At a raucous post-Christmas party some years ago, Margaret Atwood appeared out of nowhere and seized me by the shirt sleeve. “Come with me,” she said. “There’s someone I want you to meet.” She hauled me from a first crowded room into a second, where she introduced me to Matthew Swan, CEO of Adventure Canada (AC). “You two should talk,” she said, and vanished. A few weeks later, Matthew called and said that, seeing as how I had published three books about Arctic exploration, maybe I would like to sail as a resource person in the Northwest Passage. So I owe both Atwood and Swan a massive thank you. Since 2007, Sheena Fraser McGoogan and I have gone voyaging with AC at least once a year, and sometimes twice. As a result, I have met and learned from such outstanding figures as Latonia Hartery, Johnny Issaluk, John Houston, Marc St. Onge, Susie Evyagotailak, Mark Mallory, Tagak Curley, Pierre Richard and Susan Aglukark, among many others. That experience informs this work.
Dead Reckoning is my eighth book with HarperCollins, and for that I thank my lucky stars. I can confirm that editor Patrick Crean is rightly renowned throughout the industry: he has an amazing eye and does not hesitate to put his finger on your sacred text and say: “Well, it’s your book . . . but this isn’t working.” And I owe a shout-out to the rest of the team, among them Leo MacDonald, Rob Firing, Colleen Simpson, Alan Jones, Noelle Zitzer, Michael Guy-Haddock, Cory Beatty, Stephanie Nuñez and Maria Golikova. Copyeditor Angelika Glover did excellent work on this book (not hers but mine the occasional flouting of Chicago Manual conventions). And my agent, the legendary Beverley Slopen, has long since become a trusted friend and advisor.
Over the past few years, while working on this book, I have received grants from the Canada Council for the Arts, the Ontario Arts Council and the Access Copyright Foundation. For those, believe me, I am grateful. In Orkney, I have learned a great deal from historian Tom Muir, and benefitted from the kindness of Kathleen Ireland and Andrew Appleby, president of the John Rae Society. Among individuals who have contributed to this book, sometimes without knowing it, I think of John Geiger, Cameron Treleaven and Louie Kamookak, and must also single out Kenn Harper, Randall Osczevski, Andres Paredes, Dawn Huck, Fred McCoy and Lee Preston. I want to say hey to members of the Facebook group Remembering the Franklin Expedition, who frequently dazzle me with their arcane knowledge. On the home front, I owe sincere thanks to Carlin, Keriann, Sylwia, Travis, James and Veronica. Above all, I do hereby declare that without Sheena Fraser McGoogan, my life partner, first reader, sometime photographer and fellow traveller, this book would not exist—and that is the truth.