The Afterlife of George Cartwright

Ian A. Andrews is a high-school social sciences teacher and editor of the New Brunswick Teachers’ Association’s Focus.

Toronto poet John Steffler has based his first novel on the life of
George Cartwright, an 18th-century British gentleman-adventurer who
recorded his experiences as a Labrador trader in A Journal of
Transactions and Events During the Residence of Nearly Sixteen Years on
the Coast of Labrador. He stresses, however, that “what I’ve written
is fiction, not history.”

And this fiction provides remarkable insight into the lifestyles of
aristocrats in England; soldiers in colonial India and the Prussia of
Frederick the Great; passengers on trans-Atlantic voyages in the age of
sail; American privateers during the American Revolution; and,
especially, the Labrador Inuit.

Steffler teaches at Sir Wilfred Grenfell College in Corner Brook,
Newfoundland, and it is obvious that he has become enamored with the
countryside and history of Newfoundland and Labrador. The word-pictures
of a poet are in evidence as Steffler weaves a third-person narrative
with the first-person accounts adapted from Cartwright’s journal; the
spiritual Cartwright also hovers throughout the novel, with his
companion horse and hunting hawk at his side.

However, it is the relationship between Cartwright and the Inuit of
Labrador that is central to the novel. On meeting the Inuit, Cartwright
maintained, “It is the duty of the civilized man to elevate the
savage.” His trials and tribulations in adapting to winters in
Labrador, with Inuit assistance, made him appreciate a unique style of
life. Unfortunately, Cartwright’s presence causes more harm than
“civilization” for the Inuit. The tremendous differences that
existed, both between classes in British society and between the British
and the Inuit, are vividly portrayed by Steffler.

Although a work of fiction, this novel should appeal to both historians
and others who appreciate the telling of a good story in an imaginative
way.