[books 2010] Canadian history
Oct. 17th, 2010 09:18 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
inulro65. A Journey to the Northern Ocean by Samuel Hearne
Yes, a primary source! Ray Mears talks a lot about Hearne in his Northern Wilderness series so I thought I'd read it.
It's a surprisingly readable account of Hearne's journeys from 1769 to 1772 in which he travelled from the Price of Wales Fort (modern-day Churchill, Manitoba) to the mouth of the Coppermine River and thus the Arctic Ocean, the first European to do so. There were three attempts - the first thing he learned was to leave other Europeans behind! He was one of the first explorers to realise that the only way to explore the Arctic was to live like the natives.
Hearne has an ambiguous opinion of the natives - he admires some of them, for some things, but is critial of other aspects of their society. It's honest and ahead of his time.
I suppose you have to be really interested in Canadian history to want to read this, but if you are, it's certainly worth it.
Yes, a primary source! Ray Mears talks a lot about Hearne in his Northern Wilderness series so I thought I'd read it.
It's a surprisingly readable account of Hearne's journeys from 1769 to 1772 in which he travelled from the Price of Wales Fort (modern-day Churchill, Manitoba) to the mouth of the Coppermine River and thus the Arctic Ocean, the first European to do so. There were three attempts - the first thing he learned was to leave other Europeans behind! He was one of the first explorers to realise that the only way to explore the Arctic was to live like the natives.
Hearne has an ambiguous opinion of the natives - he admires some of them, for some things, but is critial of other aspects of their society. It's honest and ahead of his time.
I suppose you have to be really interested in Canadian history to want to read this, but if you are, it's certainly worth it.
