Lobsticks and Stone Cairns

Book excerpt: Lobsticks and stone cairns are landmarks that mark paths and commemorate events. The one hundred biographies in this book also offer themselves as paths to be taken. Centuries of human endeavour, hardship, folly, and suffering are collapsed into stories through which we can discover what the Arctic is and has been. Profiled in this book are "human landmarks" dating from as far back as the sixteenth century to those still active in the North today. Included are stories of adventurers, military officers, authors, guides, culture heroes, police, traders, and even the occasional charlatan. The biographies are of Inuit, European, American, Indian, and Canadian men and women. What appears here is the essence of each person, rendered by an expert and put in a new context, bringing the history and geography of the North to life.