Canadian Arctic Expedition Research Articles

Ikey Angotisiak Bolt (1894-1981)

The arrival of the Canadian Arctic Expedition (1913-1918) was of profound influence in exposing the Copper Eskimo of Coronation Gulf and Victoria Island to the culture, lifestyle, and technology of Caucasian North America. And Ikey Bolt was one of the most outstanding members of that party. He was an Alaskan Eskimo who, far from his native land, made his home among these people and built a reputation for integrity and community service that will not easily be forgotten. Ikey Bolt was born in Point Hope, Alaska, on 19 January 1894, in a whale-hunting culture that provided him with stories of the hunt with which he would regale his listeners all his life. Recruited in his late teens as an interpreter for the Canadian Arctic Expedition, he made his initial trip to Canada. ... The best appreciation of Ikey Bolt's contribution to the region can only be understood in the context of the times. Here is a native Alaskan whose people had been long exposed to the influence of southerners in the traumatic whaling era, a period of mixed blessings if ever there was one. In joining the Canadian Arctic Expedition he made contact with a people who were literally just emerging from the Stone Age, a people who had no steady contact with explorers until the Canadian Arctic Expedition arrived. They hunted with harpoons and with bows and arrows, and they had no recourse to any products of southern technology except for bits of iron traded with distant neighbours who had obtained them from abandoned ships. The introduction of a different way of life - new methods of trapping animals to be exchanged for trade goods - had all the potential for cultural devastation and the erosion of even the best of their indigenous philosophy. But the presence and influence of natives who had themselves survived similar upheavals and yet maintained a strong sense of spiritual and cultural values made a profound difference. ...

Diamond Jenness (1886-1969)

... Jenness quickly found his curiosity about anthropology blossoming into a vocation. In 1911 he was appointed Oxford Scholar to Papua, New Guinea, where he spent twelve months studying Northern Entrecasteaux. Upon his return to New Zealand, he was asked to join Canadian Arctic Expedition, an ambitious government-funded scientific enterprise under direction of well-known arctic explorers Vilhjalmur Stefansson and R.M. Anderson. In June, 1913, Jenness found himself aboard refitted whaling vessel Karluk steaming northward to Bering Strait and beyond to Beaufort Sea. ... In autumn of 1913, small vessel became locked in sea ice off northern coast of Alaska. Unable to free itself, ship drifted helplessly westward towards Siberian Sea, where it was finally crushed in ice off Wrangel Island. Eight men perished in their bid to reach mainland. By a stroke of fortune, Jenness was not aboard Karluk when she drifted off; he, Stefansson, and several others had left ship earlier on a routine hunting trip. Abandoning hopeless task of searching for Karluk, which was lost to sight when they returned, hunting party headed for Barrow, Alaska to rendezvous with remaining two vessels of expedition, Alaska and Mary Sachs. Jenness spent his first winter at Harrison Bay, Alaska, where he learned to speak Inuktitut, gathered information about Western Eskimo customs and folklore, and experienced at first-hand precarious existence of northern hunter. In spring of 1914, he set out along coast to expedition's base camp at Bernard Harbour in Coronation Gulf region. Here he engaged in one of most important goals of Canadian Arctic Expedition-the study of Copper Eskimos of Victoria Island, a people first brought to attention of civilized world by Stefansson only four years earlier. When Jenness arrived in Coronation Gulf region, only a handful of Europeans had visited land of Copper Eskimo. Merchants had only just begun to ply their trade in area, and missionaries and Northwest Mounted Police were yet to arrive. As a consequence, Copper Eskimo remained largely unaffected by contact with outside world. Jenness, therefore, was charged with recording a virtually pristine aboriginal way of life that would change radically within a generation. Jenness spent two years with these Central Eskimo people, living for one year as adopted son of hunter Ikpukhuak and his shaman wife Higalik. During that time he hunted and traveled with his family, sharing both their festivities and their famine. The monographs and publications that resulted from this field work have been recognized by scholars as the most comprehensive description of a single Eskimo tribe ever written. ... During his tenure with National Museum, Jenness published two seminal articles on northern archaeology. The first paper identified a new prehistoric culture in eastern Arctic - Dorset Culture - which Jenness believed to have preceded Thule Culture (the ancestors of contemporary Inuit) by a millenium or more. The second paper hypothesized Old Bering Sea Culture of Bering Strait area, a complex which Jenness believed not only preceded Thule Culture in western Arctic but which was ancestral to it. Considered radical at time of their publication, these theories are now widely accepted, having been vindicated by carbon-14 dating and subsequent field research. Jeness's interest in Arctic never waned. As late as 1968 he was still articulating his concern for Inuit struggle to survive. Among his last works was a series of five volumes published by The Arctic Institute of North America that reviewed government policies toward Inuit of Alaska, Canada, and Greenland. ...

William Laird McKinlay, 1889-1983

William Laird McKinlay, one of the scientific staff of the Canadian Arctic Expedition of 1913-18, died at G1asgow on 9 May 1983 at the age of 94. The son of a factory moulder in the industrial town of Clydebank downriver from Glasgow, he became a pupil-teacher at the age of 14 and subsequently studied at the University of Glasgow where he graduated both M.A. and B.Sc. in 1910. It was during his student days that his aid was enlisted by Dr. W.S. Bruce in classifying specimens brought home by the Scottish Antarctic Expedition, and this was to change his life. In 1913 he was teaching mathematics in a Glasgow school when Bruce recommended him to Viljhalmar Stefansson for appointment as meteorologist and magnetologist. McKinlay travelled to Esquimalt, B.C., where he joined the main party aboard Karluk, commanded by the veteran Newfoundlander Bob Bartlett, with Stefansson himself in overall charge. Discord made itself felt at an early stage. When Karluk was trapped in the ice off the north shore of Alaska, Stefansson and his companions went hunting ashore; weather separated them from the ship which drifted to the west while Stefansson occupied himself with the sledge travel, at which he was adept, and discovered new lands to the far north. Karluk turned out to be less than ideal for work in ice, while her crew had only been hired for a round trip and were largely unprepared for privations. After drifting with the ice for over six months, the ship was crushed and sank. Four men made their way to Herald Island where they died. Four others struck out on their own and were never seen again. The others, eleven crewmen and scientists with two Eskimo men, one Eskimo woman, and two Eskimo children, took what supplies they could to Wrangel Island 80 miles away. Then Bartlett and the Eskimo Kataktovik made an epic journey across the ice to the Siberian mainland in search of help. Those who remained on Wrangel Island divided into small groups and eked out a miserable existence in which two died, ...; one seemingly shot himself. The remainder were rescued, thanks to Bartlett, in September of 1914. And McKinlay went to war as an officer in the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders. Seriously wounded at Cambrai in 1917, he endured a long period of recuperation and limped for the rest of his life. ... He returned to teaching. It was only long after his retirement and the death of his wife, when he was moving with his daughter and her family to a new home in Glasgow, that his Arctic diaries and mementos aroused the curiosity of his granddaughters. He promised to write the story which turned into the book Karluk: The Great Untold Story of Arctic Exploration, published in 1976 when he was 87. Readers of that work, which was translated into many languages, will be aware that McKinlay was somewhat critical of Viljhalmar Stefansson. ... Perhaps his disappointment with Stefansson was heightened by McKinlay's being a scientist working in which he considered a scientific and thus a noble cause, with standards to which he felt Stefansson did not adhere. Yet it was not only in Stefansson that he was disappointed, for when he experienced comradeship in the army he realized that this is what had been entirely missing up north: it was the lack of real comradeship that had left the scars, not the physical rigours and hazards of the ice pack, nor the deprivations on Wrangel Island. ... [After] ... Karluk had been published, McKinlay turned to the writing of his autobiography, a story which is frequently hilarious and utterly gripping, with the emphasis being placed upon teaching. But it would be wrong to suggest that in old age he slaved over his typewriter. He delayed the revision of Karluk for his publishers for most of a glorious summer in which he felt priority must go to his roses. And when he wrote his autobiography, in his nineties, he still did enough in his garden to win a neighbourhood prize. ...

J.J. O'Neill (1886-1966)

A Who's Who-type biographical sketch of J. J. O'Neill might read as follows: O'Neill, John Johnston, born Port Colborne, Ontario, Canada, 12 November 1886, died Ottawa, Ontario, 1 June 1966; son of Thomas John and Mary Jane (Henderson) O'Neill. B.Sc. McGill University 1909; Ph.D. Yale University 1912. Married Lillian Mary Campbell, 9 December 1918. Children: Gordon Campbell, killed in action in World War II, and Melville Henderson. Geologist, Canadian Arctic Expedition, 1913-16; geological staff, Geological Survey of Canada, 1914-20; assistant professor of geology, McGill University, 1921-27; associate professor 1927-29; Sir William Dawson Professor of Geology and Head, Department of Geology, 1929-52; Dean of Science, 1935-39; Dean of Graduate Studies and Research, 1938-42; Dean of Engineering, 1942-52; Vice-Principal, McGill University, 1948-52; President, Royal Society of Canada, 1950-51; a Founder, Governor, and Board Chairman Arctic Institute of North America; Fellow, Arctic Institute of North America, Geological Society of America, Royal Society of Canada; Sigma Xi; Freemason; Conservative; Anglican. Club: Faculty (McGill). However detailed, such a sketch would give only an incomplete glimpse of a highly accomplished man who could be stern and awesome, yet kindly and informal, adventurous yet conservative, critical yet forgiving - in short, a whole man. It may be difficult for some who knew O'Neill as an administrator rather than as a young field geologist to visualize him as an adventurous person in addition to one who took a judicious and studious approach to problems. Yet in 1913 when he joined the Canadian Arctic Expedition in his late twenties he took a leading part in almost as venturesome an enterprise as a trip to the Moon would be today. The measure of the man is illustrated by the fact that although he and Vilhjalmur Stefansson, leader of the expedition, found themselves in opposing camps following strong expedition disagreements, O'Neill voluntarily, and at the expense of possibly handicapping his own work, gave his personal chronometer to Stefansson - an act that saved the latter's exploration program. O'Neill was the first geologist to study the mainland coast of Arctic Canada from Darnley Bay to Bathurst Inlet, a coastline distance of some 600 miles. The resulting publications indicated the bright future that lay ahead of him - Vice-Principal of McGill University, President of the Royal Society of Canada, and many additional honors about which others will write more appropriately than I. When I first met Dean O'Neill in 1938 to seek his aid in connection with further geologic research in the region he had studied, his friendliness and helpful advice made a great impression on me. Later, after World War II, as a Founder and Chairman of the Board of Governors of the Arctic Institute of North America, he continued to provide excellent counsel and generous assistance during the early critical days of the Institute, when his wisdom helped to assure the organization's future. When O'Neill and Stefansson became fellow Board members, the differences that had developed during the Canadian Arctic Expedition still lingered, and it is a credit to both that when they met at an Institute Board meeting in Montreal, they shook hands for the first time in some thirty years and worked harmoniously together for the Institute. It takes great men to do this and O'Neill was such. John Johnston O'Neill was in a unique position to contribute to the Arctic Institute of North America and he did so most effectively. He contributed significantly to science, to international cooperation in science, and in the broader context to mutual understanding and respect between nations.

Some Soil-Inhabiting, Freshwater, and Plant-Parasitic Nematodes from the Canadian Arctic and Alaska

Lists nematode genera (and the number of species in each) collected on the Canadian Arctic Expedition in 1915-1916, and at Lake Hazen, Ellesmere Island, in 1962. The former collection, identified by N.A. Cobb, but not hitherto reported (cf. No. 2817 pt. F), comprises 22 genera containing 47 species, about half of which are cosmopolitan. The Lake Hazen collection is the first the the High Arctic; it contains at least 30 described and several undescribed genera, comprising 60 or more species. Gen. Plectus is abundant in both collections.

L.E. Borden

Dr. L. E. Borden, an Associate of the Arctic Institute of long standing, died at Vancouver, B.C., Canada last summer at the age of 86. He was the last surviving member of the first Canadian Arctic Expedition in the Neptune under Capt. A. P. Low, in which he took part as medical officer. He had in his custody documents relating to Capt. Low's taking possession of "the island of Ellesmere land and all the smaller islands adjoining it". This declaration was read in the Canadian House of Commons in 1956, when the question of Canadian sovereignty over the Arctic Archipelago was being debated.

The Canadian Northern Insect Survey, 1947–57

The study of the insects of northern Canada has in the past depended mainly on a very small number of collections obtained by the early explorers, by a few individuals concerned with mapping and other scientific investigations, and by missionaries. The work of Kirby (1837), the reports of the Canadian Arctic Expedition (Hewitt, 1922) and the Fifth Thule Expedition (Henriksen, 1937), and a few short papers represent the main contributions of many years.Organized entomological research in northern Canada began in 1947 as a joint project of the Defence Research Board of the Canada Department of National Defence, and the Divisions of Entomology, Botany and Plant Pathology of the Canada Department of Agriculture. The research programme was divided into three major phases:

Sir Hubert Wilkins (1888-1958)

The passing of Sir Hubert Wilkins on November 30 means the loss of one of the most colourful figures of polar aviation and exploration. Sir Hubert was born in South Australia on October 31, 1888. He received his education as a mining engineer in Adelaide, and in his younger years worked as electrical engineer, meteorologist, and movie photographer. It was this last vocation that started him on his career of adventure and exploration. In 1912-13 he followed the Turkish Army as a movie photographer in the Balkan War. He was second in command of the Canadian Arctic Expedition 1913-18. He then joined the Royal Australian Flying Corps, learned to fly in 1917, and saw war service as a photographer and in the intelligence services. He was mentioned twice in dispatches and was awarded the Military Cross with Bar. After the war he served as navigator on one of the England-Australia flights in 1919, was second in command of the British Imperial Antarctic Expedition 1919-20, naturalist with the Shackleton Antarctic Expedition 1921-22, leader of the Australian Islands Expedition 1922-25 and leader of the Detroit Arctic Expeditions 1925-28. During these expeditions some very important pioneering flights were made in the Arctic, the most outstanding of which was the flight from Point Barrow, Alaska, to Green Harbour, Spitzbergen, April 15 to 21, 1928, which Wilkins and his pilot, Carl Ben Eielson, undertook in a single-engined Lockheed Vega. On this flight they crossed large areas of the Arctic Ocean in which other explorers had claimed to have seen land, but where Wilkins and Eielson found none. For this flight he was knighted on June 14, 1928. Sir Hubert then became leader of the Wilkins-Hearst Antarctic Expedition 1928-30 during which he discovered more than 500 miles of new coastline in the Graham Land sector. In 1931 he was leader of the Ellsworth Nautilus Submarine Expedition to the Arctic, and from 1932 to 1939 manager of the Ellsworth Antarctic Expeditions. The highlight of these was the trans-Antarctic flight from the Weddell Sea to Little America by Lincoln Ellsworth and Herbert Hollick-Kenyon in November 1935. Sir Hubert headed the search expedition for the lost Soviet flyer Levanevsky in 1937-38 and during the search covered about 170,000 sq. miles of the Arctic Ocean never previously seen. From 1942 he served as consultant to the U.S. Armed Forces on arctic problems. During his many flights and travels in the Polar regions Sir Hubert acquired a great store of knowledge of these environments, that provided invaluable help for later expeditions. He was the recipient of numerous honours from all over the world and was recognized by the American Geographical Society and the Royal Geographical Society. He was the author of many books, and active as scientist and lecturer. Sir Hubert was a man of the type that you always looked forward to meeting again. His memory will be cherished by those of us who had the privilege of being with him on polar expeditions and we shall always remember him as the finest companion one could wish for. He had courage and daring but was always even-tempered, kind and modest.

Post-Glacial Drainage Changes in the Darnley Bay Area, N. W. T., Canada

POST-GLACIAL DRAINAGE CHANGES IN THE DARNLEY BAY AREA, N. W. T. , CANADA* J. Ross Mackay University of British Columbia Darnley Bay is north of Great Bear Lake and midway between the Mackenzie and Coppermine Rivers which flow north into the Arctic Ocean. The three rivers which drain the area, namely the Brock, Hornaday , and Horton Rivers, are inaccurately shown on the latest 8 mile topographic sheet which was published in 1945, but a new and accurate map prepared from aerial photographs will shortly be available. Darnley Bay was discovered by Dr. John Richardson in 1826 but part of the inland area is still largely unknown. The mouth of the Horton River was discovered by Richardson and the river itself explored by Vilhjalmur Stefansson and Rudolph Anderson in 1909-12. ^ A, J. Stone, an American naturalist collecting for the American Museum of Natural History, discovered the Hornaday River in 1898. Until recent years the large size of the Hornaday River was unsuspected and it was considered to be a small stream rising from a lake 10 miles south of Darnley Bay, when in reality the river is about 200 miles long and the lake does not exist. The southern party of the 1913-18 Canadian Arctic Expedition explored the Brock River for 23 miles from its mouth. ^ Air photographs show it to be some 80 miles in length. The purpose of this paper is to discuss some of the post-glacial drainage changes which have occurred in the drainage basins of the Brock, Hornaday and Horton Rivers in the Darnley Bay area. Field work was done in the summer of 1951 and liberal use has been made of photo interpretation in extending the study to include a larger area. General Description The Darnley Bay region is in the barren grounds or tundra beyond the tree limit which lies close to the Horton River. Permanently frozen ground or permafrost is usually within five feet of the surface, except in areas of coarse granular materials. The area straddles the western boundary of the Canadian Shield which is shown on present geologic maps as reaching the coast at the southern end of Darnley Bay just east of the mouth of Brock River. In reality, the boundary should be shifted to the northeast because there is an area of Tertiary (?) sediments which are exposed northeast of Brock River and outcrop in an area of over 100 square miles. 5 The entire region was glaciated, and morainic material blankets most of the bedrock within 30 to 40 miles of Darnley Bay (excluding Parry Peninsula) but large areas of bedrock are exposed at the surface farther inland. Evidences for two directions of ice movement approximately at ?Based on field investigations carried out for the Geographical Branch, Department of Mines and Technical Surveys, Ottowa, with whose permission this paper is published. Thanks are due to Keith Fraser for his assistance in the field. 18 Yearbook of the Association Vol. 15 CAPE PARRY MILES Figure 1. Map of Darnley Bay area showing glacial lineatlon in ground moraine and bedrock with inset map to show general location 1953 of Pacific Coast Geographers 19 ,CAPE PARRY FRANKLIN BAY DARNLEY BAY CHANNEL A IIIBIIIIH.Î*·M >» MILES Figure 2. Map showing the principal post-glacial drainage channels. Dashed boundaries have been used to delimit drainage channels about which there is some uncertainty. 20Yearbook of the AssociationVol. 15 right angles to each other occur in the terrain. A general east-west trend is apparent across Parry Peninsula changing to a northeastsouthwest trend on the east side of Darnley Bay. This movement coincides with that of no known ice center. The other principal direction is found south and southeast of Darnley Bay where the ice moved from south to north, with a westerly component. This direction is a continuation of the projected trend from the Great Bear Lake area. Poet-Glacial Stream Capture As déglaciation progressed, the streams followed in general the regional slope of the land and drainage was in a chaotic state. It is possible to reconstruct much of the early drainage pattern from the evidences given by large, dry, abandoned valleys and also by misfit streams. The former drainage channels...

Notes on the Mammals of South and Central West Baffin Island

Notes on the Mammals of South and Central West Baffin Island Get access T. H. Manning T. H. Manning British Canadian Arctic Expedition, Montreal, Quebec Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Journal of Mammalogy, Volume 24, Issue 1, 20 February 1943, Pages 47–59, https://doi.org/10.2307/1374780 Published: 20 February 1943

British Canadian Arctic Expedition, 1936–40

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British Canadian Arctic Expedition, 1936–40

<i>British Canadian Arctic Expedition</i>, 1936–40

British Canadian Arctic Expedition, 1936–40

An abstract is not available for this content so a preview has been provided. Please use the Get access link above for information on how to access this content.

The British Canadian Arctic Expedition

The British Canadian Arctic Expedition

British Canadian Arctic Expedition, 1936–40

<i>British Canadian Arctic Expedition</i>, 1936–40

British Canadian Arctic Expedition, 1936–40

<i>British Canadian Arctic Expedition</i>, 1936–40

British Canadian Arctic Expedition, 1936–40

An abstract is not available for this content so a preview has been provided. Please use the Get access link above for information on how to access this content.

British Canadian Arctic Expedition, 1936–39

<i>British Canadian Arctic Expedition</i>, 1936–39

British Canadian Arctic Expedition, 1936-39

British Canadian Arctic Expedition, 1936-39

British Canadian Arctic Expedition, 1936–39

<i>British Canadian Arctic Expedition</i>, 1936–39