The particulars: around noon on January 12th last some kids out riding a skidoo found the bodies of a man and woman lying in the snow on a bluff which looks over the river. They lay side by side and there was no sign of violence.
The medical examination showed they both had elevated levels of blood alcohol. It was the coroner’s opinion that they got drunk and then fell asleep in the snow, which is said to be about the most pleasant way there is for a person to go. They probably stayed up drinking then went out there thinking to watch the sun rise, January 12th being our first dawn in these parts after a month of Arctic night.
My constables found nearby a 2013 Chevrolet Equinox SUV registered to Albert Nilsson. They searched the dead man and found a wallet with a driver’s licence, credit cards and various other particulars identifying him as Albert Nilsson, born Grande Prairie Alberta. This name was also written on the label of the dead man’s coat.
On further enquiries, Albert Nilsson turned out to be a former government scientist who came from outside to teach geography in the high school. His only listed next of kin is a brother, Arthur Nilsson, last known address Fort McMurray, Alberta, a drifter whom we have been unable to trace.
The dead lady had no identification of any kind on her, except that some of her clothing labels came from the United Kingdom. I myself went to search the dead man’s apartment in person and there was no sign there of the lady’s personal effects or documents or any indication that she had ever been there.
I also personally checked all the hotel and guest-house registers in town but no one of that description had been checked in to any of them. We sent out her picture and data through the usual channels but she did not match any missing person reports in Canada or the UK or the States.
I am afraid to say that stories like this are not unknown up here on the delta, which is the end of the road for a lot of drifters and suchlike.
I don’t know what else I can tell you. I never met Dr Nilsson myself, and neither of the deceased came to my attention in any way before their demise.
If the people in London or Ottawa or wherever do come up with any further information I would ask that they supply it to the RCMP through official channels and not to involve me personally again. As far as I am concerned the case is already closed. It is true that we can’t find anyone to identify these people and lay them to rest, but lives don’t always end like they’re supposed to. Some people slip through the cracks.
Yours,
Sergeant Martin Peake RCMP
Acknowledgements
So many people helped me in the writing of this novel that I am sure to forget to thank some of them here. Sorry. Thanks.
This book received generous support from the Arts Council of Ireland and from the Canada Council for the Arts. Particular thanks go to Sarah Bannan in Dublin and to Suzanne Keeptwo in Ottawa.
My wife, Nuala Haughey, put up with several years of spiralling introversion, severe mood-swings, mental absences and poorly performed domestic tasks. Now that the book is finished, none of this will change. Bláthnaid and Iseult are already old and wise enough to expect no better.
My sister Róisín, another secret polar enthusiast, was an excellent reader when I needed one, as were Nuala Haughey, Kevin McCarthy, Maeve McLoughlin and Conn Ó Midheach.
My mother, Gabrielle Hetherington, offered much-needed hospitality in Grande Prairie and Edmonton, while Kerri and John O’Loughlin did the same in Calgary. Emmal Baker and Omar Karmi provided a welcoming refuge in London. Carol Haughey held down the Lurgan end for all of us.
Jeroen Kramer was, as ever, a wonderful companion on the road; his photographs of the Mackenzie delta were a source of inspiration whenever my well ran dry.
I am particularly indebted to Jonathan Betts and Rory
McEvoy of the horological workshop at the Royal Observatory in Greenwich, who shared their precious time with me. If I have trampled on their learning it is only for artistic reasons, or because I failed to understand them.
In Dublin I was kindly assisted by Sinéad Shiels MacAodha at the Irish Literature Exchange and by the libraries of Trinity College, UCD and Dublin Corporation. Special thanks are due to Sinéad Haughey.
In Inuvik, Peter Clarkson was generous with his knowledge, his contacts and his snowmobiles. Denny Rodgers showed us around and tried to take us curling. Onida Banksland introduced me to Peter Esau and Alice Aklauf, who were a fount of information on life in the tough old days. Heather Moses of the tourist office provided a small but vital piece of last-minute information about the non-availability of cigarettes at Inuvik airport. Olav and Judi Falsnes were informative hosts at the Arctic Chalet Resort. Thanks too to Rick Adams at the Mad Trapper Pub, the best and indeed only tavern in town.
Merven Gruben, the mayor of Tuktoyaktuk, showed us around his township and was very helpful with background. Thanks also to the Voudrach family and to Lennie Emaghok.
The Aklavik troop of the Canadian Rangers hosted us on their annual training camp in the depths of the Arctic winter. Sergeant Marcy Maddison, their regular army instructor, patiently put up with her civilian intruders. Captain Sandra Bourne and Captain Stephen Watton of National Defence Headquarters in Ottawa authorized what I would like to claim as the world’s most northerly military embed. Thanks also to Edward McLeod and Frank Kasook for guiding us and putting up the tent.
Major Mathias Joost of the history directorate at Armed Forces Canada repeatedly came to my aid with information about the epic post-war photo-surveying mission of 408, 413 and 414 Squadrons of the Royal Canadian Air Force. Hugh Halliday helped me to get my hands on an invaluable copy of the newly published history of 408 Squadron.
Kristina Kwiatkowski of the Canada Centre for Mapping and Earth Observation dug into her archives to unearth priceless contemporaneous information about the discovery and naming of Prince Charles Island, Air Force Island and Foley Island in 1948. I thank her for this, and also for having the job title of ‘Toponymy Specialist’, which is a wonderful thing. I would also like to thank Richie Sue Allen and Sophie Tellier at Library and Archives Canada.
While researching the Distant Early Warning Line I was fortunate to stumble across the blogs of Paul Kelley and Brian Jeffrey, two civilian radicians who worked on the DEW Line in the early days. Both were then patient enough to deal with many vexatious questions.
Neal McEwen, Sid Reith and Bryan Robinson will never have heard of me, but I have borrowed their online reminiscences of their lives as telegraph clerks and twisted them to my own ends.
The great Edith Iglauer is owed a considerable debt, both for her classic work of north-country reportage, Denison’s Ice Road, and for the contacts she gave me in Yellowknife, including the very helpful Bill Braden.
I am grateful to author Barbara Smith for her fascinating book on the fugitive ‘Albert Johnson’ and also for showing me the long-lost secret report on the manhunt by Constable William Carter RCMP, which she unearthed in the course of her research. John Evans of the Canadian Police Research Center gave me his insights on the manhunt.
Dr Lorne Hammond of the Royal British Columbia Museum helped me to track down useful details of Cecil Meares’s last years in Victoria, BC. My portrayal of this intriguing figure relies heavily – in so far as it is based in fact at all – on the work of Leif Mills, whose biography of Meares is, as far as I know, the only one ever written. Mr Mills was kind enough to send me one of his own copies of the out-of-print Men of Ice, which also contains a fascinating account of the deeply affecting life and death of Alister Forbes Mackay, a long-forgotten Shackleton associate who was part of the first expedition to reach the south magnetic pole.
Professor William Barr of the University of Calgary has actually been to Cape Chelyuskin and could tell me what it was like. I met him at the annual Shackleton festival in Athy, County Kildare, whose organizer, Seamus Taaffe, I would also like to thank.
Just up th
e road in Dunshane, John O’Loughlin, Catherine Choiseul and Dan O’Loughlin were always good for a free meal, good conversation and a break from weekend writing. In Newbridge, Rose O’Loughlin and family lent us a retreat and a pool.
Marissa Doyle, an expert on historical dance, elucidated an important point about nineteenth-century dance cards.
Brendan Barrington of the Dublin Review published an essay that I wrote on the Mad Trapper of Rat River – an essay which later fed into this novel.
Dr Lisa Goldfarb of the Wallace Stevens Society helped me to obtain the rights for the poem ‘The Snow Man’, which is used as an epigraph. Peter Fallon of the Gallery Press was very generous following a similar request about Derek Mahon’s aching ‘Antarctica’.
He had little to do with this particular novel, but I still owe David Beresford my deepest gratitude for many other things, so I’ll take the opportunity to thank him here.
Sabine Klingner, Justine Driscoll, Deborah Behan, Myra Dowling, Edel O’Connell, Aisling Sexton, Julianne Gee, Louise Dunne, Sinéad McMahon and Nicola Brennan all provided much-needed back-up when called upon. Thanks, too, to Audrey Magee.
Many great books and periodicals (not to mention DuckDuckGo and Wikipedia) helped to inspire and inform the writing of this work of fiction. Chief among these was Pierre Berton’s The Arctic Grail, a gripping yet comprehensive history of the centuries-long search for the North West Passage. Some of Berton’s elegiac The Klondike Fever also found its way in. The debt which a certain passage of my novel owes to the great Jack London story ‘In A Far Country’ has to be seen to be believed.
My interpretations of the characters of Roald Amundsen and Bess Magids are drawn principally from the recent Amundsen biography by Tor Bomann-Larsen. I apologize for the many crimes that my fiction has committed against his facts.
Ralph Lloyd-Jones’s fascinating paper on ‘The Paranormal Arctic’ is at the heart of the chapter about Joseph René Bellot. Chauncey Loomis’s elegant life of Charles Francis Hall, Weird and Tragic Shores, supplied not only an epigraph for my book but also an intriguing murder which, like all good mysteries, ought never to be solved.
To switch media, I would also like to mention the Conet Project’s audio compilation of broadcasts by numbers stations, those enigmatic Sirens of the shortwave radio band. Eric Holm’s Andøya, an album of eerie ambient music taped from military antennae in the Arctic, made an obvious mark on part of my story.
I thank my agent, Peter Straus, for selling the book, and Jon Riley of riverrun and Quercus for buying it. My editors, Richard Arcus, Jon Riley and Nick de Somogyi, have worked long and hard to turn a self-indulgent mess of cobbled-together myth and mystery into something like a novel. Jeff Edwards made the excellent maps, with some help from Bláthnaid O’Loughlin. Finally, thanks to you, the reader, for reading it – assuming you made it this far.
Dublin, 2016
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
ED O’LOUGHLIN is an Irish-Canadian author and journalist. His first novel, Not Untrue and Not Unkind, was longlisted for the Man Booker Prize in 2009 and shortlisted for the Kerry Group Irish Fiction Award. His second novel, Toploader, was published in 2011. As a journalist, Ed reported from Africa for several papers, including the Irish Times. He was the Middle East correspondent for the Sydney Morning Herald and The Age of Melbourne. Ed was born in Toronto and raised in Ireland. He now lives in Dublin with his wife and two children.
ABOUT THE PUBLISHER
House of Anansi Press was founded in 1967 with a mandate to publish Canadian-authored books, a mandate that continues to this day even as the list has branched out to include internationally acclaimed thinkers and writers. The press immediately gained attention for significant titles by notable writers such as Margaret Atwood, Michael Ondaatje, George Grant, and Northrop Frye. Since then, Anansi’s commitment to finding, publishing and promoting challenging, excellent writing has won it tremendous acclaim and solid staying power. Today Anansi is Canada’s pre-eminent independent press, and home to nationally and internationally bestselling and acclaimed authors such as Gil Adamson, Margaret Atwood, Ken Babstock, Peter Behrens, Rawi Hage, Misha Glenny, Jim Harrison, A. L. Kennedy, Pasha Malla, Lisa Moore, A. F. Moritz, Eric Siblin, Karen Solie, and Ronald Wright. Anansi is also proud to publish the award-winning nonfiction series The CBC Massey Lectures. In 2007, 2009, 2010, and 2011 Anansi was honoured by the Canadian Booksellers Association as “Publisher of the Year.”
Minds of Winter Page 44
