Just thought I’d give everyone a heads up on this year’s Common Ground, an annual story-telling event that brings back the memories of earlier days in the Lake of the Woods Region. The price is a steal for a day full of history AND lunch! If you aren’t chained to your workplace, do take Common Ground in!

I think the fellow who wrote this book must be a bit eccentric himself! Once I adjusted to his writing style, though, I found the accounts quite entertaining.

This is a collection of biographies of seven world travellers: Captain Philip Thicknesse, Thomas Manning, James Holeman, Charles Waterton, Joseph Wolff, William Gifford Palgrave and Dr. G. W. Leitner; men who felt the urge to go where few, if any, of their race had gone before, despite the risks. Several were, at some time in their career, missionaries, others were naturalists, one was an outlaw of sorts, another was totally blind. All of them were, to say the least, quirky.

One of the things I found very interesting about the individuals discussed was how different they were from one another. Their reasons for travelling were diverse. The way each of them considered the environments they travelled through was sometimes surprising to me. It was fascinating to see through these somewhat extreme examples of travellers, just how different we can be from each other, how much our experiences are coloured by our perceptions and expectations, and how differently we are perceived by those we meet, even though we share something so significant in common: the compulsion to travel and explore the world around us.

I was sorting through some books the other day when I found, to my great joy, another Paul Gallico book. This one is a departure from fiction in the form of a biography of St. Patrick. Rather fitting I should find it this month…

In The Steadfast Man, Gallico attempts to reveal the real man that St. Patrick was. This is quite a challenge given that only two documents written by this Primate of Ireland have survived the fifteen centuries since he set them on paper. Both are appended at the end of the book. Although Gallico refers to works about St. Patrick from time to time in his narrative, he indicates that, although there may be a grain of truth to some of the legends surrounding the saint, most of them are sensational beyond the believable. And, yes, that includes the story about him driving the snakes from Ireland.

There is a fair bit of repetition in the text, something I found mildly annoying. But I think I would read it again if I were travelling to Ireland, as it gives a lot of useful advice to the Patrician pilgrim. I enjoyed sampling a bit of Church history, too, for a change. Even if I don’t agree completely with their messages, I still find many of the great individuals in the history of Christianity inspiring for their faith, their tenacity and their courage.

A non-fiction author should express his opinions and compare and contrast them with those of others. Introducing new ideas gets the intellectual juices of readers flowing. Presenting those ideas and discussing them frankly and diplomatically promotes the growth of knowledge. That is good.

Unfortunately, Peter Brent loses track of that in Viking Saga. He is patronising, pompous and, consequently, boring. I wanted to thwack him across the head with his tome several times. I don’t know enough about the Vikings to judge his scholarship. The presentation of his history of the Vikings left much to be desired, though. For example, he has little use for Christianity (perhaps for any religion, but especially Christianity!). His snide remarks against Christians and their efforts to spread their religion writhe with contempt, and they liberally salt the book. He’s entitled to his opinion, of course, and he may have a strong argument for his judgement. So, state it and move on. I’d have had a lot more respect for him if he had done that.

Brent is also prone to float off on imaginative flights of fancy from time to time. These florid bits of prose do not sit comfortably with the rest of the material in the book – they’re quite distracting.

The other thing I found frustrating as a reader was his lack of reference to original sources. Where did he get his information? I’m the type of person who enjoys chasing down an obscure history if I find something intriguing about it (and I like notes on the same page as the text they are illuminating, thank you!). When these references are missing in a non-fiction work, red flags go up. Notes can be faked, of course, but at least I can check them out if they are there. Knowing what a writer has read and how that information has been applied helps readers learn and form opinions, too.

No references? Why not? Perhaps the writer is making things up as he goes along. Perhaps he’s got enough of a conscience to be embarrassed at his lack of original thought/material. Maybe he thinks his readers are too stupid to question, or too timid to explore on their own. Maybe the publisher made the decision. I don’t know. But I wonder.

There was something I did find very interesting in the book – the last chapter. It is about the different ways Brent feels Viking society has contributed to Western systems and culture. For example, he questions that the North Western European notion of democracy rises from the Greek culture, and presents an interesting case for its development out of the Viking ‘thing,’ a gathering of all the people to decide legal cases, etc. I wish the rest of his book had been written the way he wrote that last chapter. It was thought provoking, and intriguing.

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Sometimes it is impossible to find a copy of the out-of-print book/periodical that you REALLY NEED for that research project you have underway.

I found such a thing on Google Books, but it would only give me a snippet view. It looked to be an obituary article or a biography of one of my ancestors – Samuel Brandram, grandson to the Samuel I wrote about in Parallel Lives? Samuel the younger was a famous reciter who had committed Shakespeare’s complete works and many other literary works to memory. An amazing feat! The article I wanted was in Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine of 1893, and covered almost seven pages. I had to have it.

I couldn’t find a copy for sale anywhere on the Internet. My next best chance of obtaining it was through Inter-Library Loan. Marg at the Kenora Public Library has come to know me pretty well over the last couple of years as an Inter-Library Loan client. Only rarely has she been unable to help me. A week or so after I had ordered the periodical, she phoned to tell me that she had found a copy, but the National Library would not send it through the system. But (sometimes buts are good…) they could photocopy the pages I required and send them!

The other day I got Marg’s call to say that the copies were at the Library waiting for me along with another book I’d ordered through Inter-Library Loan. There was no charge for the service.

The happy news was that the article had some great gems of information in it, and I learned more about Samuel than I had previously known. Samuel used to perform at Justice Talfourd’s house in Russell Square, where he met Charles Dickens. Dickens was so impressed by Samuel’s rendering of the great novellist’s work that he stated that Brandram was “a man who interprets me better than I can interpret myself.” With recommendations like that, the reciter was in high demand!

So, if you reach a brick wall in finding that tome you require, visit your local library and try out Inter-Library Loan. It doesn’t always work, and there may be a fee sometimes, but it usually brings good results!

Grade five was when we began to study the explorers. It was the first time I found myself compelled to read ahead in my textbook; my imagination sailed with those great explorers. My two favourite books were The Men Who Found America and Raven ’s Cry, by Christie Harris. In the latter, I read how the Haida first met Captain Cook, the man who until that time stuck in my memory as discoverer of New Zealand and who was killed in Hawaii.

Fatal Voyage takes readers with Cook and his men on that last of his tours of discovery. His goal was to find the western entrance to the North-West Passage and, hopefully, circumnavigate the globe sailing eastward.

Aughton provides an interesting and entertaining account of the voyage. Cook takes his time along the way, mapping partially uncharted previous discoveries from the Indian Ocean to Polynesia, and discovering Hawaii on his way north. Right from the beginning there are problems with the seaworthiness of his ships, problems that ultimately lead to his death at the hands of an angry Hawaiian mob. We hear the voice of his officers in accounts of new sights and experiences in their journals, and Aughton provides those of us who aren’t experts in 18^th century navigational methods with just enough information to understand the challenges of the voyage.

This is a book for people eager to learn more about Pacific exploration without getting bogged down in the technicalities and dry, sonorous lectures of textbook history. Those who have read extensively in this field are unlikely to learn anything new, and may find the history too light to be very edifying. It is an easy read, and provides entertaining insights for the novice, though, and it gives a good overview of Cook’s contribution both in terms of mapping the world, and in better understanding the people who populated it at the time. Aughton also does some interesting speculating about the explorer’s responsibility for changing forever the lives of those native populations contacted, and the overall negative effect of contact on the cultures of the Pacific in particular.

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