Introduction
The scientists of the Canadian Arctic Expedition returned from
their Arctic explorations with thousands of specimens of animals, plants, fossils
and rocks, and thousands of artifacts from the Copper Inuit and other Native cultures
of the Arctic. The men of the Expedition, primarily the official photographer,
George Wilkins, also shot thousands of photographs and several thousand feet of
movie film, covering all aspects of the expedition and its objectives. Most of
this material is held in national collections in museums and archives in Ottawa.
Drawing on these various museum collections and databases, this section samples
some highlights of the extensive collections resulting from the Expedition.
Due to the Expedition being divided into two parties with different objectives,
and travelling in different areas, many of the
specimens
were collected by amateurs or untrained men. The Inuit and Inupiat hunters
made many contributions to the museum collections. For example, young Patsy Klengenberg
helped Dr. Anderson in both acquiring and preparing specimens of birds and mammals.
George Wilkins and Captain Peter Bernard collected biological specimens in the
absence of official scientists on the Northern Party. Stefansson, himself an ethnologist,
left most of the collecting to others and John Hadley was left with the responsibility
of trying to sort out hundreds of unlabelled artifacts that Stefansson, Gonzales,
and others acquired on Banks and Victoria Islands.
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- Video:
Men hunting seal on the ice, with dogs
- Video:
Finding and probing a seal hole
- Video:
Woman using and sharpening an ulu
- Video:
Inuit seamstress
- Video:
Inuit man fixing arrows and then shooting them from a bow
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