No Ordinary Journey: John Rae, Arctic Explorer 1813-1893 - Softcover

Bunyan, Ian; Calder, Jenni

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0773511075 ISBN 13: 9780773511071

Publisher: McGill-Queen's University Press, 1993

Synopsis

John Rae's solitary childhood in the rugged hills of Orkney, Scotland, can be seen as preparation for the challenge he later faced in the Canadian Arctic. As a member of the Hudson's Bay Company, with a posting as surgeon and clerk to George Simpson, he travelled extensively in the Arctic, often alone. Taught to survive in extreme conditions by the Indians and the Inuit, he used this knowledge in exploring, surveying and mapping; collecting information on zoology, ethnography, and geology; and making detailed observations of the ethnography of the Inuit. In his later years he wrote widely on the natural history, geography, and anthropology of the North. Rae was a committed, independent, and idiosyncratic man and a controversial figure in his own period. There has, until now, been little recognition of the importance and diversity of his achievements.

About this title

About the Author

Jenni Calder was born in Chicago, educated in the United States and England, and has lived in or near Edinburgh since 1971. After several years of part-time teaching and freelance writing, including three years in Kenya, she worked at the National Museums of Scotland from 1978 to 2001 successively as education officer, Head of Publications, script editor for the Museum of Scotland, and latterly as Head of Museum of Scotland International. In the latter capacity her main interest was in emigration and the Scottish diaspora. She has written and lectured widely on Scottish, English and American literary and historical subjects, and writes fiction and poetry as Jenni Daiches.

Edition details

• Publisher: McGill-Queen's University Press
• Publication date: 1993
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0773511075
• ISBN 13: 9780773511071
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 128