This is the biography of an exceptional Canadian who as a member of the RCMP, played a crucial role in asserting Canada's sovereignty in the Arctic. Having emigrated to Canada from England in 1913 Harry Stallworthy joined the Force in 1914 and until 1921 served at various detachments in the Yukon, except for the period 1918-19 when he participated in the RNWMP's Cavalry Detachment as part of the Canadian Expeditionary Force during the final bloody months of World War I in Flanders. After serving for two years at Chesterfield Inlet (west shore of Hudson Bay) he was posted to Edmonton, and...

Emil Bessels was chief scientist and medical officer on George Francis Hall's ill-fated American North Pole Expedition of 1871-73 on board the ship Polaris. Bessels' book, translated from the German in its entirety for the first time, is one of only two first-hand accounts of the voyage, and it is the only first-hand account of the experiences of the group which stayed with the ship after it ran afoul of arctic ice, leaving some of its crew stranded on an ice floe. Bessels and the others spent a second winter on shore in Northwest Greenland, where the drifting, disabled ship ran aground. Hall...