Americas - Travel Essays & Descriptions, Canadian & North American Travel, Northern & Territorial Canada - History, General & Miscellaneous Native American Studies, Native North American People, Regional Studies
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Overview
Tahoe Talbot Washburn first visited the Arctic in 1938 with her graduate student husband, Lincoln. The journals she kept of their adventures over the next three years - written in tents and snow houses, at missions and Hudson's Bay Company posts - form the basis for Under Polaris. The Washburns traveled the coastal areas of Victoria and King William Islands, learning to deal with close calls aboard boats while struggling to keep from colliding with ice floes, running aground in icy fog, or drifting helplessly out into open water. They learned to travel by dog team, even through blinding snow storms. And they learned how to hunt and fish for food for themselves and their dogs. They came to value greatly the help and companionship of the people who became part of their lives, whether they were Inuit, Hudson's Bay Company employees, Canadian government workers, Catholic and Anglican missionaries, or the remarkable pilots of the single engine planes that got them to their destinations. Washburn made a concerted effort to learn the survival skills of the Inuit women and to understand their lives. She tells of their patience and gentle amusement as they helped her, their curiosity about her way of life, and their generosity in sharing meager resources.Synopsis
Tahoe Talbot Washburn first visited the Arctic in 1938 with her graduate student husband, Lincoln. The journals she kept of their adventures over the next three years - written in tents and snow houses, at missions and Hudson's Bay Company posts - form the basis for Under Polaris. The Washburns traveled the coastal areas of Victoria and King William Islands, learning to deal with close calls aboard boats while struggling to keep from colliding with ice floes, running aground in icy fog, or drifting helplessly out into open water. They learned to travel by dog team, even through blinding snow storms. And they learned how to hunt and fish for food for themselves and their dogs. They came to value greatly the help and companionship of the people who became part of their lives, whether they were Inuit, Hudson's Bay Company employees, Canadian government workers, Catholic and Anglican missionaries, or the remarkable pilots of the single engine planes that got them to their destinations.Editorials
Booknews
Based on Washburn's journal of the first three years of her journeys in the Arctic beginning in 1938, including photographs by her and her husband. They traveled the coastal areas of Victoria and King William Islands by boat and dog sled. She made a concerted effort to learn the survival skills of the Inuit women, and describes the process of making caribou skin clothing for herself and her husband. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknew.com)John E. Gordon
Although this is not an academic book, it provides a rich insight into life in the field 50 years ago -- of the practicalities and experiences behind the scientific results that are published in the academic literature. It will appeal to those who have an interest in the Arctic, those who have worked there and those who aspire to do so. One feels a sense of great admiration for the Washburns, as well as a sense of envy for an era that is no more.—Quaternary Science Reviews
Kirkus Reviews
A modest memoir of scientific exploration in the Canadian Arctic. In 1938 first-time author Washburn accompanied her husband, Lincoln, to the far north when he went to pursue doctoral fieldwork on the geology and glaciology of the vast region; for the next several years the two traveled across much of the ice pack, studying both the landscape and its people and animals. Washburn's memoir is drawn from journals she kept at the time, and they're full of exclamation marks, mundane details, and the unexplained stuff of passing observation. "We found the early Canadian bush pilots to be outstanding men individually and as a group," she writes, without elaborating, leaving the reader to imagine why the bush pilots should have merited such commendation. As the narrative progresses, Washburn's account takes on a more lively air, but it's still not much of a literary production. Even so, readers may enjoy her accounts of the hardships of life in the permafrost. For instance, getting into the Arctic heartland above the Mackenzie River delta, she writes, took much doing, including bargaining for passage with sometimes surly, often lonely trawler captains; becoming accustomed to the ways of her Inuit and Eskimo neighbors (and especially their penchant for practical joking) presented other difficulties—as did negotiating a path among contending missionaries and government workers charged with improving the spiritual and material life of the native peoples. Of greater value than Washburn's words, pleasant enough though they are, are the more than 100 photographs taken by the author and her husband, which accompany the text; they show innumerable details of life in the still-frontier Canadian farnorth, and they are unfailingly interesting. For those photographs alone, diehard fans of Arctic-exploration narratives will find this a valuable addition to their collections.Book Details
Published
March 30, 1999
Publisher
University of Washington Press
Pages
247
Format
Hardcover
ISBN
9780295977614