2006 Ken McGoogan

Le biographe historique Ken McGoogan

Le biographe historique Ken McGoogan est un ancien journaliste globe–trotteur et aventurier! Il a survécu à un naufrage dans l'océan Indien, a installé une plaque commémorative dans l'Extrême Arctique et chassé le fantôme de Jane Lady Franklin à travers la Tasmanie.

Né à Montréal et élevé dans une ville francophone, il a fait de l'auto stop et s'est embarqué à bord de trains de marchandise partout en Amérique du Nord avant d'obtenir deux diplômes dans des universités de Montréal, de Toronto et de Vancouver.

Il a travaillé comme journaliste pendant vingt ans et a publié huit livres, dont un (Fatal Passage) servira de base à un docudrame.

Biographie / Histoire

• Lady Franklin's Revenge: A True Story of Ambition, Obsession and the Remaking of Arctic History. HarperCollins Canada, Bantam/Transworld U.K., 2005.
• Ancient Mariner: The Amazing Adventures of Samuel Hearne, the Sailor Who Walked to the Arctic Ocean. HarperCollins Canada, Bantam/ Transworld U.K., Carroll & Grad U.S., 2003.
• Fatal Passage: The Untold Story of John Rae, the Arctic Adventurer Who Discovered the Fate of Franklin. HarperCollins Canada, Bantam/ Transworld/Bantam U.K., Carroll & Graf U.S., 2001.

Other Nonfiction

• Canada's Undeclared War: Fighting Words From The Literary Trenches. Detselig Enterprises, 1991.
  An integrated collection of features and profiles that explores the politics of Canadian culture, this book won the Wilfred Eggleston Award as best non–fiction book of the year from the Writers' Guild of Alberta.
• Going For Gold. Co–author with Catriona Le May Doan. McClelland & Stewart, 2002.
  This autobiography tells the story of the gold–medalist speed–skater who became known as the Fastest Woman on Ice.

2006 PBA Winner — Ken McGoogan interview with former Beaver editor Doug Whiteway.

1. You've worked for newspapers, written novels — what drew you to Arctic exploration as a subject for non–fiction, and what keeps you there? (Or have you moved on to mine other areas?)

I stumbled into Arctic exploration by chance after I won a three–month fellowship to Cambridge University. I had intended to write a contemporary novel with an historical sub–plot revolving around explorer John Rae. But while researching I discovered that Rae had fallen victim to injustice.

Because he revealed an unwelcome truth — that some of the final survivors of the 1845 Franklin expedition had resorted to cannibalism — he was effectively written out of the historical record. I felt driven to correct this injustice. And I realized that the best way to do that was to write the book as nonfiction. The result was Fatal Passage: The Untold Story of John Rae.

Writing that book led me to Samuel Hearne, the eighteenth–century explorer who anticipated Rae in his respect for native peoples; and also to Jane Lady Franklin, who not only orchestrated the erasure of Rae, but turned her hapless husband, Sir John Franklin, into a legendary hero, and opened up the map of the Arctic. I am now writing a book called The Great Escape Across the Polar Ice (renamed to Race to the Polar Sea), about adventurer Elisha Kent Kane, so I appear to be staying in the Arctic.

What keeps me there? I feel like a kid who, awakening in a forest, begins following a trail of breadcrumbs. Every once in a while, I straighten up, look around at the trees, and wonder if I should use my GPS to escape this timberland. But then I think, why do that? Nothing out there is half as intriguing as these breadcrumbs.

2. In Fatal Passage, Ancient Mariner, and Lady Franklin's Revenge, you've used what are sometimes described as “novelistic techniques” — imagined conversations and internal monologues — that are generally thought unorthodox in history–writing circles. What drove you to do this? (Was it always your intent, or was there some serendipity here?)

I do take a more literary approach than is customary. I had spent years writing and reviewing novels, and also I had taught narrative nonfiction, starting with classics by Truman Capote, Piers Paul Read, and Tom Wolfe. When I sat down to write about John Rae, naturally I brought all my story–telling resources to bear. I didn't think I was doing anything revolutionary. Now I realize that historical biography is an especially conservative genre that needs to be dragged kicking and screaming into the twenty–first century.

3. And what has been the reaction? Who most approves of your approach? Who most disapproves?

Fatal Passage sat on national bestseller lists for fourteen weeks. It won four awards, was short–listed for three others, and is now being turned into a docudrama. Lady Franklin's Revenge, another national bestseller, won the University of British Columbia Medal for Canadian Biography and obviously figured in my garnering the Pierre Berton Award.

Reviewers in England, Australia and U.S. have lauded all three of my historical biographies. So I think I can say that the reaction has been overwhelmingly favorable, both from general readers and from leading professionals who sit on juries.

A few people disapprove, but how could it be otherwise? All three of these books challenge well–entrenched orthodoxies. Those who have a vested interest in outmoded interpretations, among them tenured academics and envious nitpickers, can't help striking back when they get a chance.

4. Do you have a message, then, for your critics?

The “experts” should do some reading outside their specialty, and start showing some respect for the general reader, who is far more sophisticated than they realize. The nitpickers should get a life.

5. Which writers or interpreters of Canadian history do you most admire?

Of my contemporaries, I most admire the wide–ranging Charlotte Gray. I reread her books and avidly await each new title. I also keep an eye out for works by Daniel Francis, Ted Barris, Mark Zuelke, Ron Brown, and Christopher Moore, and think the late Leslie H. Neatby deserves more recognition.

6. What does it mean to you to win the Pierre Berton Award?

My favorite moment with Pierre Berton came at an annual general meeting of the Writers' Union of Canada, when during a banquet he led our table in a sing–along. The song was Solidarity Forever, and Pierre not only knew the words, but could carry a tune.

Also, I am one of several writers who have spent some months residing in the Dawson City house where Berton grew up, and which is now a writers' retreat. So on a personal level, this award means a lot to me. Professionally, of course, the recognition is huge. For Canadians who write history, the Berton Award is the Giller Prize.

7. What was the first Pierre Berton book you ever read?

That would be Klondike, published originally as The Klondike Fever. My father was an avid reader, and he brought it to my attention. That book, along with the novels of Jack London, sowed the seeds of my later interest in the North.

8. Is there something in the Canadian narrative that other countries' histories don't have, or are there elements missing.

Canadian history includes no Revolution, no Civil War, no 9/11 — no cataclysmic events that involve us and nobody else, and so form part of a unique shared narrative. Apart from constitutional debates and referenda, we have regional events like the so–called Conquest, which involved Quebec; the 1837 Rebellions, which took place in Quebec and Ontario; and the Riel Rebellion, which resonated in Manitoba, Quebec and Ontario. But those events meant little in Atlantic Canada, and less in Alberta and B.C., which have their own transformative experiences.

What we do share across Canada is a written history of exploration and settlement — and some would say colonization. Our bedrock narrative includes first contact between native peoples and Europeans, and begins with the fur trade and the search for the Northwest Passage.

9. Would you be able to (and if you can, can you) describe Canadians' relationship to their own history?

We run from our history. We try to hide from its northerliness. But the North, and the reality of our nordicity, will not be denied. I think of Glenn Gould, confined to Toronto, creating his Idea of North. I think of Gilles Vigneault in Quebec City, singing Mon pays ce n'est pas un pays, c'est l'hiver.

I think of the Group of Seven painting Arctic landscapes, and B.C. artists Toni Onley and Gordon Smith doing the same. I think of Margaret Atwood writing Strange Things: The Malevolent North in Canadian Literature; and of the cosmopolitan Mordecai Richler resorting, at the height of his powers, in Solomon Gursky Was Here, to ringing farcical changes on the story of the last Franklin expedition.

These examples teach a single lesson. Geography and history are inseparable. If you immerse yourself in this country, in this place, you will eventually confront the North. Can an Australian shake off the psychic influence of the Outback? Can a North African obliterate the Sahara, or a Tibetan the looming presence of Mount Everest? The Arctic is our Outback, our Sahara, our Everest. Scratch around in the history of this place and you will discover the centrality of North.

The Canadian penchant for running from this reality has caused some professionals to worry about the future of our history. Certainly, a sociological approach to our collective life is currently in vogue. But I don't believe we can hide in that for long. I believe that, inevitably, the North will reassert itself — and our history. The fog will clear.

I think of British landscape artist J.M.W. Turner, who came into his own early in the nineteenth century. During his lifetime, Turner received nothing like the attention and applause accorded those who painted classical tales and portraits. Landscapes did not qualify as Great Art. Why could Mr. Turner not understand that?

Today, of course, everyone recognizes that Turner painted masterpieces. And I think that, sooner or later, like Turner's landscapes, significant works of Canadian history will be recognized for what they are — primary and fundamental. I believe that, when the vast majority of fashionable, sociological novels have been consigned to the dustbin of literary history, Canadians will still be arguing about Arctic exploration. We will still be investigating the meaning of North.

10. Which Canadian historical figure would you most like to meet in a bar? Have dinner with? Sleep with?

I would have dinner with the non–drinker John Rae, feasting on a caribou he had shot through the heart from a distance of one hundred metres.

I would join the eloquent Samuel Hearne in a bar, and encourage him to talk of the Seven Years War, the mystery of the James Knight expedition, and the massacre at Bloody Falls.

Finally, what the heck, I would sleep with Jane Lady Franklin. I would promise to be gentle and then, as a Canadian, urge her to lie back and think of the Arctic.

An edited version of this article was published in the December 2006/January 2007 issue of the Beaver.