Join The Explorers Club on Thursday, March 21st to learn about some new discoveries regarding an infamous tragedy of early Arctic exploration.
Urged on by the late Louie Kamookak, the celebrated Inuit oral historian, Ken McGoogan set out to discover the reality behind the myth of Sir John Franklin as Arctic Hero. In Searching for Franklin (Douglas & McIntyre), while drawing on his own engagement with the north, he intertwines two main stories. In 1821, while leading the Royal Navy’s first overland Arctic expedition, John Franklin rejected the advice of an outstanding Dene leader, Akaitcho, and so ended up losing eleven of his twenty men to starvation, murder, and cannibalism. Yet back in England, when he published his official narrative of this nightmare, he was lionized as The Man Who Ate His Boots. Then, while leading an 1840s voyage of great expectations, Franklin got trapped in the Arctic ice and lost two ships and 129 lives, including his own. This time he was celebrated as a hero who died while discovering the Northwest Passage. Searching for Franklin challenges these visions. The book rejects old orthodoxies, incorporates contemporary science, and proposes a new answer to that most haunting of Arctic mysteries: what was the root cause of the catastrophe that engulfed the final Franklin expedition?
This event is done in conjunction with Adventure Canada. Click here to learn more about the Franklin Expedition with Ken within the Northwest Passage itself while sailing with Adventure Canada!