Jean Rivard - University of British Columbia

Books in Review
Reimag(in)ing the Arctic
C. Stuart Houston and I.S. MacLaren
Arctic Artist: The Journal and Paintings of George
Back, Midshipman with Franklin, 1819-1822.
McGill-Queen's Ρ $45.00
M.J. Ross
Polar Pioneers: John Ross and James Clark Ross.
McGill-Queen's Ρ $34.95
Photographs by Charles Gimpel
with commentary by Maria Tippett
Between Two Cultures: A Photographer Among the
Inuit. Viking $50.00
Reviewed by Sherrill Grace
As we approach the end of the twentieth
century, Canadians are demonstrating
renewed fascination with the far north and
with those who explored, painted, and
photographed it. Whatever the reasons for
this interest (and they range from political
and economic to social and romantic), the
striking number of recent publications on
the north, of which the three books
reviewed here are a representative sample,
all share a desire to re-write history, to take
received notions and narratives of what
happened and to expand or modify the
story, to adjust our perceptions of what the
arctic was/is really like. Arctic Artist gives
us, for the first time, George Back's perspective
on the first Franklin expedition;
Polar Pioneers claims a new place in history
for the two Rosses; and Between Two Cultures
introduces us to the little-known photography
of British art collector and dealer
Charles Gimpel. To my delight, the images
that emerge from these three fine books
serve to complicate the picture nicely;
myths are problematized, stereotypes dismantled,
and our received, simplified
notions of the complex human realities of
arctic life and exploration are greatly
enriched.
Arctic Artist is a stunning volume. If you
have formed your opinion of George Back
(1786-1878) from other exploration
accounts or from Rudy Wiebe's A Discovery
of Strangers (1993), you may imagine the
man, whatever his considerable accomplishments
as an explorer, as vain, arrogant,
and overweeningly ambitious. Arctic
Arfisf will not eradicate this image, but it
will present you with a more complex
human being. Stuart Houston has edited
three versions of Back's journal from the
1819-21 expedition into one text, providing
an essential contextual introduction, useful
annotations, and brief interstitial comments
to guide the contemporary reader.
By placing the material excised from Back's
journal by Franklin (who, as expedition
Commander, published the official account
Narrative of a Journey to the Shore of the
Polar Sea in 1823) in bold face, Houston
executes an editorial coup. This editorial
decision, more than any other to my mind,
makes the journal riveting. Not only do we
get new information about the expedition
and the human being who wrote and
sketched under the most arduous circumstances,
but we are also allowed to trace the
discursive manipulations and narrative
constructions of people, places, and events
that inevitably occur when a text is tailored
to the demands of an official record.
Predictably, Franklin cut almost all of
Back's extensive aesthetic and descriptive
commentary on the landscape, most of his
detailed observations of the native peoples,
and much of his lively (at times critical)
story of events. Quite simply, there are two
textual Backs here; the one Franklin constructed
and the one Back presents in what
amounts to another voice.
This other voice is witty, ironic, dramatic.
Back has a flair for metaphor and an ear for
dialogue; he doesn't merely describe what
the Natives and Canadians said but presents
it (in French for the latter group). Here, for
example, in a passage Franklin discarded,
Back narrates, in the form of a vignette, the
trials of sleeping on the land in winter so as
to avoid frost bite. The trick is to settle
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