North Star of Herschel Island - the Last Canadian Arctic Fur Trading Ship

North Star of Herschel Island - the Last Canadian Arctic Fur Trading Ship PDF

Author: R. Bruce MacDonald

Publisher:

Published: 2012-10

Total Pages: 496

ISBN-13: 9781460205570

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In 1935, at the height of the Great Depression, two Canadian Inuit fur trappers ordered the largest private sailing ship ever delivered to be used in transporting their annual catch of fur to Herschel Island on the MacKenzie Delta in exchange for the supplies that they needed to survive another winter hundreds of miles north of the Arctic Circle. Three times she did not make it into port in time and was frozen solid into the ice. This is the story of one of the most historic ships in Canada, who under three owners faced many challenges including; holding land at the entrance of the fabled NorthWest Passage to protect Canadian Arctic Sovereignty, was used in sail-training for Inuit, surveyed the controversial B.C./Alaska border and was chartered to search for mermaids off of the Aleutian Islands. North Star of Herschel Island is now a familiar sight on the Victoria, B.C. waterfront and a regular participant in Classic Boat and Tall Ship Festivals. In 2005 she represented her country as the Canadian GoodWill Ambassador in an international gathering of Tall Ships. This is the true story of a remarkable ship and the people who have known and loved her.

Sisters of the Ice

Sisters of the Ice PDF

Author: R. Bruce Macdonald

Publisher: Harbour Publishing

Published: 2021-04-24

Total Pages: 209

ISBN-13: 1550179292

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This book is a biography of two British Columbian ships that performed legendary service in the Canadian Arctic. The St. Roch, now on permanent display at the Vancouver Maritime Museum, is the better known of the two, although North Star of Herschel Island is still sailing and still adding to her legend. Historian Bruce Macdonald—who, along with his wife, owns North Star of Herschel Island—has meticulously researched the origins and service logs of each ship and created a book that will enthrall old Arctic hands, maritime history buffs and anyone who appreciates well-written Canadian history. Under the command of Captain Henry Larsen, the sturdy RCMP vessel St. Roch spent years showing the Canadian flag in the Arctic, performing many duties including delivering medical supplies and taking census information in addition to enforcing the law in the North. St. Roch is world renowned for achieving many firsts, including being the first vessel through the Northwest Passage west to east, the first vessel to navigate the passage in both directions and the first vessel to circumnavigate North America. Inspired by St. Roch, renowned trapper and Inuit leader Fred Carpenter designed the elegant North Star, the ultimate ice vessel used to transport furs and people to and from remote Banks Island. Together, the two iconic ships have helped to solidify Canadian sovereignty in the Arctic and have become symbols of unity among Northern communities. In Sisters of the Ice, Macdonald documents in vivid detail the adventurous histories of these two vessels, as well as the history of the Northern communities in which they gained renown. Detailing daring escapes from dangerous ice conditions to thrilling sea voyages to raucous whaling towns, Macdonald reveals the perilous and often lawless climate in which these vessels operated and the ties of Canadian identity that they helped forge.

White Fox and Icy Seas in the Western Arctic

White Fox and Icy Seas in the Western Arctic PDF

Author: John R. Bockstoce

Publisher: Yale University Press

Published: 2018-03-20

Total Pages: 349

ISBN-13: 030023516X

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How the fur trade changed the North and created the modern Arctic: “The history is fascinating.” —Anchorage Daily News In the early twentieth century, northerners lived and trapped in one of the world’s harshest environments. At a time when government services and social support were minimal or nonexistent, they thrived on the fox fur trade, relying on their energy, training, discipline, and skills. John R. Bockstoce, a leading scholar of the Arctic fur trade who also served as a member of an Eskimo whaling crew, explores the twentieth-century history of the Western Arctic fur trade to the outbreak of World War II, covering an immense region from Chukotka, Russia, to Arctic Alaska and the Western Canadian Arctic. This period brought profound changes to Native peoples of the North. To show its enormous impact, the author draws on interviews with trappers and traders, oral and written archival accounts, research in newspapers and periodicals, and his own field notes from 1969 to the present. A Choice Outstanding Academic Title of the Year Honorary Mention, 2020 William Mills Prize for Non-fiction Polar Books “An engaging story that is chock-full of fascinating anecdotes.” —Arctic “Invaluable . . . future generations of historians will refer to it.” —Canadian Journal of History “A compelling narrative . . . Bockstoce proves once again why he is the definitive source of all things related to Arctic maritime history.” —Sea History Includes photographs

Powering Up Canada

Powering Up Canada PDF

Author: R.W. Sandwell

Publisher: McGill-Queen's Press - MQUP

Published: 2016-11-01

Total Pages: 482

ISBN-13: 0773599533

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With growing concerns about the security, cost, and ecological consequences of energy use, people around the world are becoming more conscious of the systems that meet their daily needs for food, heat, cooling, light, transportation, communication, waste disposal, medicine, and goods. Powering Up Canada is the first book to examine in detail how various sources of power, fuel, and energy have sustained Canadians over time and played a pivotal role in their history. Powering Up Canada investigates the ways that the production, processing, transportation, use, and waste issues of various forms of energy changed over time, transforming almost every aspect of society in the process. Chapters in the book's first part explore the energies of the organic regime – food, animal muscle, water, wind, and firewood-- while those in the second part focus on the coal, oil, gas, hydroelectricity, and nuclear power that define the mineral regime. Contributors identify both continuities and disparities in Canada’s changing energy landscape in this first full overview of the country’s distinctive energy history. Reaching across disciplinary boundaries, these essays not only demonstrate why and how energy serves as a lens through which to better understand the country’s history, but also provide ways of thinking about some of its most pressing contemporary concerns. Engaging Canadians in an urgent international discussion on the social and environmental history of energy production and use – and its profound impact on human society – Powering Up Canada details the nature and significance of energy in the past, present, and future. Contributors include Jenny Clayton (University of Victoria), George Colpitts (University of Calgary), Colin Duncan (Queen’s University), J.I. Little (Emeritus, Simon Fraser University), Joanna Dean (Carleton University), Matthew Evenden (University of British Columbia), Laurel Sefton MacDowell (Emerita, University of Toronto Mississauga), Joshua MacFadyen (Arizona State University), Eric Sager (University of Victoria), Jonathan Peyton (University of Manitoba), Steve Penfold (University of Toronto), Philip van Huizen (McMaster University), Andrew Watson (University of Saskatchewan), and Lucas Wilson (independent scholar).

Herschel Island

Herschel Island PDF

Author: Christopher Robert Burn

Publisher:

Published: 2012

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13: 9780988000919

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Herschel Island is a remarkable place. For hundreds of years, it sustained aboriginal people who lived off the sea, and its shelter provided a base for the western Arctic whaling fleet in the 1890s. It was named by John Franklin during a voyage to establish sovereignty over arctic North America, and it was the location of the first police detachment in the Canadian Arctic. The rise of the fur trade in the 1910s and 1920s led to the Inuvialuit becoming the wealthiest aboriginal people in Canada at the time. Herschel Island was a logistical centre during the offshore oil boom of the 1970s and early 1980s, but it is now designated as a territorial park, a reserve established as a result of the Inuvialuit Final Agreement. As a wilderness park, it is a semi-contained ecosystem, and presents land, ocean, and coastal environments. Herschel Island Qikiqtaryuk: A Natural and Cultural History traces the history of the island, explores its rich and diverse flora and fauna, discusses its strategic role and position in the Arctic, and introduces readers to one of the North's most fascinating places. Published by the Wildlife Management Advisory Council (North Slope), Yukon.

Baychimo

Baychimo PDF

Author: Anthony Dalton

Publisher: Heritage House Publishing Co

Published: 2006

Total Pages: 260

ISBN-13: 9781894974141

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Baychimo is the legendary Hudson's Bay Company ship that survived for years in the Arctic after being abandoned by her crew in 1931.In the 1920s, the crew of Baychimo set up trading posts in eastern Canada, sailed on fur-trading expeditions to Siberia during the turbulent years of the Russian Civil War, and eventually made the dangerous annual voyage around Alaska to Canada's western Arctic coast, shouldering her way through the ice floes to resupply the HBC's remote trading posts. But this ship's story had a remarkable twist. When Baychimo was caught in 1931 in an ice floe that refused to let go, her crew expected her to sink at any moment, and abandoned ship. But she was as stubborn as the ice, and she floated away unharmed to begin what would prove to be the longest phase of her seemingly charmed career: for the next four decades she would appear on the horizon at unexpected times and places, always defiantly upright and afloat, becoming the legendary ghost ship of the Arctic.

The Fur-Trade Fleet

The Fur-Trade Fleet PDF

Author: Anthony Dalton

Publisher: Heritage House Publishing Co

Published: 2011-05

Total Pages: 146

ISBN-13: 1926936094

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In mid-July 1925, the SS Bayeskimo ran into heavy drift ice at the entrance to Hudson Strait. The ice carried her north, squeezing the steamer and testing the strength of her rivets. Helpless until the tide changed and the ice moved, the officers and crew could only watch and listen to the ship's tormented groans. Slowly at first, trickles of freezing water seeped through the steel plates on her bow. The trickles became a flood, and Bayeskimo began to sink. Bayeskimo was one of hundreds of ships in the Hudson's Bay Company's fur-trade fleet. For much of the company's history, they roamed Hudson Bay, the subarctic and beyond the Arctic Circle, servicing far-flung posts. Some even battled their way around the tip of South America to open up trade on the west coast of North America. During these arduous voyages, many came to grief under conditions that would test the mettle of any ship. Here are some of their stories.