In a Crystal Land: Canadian Explorers in Antarctica

Barry M. Gough is a history professor at Wilfrid Laurier University and
author of The Northwest Coast: British Navigation, Trade, and
Discoveries to 1812.

“What were Canadians doing in Antarctica?” Our national history
contains no chapters on official exploration in the southern hemisphere,
and certainly not in Antarctica. Our only national claims have been in
attempts to forge a new international law of the sea and to establish
Antarctica as a nuclear-free zone. This pleasant book explains not only
the roles of Canadians in the historical evolution of the southernmost
continent, but also many of the reasons why we have not taken a national
role there.

About a dozen Canadians feature in south polar expeditions. Some were
geologists; others were physicists, dog-drivers, aviators. They left a
paper trail in their journals, logbooks, and letters. Hugh Evans was
with Carsten Borchgrevink’s 1899–1900 wintering party, the first on
the continent. Charles Wright was with Robert Falcon Scott at the time
of the tragic assault on the South Pole in 1910–12. Bush pilots Silas
Cheesman, Herbert Hollick-Kenyon, and J.H. “Red” Lymburner made
remarkable contributions to the history of polar flight. Andrew Taylor
commanded Operation Tabarin, a 1944-46 British military scheme to keep
Chile out of Antarctica. And so on.

The author has interviewed the survivors, and his footnotes make
reference to a larger literature on Canadian Antarctic expedition
history than hitherto gathered. It is regrettable that no bibliography
accompanies this book. The author has unearthed numerous tales of
bravery and madness, heartbreak and revelry. More than that, however,
this work at last gives Canadians a place in deep southern latitudes,
among ice-choked, frozen terrain that they ought to have explored
themselves, given their own potential experience, but that others always
took the lead in uncovering.