View topic - UNFLINCHING P. G. DOWNES' ANNOTATED COPY

Alan Gage: "One could argue that rather than passing judgement he was laying out the facts as he knew them." Indeed "as he knew them". It could also be argued that Downes use of the word 'nuisance' injects something other than "he facts as he knew them", it injects opinion of those facts as he knew them.

Downes' marginalia below is correct and interestingly enough supports the transcription of George Whalley's "Death in the Barren Ground" :

Hornby:
"Twenty-three years... twenty-three years since I first went to Edmonton and started working into the North-West. It's a hard life, of course; but it suits me. Dangerous and exacting... Lonely certainly and... yes, I suppose it is rather unrewarding. But my head has gradually drifted up with all kinds of knowledge--the weather, and ice, the caribou, birds, different parts of the country. Someday I mean to write a book... I've started it several times, but something more interesting always seems to turn up.

I gradually worked farther and farther afield--from Great Slave, up to Coppermine with Father Rouvier, Great Bear, Coronation Gulf. We had a good winter in a warm cabin near Great Bear, and Douglas's party not far away for an occasional game of auction or chess. Rouvier stayed up there; the Eskimo killed him after I'd gone South. That was the year we went to the Dismal Lakes... and that's where I learned the fascination of the Barren Ground."

http://georgewhalley.ca/gwp/node/3910

True, but in this context I don't take 'nuisance' to have a particularly negative connotation. If he'd been repeatedly pestering someone it would be a negative word. But in this case, at least to me, nuisance refers to the case in general rather than the man. So if the English military considered it a nuisance it would be because, under the circumstances, they perhaps didn't feel he did anything terribly egregious and just wanted to make the problem go away rather than pursue it to its end.

The story about the priests murdered by eskimos is very interesting and covered in depth in The Legend of John Hornby

Alan

Alan Gage: "So if the English military considered it a nuisance....." is not the same as Downes' "H was more of a nuisance..."

"UNFLINCHING" Downes copy - Intro Pg 11 written by Miss B. Drew Roberts: "When the Douglas expedition returned south, Hoenby remained behind for another winter. Sometime later he warned Father Roubier(sic) that the Indians of the district were in a dangerous mood - "looking mean" as he called it"

To which Downes' marginalia said "Ridiculous, there were not Indians involved at all - they were two Eskimos of the Koqmelluk band Not only that but the Huskies were very justified.

From George Whalley's "The Legend of John Hornby"

Pg 96 Bullock's account, relayed to him no doubt by Hornby, is more colourful. Hornby he wrote, lived in the same village as those 'bad actors' [Uluksauk and Sinnisiak], and fell foul of them when they stole his rifle"

Pg 96 Hupo "Sinnisaik wanted to kill Hornybaena [Horby] in the summertime. Sinnisiak and Kosuktuk went to Bear Lke with Hornybeana. Hornybeana dropped a sealskin line and Sihhisiak picked it up and wanted to keep it. Hornybeana saw him with it and took it back from him, and Sinnisiak wanted to kill him Sinnisiak is a bad man, everyone says so and he told me lies."

thus we have one clarification - the Indians didn't do it and one conflict. Downes said "...the Huskies were very justified." and two sources in Whalley's book cast doubt on Downes assertion.

"The rest of the story" comes later in the book as well as having its own appendix in the back of the book.

Alan

Indeed Alan, it is an unfolding story with its complications, complications, contradictions with apparent paradoxes. There is nothing wrong with that given that.

Alan Gage: "The rest of the story" comes later in the book as well as having its own appendix in the back of the book. I remember listening to Paul Harvey on my drive to somewhere in Canada with a canoe and gear waiting for the road to end. "And now you know the rest of the story." I enjoyed Paul Harvey as much as I learned to dislike Garrison Keillor until... But that is another story.

The Land of Feast and Famine (Helge Ingstad) - published in 1931

Pg 10 "Unflinching" "In the Land of Feast or Famine, or a Lifetime in the Arctic Regions" by J. Hornby

Downs note on this page *This title was stolen by Helge Ingsted for his book. He got it by hearing Douglas (George Mellis Douglas) mention it at Snowdrift

"His (Hornby) only accounts of two decades of subarctic travel were his “Caribou Notes”, a few incomplete diaries, and notes for a projected book, The Land of Feast or Famine."

http://pubs.aina.ucalgary.ca/arctic/Arctic37-2-184.pdf

Once I get the and/or corrected , perhaps the issue of the stolen title will be addressed.

In logical applications the difference between and and or is significant, thus whether or not Ingstad stole anything is problematic especially when considered in conjunction Hornby's effort which was consisted a few unpublished diaries.

-notes from an insomniac-

Alan: "The rest of the story" comes later in the book as well as having its own appendix in the back of the book.
indeed, my original impression was formed by Edgar Christian adulation in"Unflinching". Now I must reconcile that with Bullock as presented by Whalley "The Legend of John Hornby. "Never have I been so utterly disillusioned by anyone."

Hornby was what is known as a hard traveler. As an example the following quote will on pg 240 of Whalley's book: "Hornby said today that the meanest eating he ever had was a sack of flour on which a skunk had squirted." I remember talking with Robert Perkins, a Back River legend,about he having scavenged hot dogs that had been dumped by a mining operation years back. Hard call as to who was the hardest traveler! But then this all came before "Unflinching"

Hornby died on April 17th 1927

From page 312 of Walley's "Legend of John Hornby": "In June of 1927 the Thelon Game Sanctuary was created...." & "to take effect on 1 September of that year"

Thus Downes was not correct in asserting Hornby "...had no right whatsoever..."

Save but for two trivial annotations, Downes' is silent on the actual diary. What is one to make of that given it is essential to the book. Thus Downes' annotated 'Unflinching' was not about the diary but about 'others' writing about the diary. Was there nothing in the diary which would shed light on this tragic event? Something which participated in the events which precipitated the deaths of three people? Nothing worth an annotation?

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No bones about it: "The whole trouble being bound up from bones which we must have eaten 10 days ago." startinfg on pg 107 Downes' copy. It is alimentary my dear Watson!

This statement by Downes in "Unflinching" is interesting because he doesn't reference Edgar Christian's comments about Harold Adlard.

But I will:

I think it important that an individual with close contact with Hornby over an extended period of time up and until Hornby's death be commented upon. A reflection of the totality of his experience. I leave it to the reader to review Downes' comments on Hornby, a individual he never met, with the comments of Christian, an individual whose life was indescribably bound to Hornby