that a good meal of seal meat was better than the food he had received in wartime London.This book will be enjoyed by anyone with Antarctic interests, especially those interested in the origins of the Antarctic Treaty. It is clearly written with little of the heroic overtones of similar works. It covers daily life and scientific work in great detail, clearly and effectively. Had this manuscript been published when it was written, young Canadians, knowing that one of their own led a very special Antarctic expedition, would have a different view of Canada’s involvement in the great southern continent. The editors are to be commended for a fine piece of work.Hon. Peter AdamsProfessor EmeritusTrent UniversityPeterborough, Ontario K9L 0G2, Canadapeter.adams@cogeco.caLINES IN THE ICE: EXPLORING THE ROOF OF THE WORLD. By PHILIP HATFIELD. Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2016. Published in the United Kingdom by the British Library. ISBN 978-0-7735-4820-6. 255 p., colour illus., select bib., index. Hardbound. Cdn$44.95.This wonderfully illustrated book draws most of its pictures and maps from the collections of the British Library. As the author, Philip Hatfield, points out, the large amount of Arctic-related material held by an institution that has never had any particular focus on the Far North demonstrates the allure of this region for Europeans. Hatfield’s book offers no overarching thesis; instead, he merely observes that although the Arctic’s beauty has often inspired visitors to produce creative works marked by “awe and humility,” those who engage with the region must do more to respect the land and its indigenous inhabitants (p. 247). The section on global warming near the end is suitably sobering, but overall the book is more effective at evoking wonder than at increasing the reader’s awareness of past and present shortcomings among the producers of Arctic images.Lines in the Ice is made up of short chapters, most of them only a page in length, on topics arranged in chronological order from the Middle Ages to the present. For every page of text, there is a page or more of beautifully reproduced images. Although British, American, and Canadian stories predominate, there are several extremely interesting sections on Dutch, Scandinavian, and Russian expeditions. Some Antarctic topics have also been included, and while the material in these chapters is important in itself, it does appear somewhat out of place here, especially considering the subtitle “Exploring the Roof of the World.”The volume, therefore, has elements of the coffee table book, but it is well suited to inform at the same time as it entertains. Hatfield has read extensively in the published primary and secondary literature, although he does not appear to have ventured into the archives to any extent. His commentary provides a well-balanced and gracefully written synthesis of recent scholarship. General readers will learn much from Hatfield, but students and scholars concerned with accurate detail should look elsewhere for information. There are few major mistakes—no small REVIEWS • 427achievement for an author who is not a polar specialist yet has undertaken research covering such a large geographical area over many centuries. However, minor errors are quite frequent, and although most of them are very minor indeed, the cumulative effect makes the book unsuitable as a reference work. Among the major errors is Hatfield’s acceptance of the claim that Sir John Franklin’s wife, Jane, was responsible for the 1854 articles in which Charles Dickens denounced John Rae’s reports of cannibalism on the last Franklin expedition. The originator of this story, Ken McGoogan, admits that there is no documentary proof of his allegations, and the published edition of Dickens’s letters shows that he outlined the essential points of his articles more than two weeks before his supposed meeting with Lady Franklin.While the British Library provided Hatfield with a rich abundance of fascinating material, there are drawbacks to his reliance on one major source. The choice of topics was clearly influenced by the availability of good illustrations. For example, the northern expeditions led by John Douglas Moodie of the Royal North West (later Royal Canadian) Mounted Police in the early 20th century receive attention mainly because Moodie’s wife, Geraldine, was a brilliant photographer and the British Library owns several of her prints. Moodie’s more f lamboyant and famous contemporary, Joseph-Elzéar Bernier, who traveled much farther north, is omitted, probably because the photos taken on his expeditions are amateurish in comparison and belong to other institutions. The section on Moodie provides good examples of the small errors that occur throughout the text. Hatfield refers to him as “Captain J.D. Moodie,” when in fact he was usually called “Major Moodie” from the military rank he attained during his service in the Boer War. His police rank was superintendent. Hatfield writes that Geraldine Moodie “visited her husband during his tenure as leader of the Canadian government’s Arctic mission” (p. 199). But Moodie actually led two official expeditions, in 1903–04 and 1904–05; his wife remained at home during the first, but accompanied him on the second. The northern diaries of both Moodies are now available online through the website of the Glenbow Museum in Calgary and could have been used to good effect if archival sources had been consulted. The typeface chosen for a book is rarely worthy of comment in a review, but this case is an exception. The author was not well served by the designers of his volume. The main text is in an antiquarian font, evidently intended to evoke the appearance of early modern printed narratives, while the chapter titles are in an equally unusual and gimmicky sans-serif style and the captions resemble something from a 1980s computer printout. The overall effect of these ill-assorted fonts is extremely irritating, and unfortunately, the clash of styles does mar the general impressiveness of the book’s appearance. Nevertheless, Lines in the Ice will delight general readers and polar specialists alike. My own favourite illustrations are the coloured woodcuts from Gerrit de Veer’s account of Willem Barentsz’s voyages, first published in 1598 (p. 50 – 53), and every flip of the pages leads to other images that are nearly as entrancing. Yet perhaps being entranced by the Arctic’s beauty is a dangerous pleasure. It might have been wise to balance the delight not only with cautions expressed in words, but also with a few downright unattractive images of conflict, exploitation, and environmental pollution.Janice CavellHistorical Section, Global Affairs Canada125 Sussex DriveOttawa, Ontario K1A 0G2, CanadaandCarleton University1125 Colonel by DriveOttawa, Ontario K1S 5B6, Canadajanice.cavell@international.gc.caTHE FROZEN SAQQAQ SITES OF DISKO BAY, WEST GREENLAND, QEQERTASUSSUK AND QAJAA (2400–900 BC): STUDIES OF SAQQAQ MATERIAL CULTURE IN AN EASTERN ARCTIC PERSPECTIVE. By BJARNE GRØNNOW. Copenhagen: Museum Tusculanum Press, 2017. ISBN 978-87-635-45617. Monographs on Greenland 356; Meddelelser om Grønland, Man and Society 45. 490 p., maps, b&w and colour illus., appendices, references. Hardbound. DKK 498; €67; US$70.00.The Frozen Saqqaq Sites of Disko Bay is a gorgeously illustrated volume and a self-described “classical ethnography” of material culture, which is fittingly arranged by functional tool categories that are reflective of the completeness of artifact assemblages usually only seen among living communities. From an archaeological perspective, this book offers a new perspective into the Arctic Small Tool Tradition (ASTt), which previously was focused through a narrow lithic lens. Encyclopedic in nature, and covering the entire temporal occupation of Saqqaq culture in Greenland, Grønnow’s volume offers a complete overview of Saqqaq material culture (c. 2400 to 900 BC), including an extraordinary suite of organic tools that were preserved by permafrost. The exacting nature of the artifact descriptions and the accompanying analysis provide important insights into the sophisticated material culture of the Saqqaq peoples, and shed new light on otherwise unknown elements of daily life of these Arctic pioneers.In this comprehensive treatment of Saqqaq material culture, Grønnow provides detailed descriptions of the incredibly well preserved sites of Qeqertasussuk and Qajaa, which are not only of national significance, but arguably of world significance. A comparison to Independence I and Pre-Dorset cultures sets Saqqaq in a broader cultural context and provides the basis for an examination of 

Lines in the Ice: Exploring the Roof of the World, by Philip Hatfield

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Lines in the Ice: Exploring the Roof of the World, by Philip Hatfield

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