Additional Images

Provenance:

Oswald Sterling Finnie, Yukon;
Bjarne Tokerud, Vancouver, BC;
Private Collection, Toronto, ON

Exhibited:

Arctic Exposure: Photographs of Canada’s North. McMichael Canadian Art Collection, Vaughan, ON, 3 May 2014 - 1 June 2014.

Note:

Lachlan Taylor Burwash lived many lives: he served as a Major in the Canadian Expeditionary Force in the First World War, followed by a career as a mining engineer, and later in life, an Arctic explorer and photographer. In this capacity, his accomplishments included charting the Mackenzie River to King William Island and the Boothia Peninsula, flying to the magnetic pole, and conducting extensive research tracing the path of Arctic explorer John Franklin’s ill-fated 1845 Northwest Passage expedition in the hope of locating the final resting place of the expedition's missing ships HMS Erebus and HMS Terror.

In 1925, Burwash was hired by Oswald Sterling (O.S.) Finnie, then-Director of the Northwest Territories and the Yukon Branch of the Department of the Interior, to conduct a one-man expedition to the Arctic to investigate the prevailing social conditions of the Inuit. In 1927, Burwash authored a report for the Canadian Government entitled: Report of exploration & investigation along Canada’s Arctic coastline from the Delta of the Mackenzie River to Hudson Bay, 1925-1926.

Of the photographs in the present collection, only one, a portrait of a man identified as “Neep-ta-yook” was included in the 1925-1926 report where it was printed as a 2.75” x 4.5” gelatin silver print. The present enlarged studio portraits, where the subjects are photographed in front of what appears to be an improvised canvas backdrop, were taken with the help of two electric flood lamps. This technique can be evidenced upon close examination of the glare in the eyes of the subjects. While the photographs may have been taken at an RCMP outpost, possibly on King William Island during the expedition, it is unlikely that Burwash brought heavy lighting fixtures with him on an expedition largely conducted by dogsled after he left Aklavik. It is possible that the photographs were taken within another Hudson Bay Company outpost at an unknown time circa 1925-1926.

Of the present group we are aware of the identity of only two of the twelve subjects, “Mir-ho-to-it” and “Neep-ta-yook”, although more of the sitters may be identifiable pending further research. An important and likely unique set of large exhibition prints.

Related works

Report of exploration & investigation along Canada’s Arctic coastline from the Delta of the Mackenzie River to Hudson Bay, 1925-1926

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