The Man Who Mapped the Arctic (*****)

THE INTREPID LIFE OF GEORGE BACK, FRANKLIN'S LIEUTENANT

It takes considerable flair and panache to write history in a way that makes it read like a novel and not very many authors have that ability. Canada’s Pierre Berton has it! Dava Sobel and Simon Winchester are certainly up to the task!

In “The Man Who Mapped the Arctic”, Peter Steele demonstrated his rightful claim to membership on that short list. Steele, a physician who has spent most of his life in the North and an arctic adventurer and mountaineer in his own right, has eloquently told us the astonishing tale of George Back, Franklin’s undeservedly obscure and unsung Lieutenant and his astonishing exploits in exploration that rival Samuel Hearne’s or Lewis and Clark’s in their extraordinary scope and difficulty.

Steele’s prose has painted a vivid picture of Back’s working life as a Navy Lieutenant and explorer and the compelling setting in which the story takes place – endless waterfalls and rapids; excruciating clouds of mosquitoes or black flies; extreme temperature swings; backbreaking 90 to 100 pound loads hauled over strenuous ankle-breaking portages; the open water of Lake Winnipeg, Lake Superior and Great Bear and Great Slave Lake that might better be described as inland oceans when observed from the perspective of a canoe; changeable unpredictable weather; the dumb-founding athleticism of ten to twelve men paddling in perfect synchrony at 50 strokes per minute for hours on end singing, if you please, to provide a rhythm and take their minds off the numbing pain in their backs and shoulders; lost rations, near starvation and cannibalism; the stinging cold and near endless dark of sub-arctic winter camps; the political struggles, bickering, corporate fighting and espionage that occurred as a matter of course in the conflict between the Hudson Bay Company and the Northwest Company; and much, much more.

Of Back’s cultural indoctrination by fire upon his arrival in Canada, for example, Steele wrote:

“He knew nothing of the rival fur companies’ years of bitter forest skirmishes, sniping from riverbanks at each others’ canoes, occasionally taking prisoners, and resorting in extremis to arson and theft, kidnapping and murder – tantamount to open warfare.” “Neither did he understand the cultural differences that might arise between himself and a disparate group of French Canadian voyageur canoemen, Indian hunters and Eskimo guides, who he expected would guide them through the most barren and inhospitable land anyone could imagine, among people utterly ignorant of intrusive Westerners and their strange ways.”

Of Back's almost supernatural skills in the art of mapmaking and navigation, Steele writes:

"Since both chronometers had frozen and broken during the previous winter, he relied on dead reckoning - courses and distances checked by compass bearings each time they changed direction. By the much more complicated method of lunar observation, he estimated latitude and longitude every week or so - weather, clear skies, and moon permitting. Nevertheless he produced a map that was out by only twenty seconds over a thousand miles of uncharted coastline."

In other words, Steele has provided us with an exciting biography of a talented naval officer, artist, scientist, explorer, mapmaker, outdoorsman and survivor who has languished for too long under the shadow of Franklin, his considerably less talented superior. The Yukon News praises “The Man Who Mapped the Arctic” by suggesting that it is destined to become a classic story of Canadian Arctic exploration. I concur.

Paul Weiss