Cold Comfort
Kath Gourlay discovers why an intrepid Orkney explorer forfeited his rightful place in the history books simply by telling the truth.
Deep in the Canadian Arctic, northwest of the Castor and Pollux River, is a promontory called Point de la Guiche. Few will have heard of it; fewer still will have been there. But what really stuck in the craw of Orkney residents was the absence of Point de la Guiche in the recent Channel 4 documentary The Search for the Northwest Passage. The programme contained not one mention of the place, nor of the Orkneyman who should have had national recognition because of it.
Above the promontory, overlooking the fifteen-mile stretch of water between the Gulf of Boothia and King William Island, lie the remains of an old and weather-beaten stone built cairn. Just below it, the light glances off a modern aluminium plaque and brings the present day sharply into focus. It reads: This plaque marks the spot where Arctic explorer John Rae (1813-93) discovered the final link in the Northwest Passage. It was put there by Ken McGoogan, former editor of The Calgary Herald, and it marked the end of a twelve-year quest to bring justice for the Orkney explorer he has dubbed the greatest Arctic explorer of them all.
To read the full "Cold Comfort" story and others like it every month why not subscribe to our magazine.
