Prisoners of the North

In his last book, Canadian historian extraordinaire Pierre Berton returned to the style of his Remarkable Past stories and his favourite subject - the Canadian north - to highlight five Canadian (or Canada-related) figures who have largely been forgotten or neglected by history. In some respects this serves as a coda to his best known work, "The Arctic Grail". It includes more than the usual number of photos.

Joseph Boyle - adventurer, gold-seeker, 'King of the Klondike'. Some key parts of his story are missing or skimmed: how did he stake a claim eight miles long when the classic image is of barely-surviving gold seekers arriving only to discover everything already snapped up? How did he ship in such an enormous amount of parts and show more pieces for his monstrous dredges over those challenging passes?

Vilhjalmur Stefansson - last of the old-time Arctic explorers. Stefansson learned mightily from the Inuit and the mistakes of his forerunners, but his lone wolf personality resulted in poor leadership and organizational skills that endangered the lives of his less rugged companions.

Lady Jane Franklin - wife of the doomed Sir John Franklin, she was a world traveler and world famous. She was also extremely stubborn, first about accepting her husband's death in his Arctic quest for the Northwest Passage and then about whether he was its discoverer.

John Hornby - the hermit of the north, Hornby presented few heroic qualities other than a remarkable ability to survive under ridiculous self-imposed circumstances, just so he could say he did. This, and the senseless tragedy that ended his life, was enough to put his name on several northern landmarks.

Robert Service - Canadian poet who specialized in writing about the north; also, a neighbour when the author was growing up. Berton oversells this portrait (best-known English poet of the 20th century??) of a man he knew and admired personally, but this is somewhat balanced by Service's own retiring modesty.

The book's last photo depicts the author interviewing Robert Service approximately three months before the poet's death in 1958. Pierre Berton died about as many months after publishing this book, in 2004 at the age of 84. show less

Spoilers? What could be a spoiler? This is a nutty book. The author has written many books & gotten them published but he isn't a very good writer. I think he has perseverance. The stories were pretty dull. He grew up in the Canadian northwest so he has some personal memories to draw from; for example, his mother knew Robert W. Service. The maps aren't very good, it is hard to follow the geography. It is romanticized and unreal. I don't know. I ploughed through but it didn't give me any thrill about the land.

Pierre Berton's final book features four larger than life characters who made Northern Canada their physical and in one case spiritual home.

This is one Berton book that I could not get into. I found it tedious to read.

The author profiles Klondike Joe Boyle, Vilhjalmur Stefansson, Lady Jane Franklin, John Hornby, and Robert Service.

klondike joe boyle vilhjalmur stefansson lady jane franklin john hornby robert service