A geologist by profession, Maurice Haycock (1900–88) first went to the Arctic with the Geological Survey of Canada in 1926. Travelling north with the Eastern Arctic Patrol on board Beothic, he was present at Bache Peninsula at the establishment of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police detachment there. Then, as Beothic worked her way back south, he and a companion were dropped off at Pangnirtung, and over the following year they carried out a survey of the Cumberland Sound and Nettilling Lake areas. They were picked up again by Beothic on 22 August 1927. The artist A.Y. Jackson was also on board, and, as well as recording that Haycock and Weeks had come aboard, he included a pencil sketch of Haycock in a series of portrait studies of individuals on board the ship (Jackson Reference Jackson1982). Thereafter, Haycock and Jackson became close friends until the latter's death in 1974, and there is a certain resemblance in their painting styles.
Haycock began painting outdoors along with a number of Ottawa artists in the 1930s; it was also around that time that he obtained his PhD from Princeton University. The focus of his career with the Geological Survey of Canada was mineralogy.
Towards the end of that career, Haycock started to visit the Arctic to paint the numerous historic sites. From 1963 until 1987 he spent part of every summer in the Arctic. In terms of logistics, this was facilitated by the Polar Continental Shelf Project, through the good offices of his friend George Hobson, director of PCSP. He also was allowed to make use of the aircraft (fixed-wing and helicopters) of the Geological Survey and the Surveys and Mapping Branch of Energy, Mines and Resources, and also travelled on board the icebreakers of the Canadian Coast Guard. He was made welcome at the camps of the National Museum of Natural Sciences, the Fisheries Research Board, and the Canadian Wildlife Service.
In 1980, Maurice Haycock was awarded the Massey Medal by the Royal Canadian Geographical Society, and it was probably about that time that he completed the manuscript of this book, but, unfortunately, he had not published it before his death in 1988. The completed manuscript lay untouched for a number of years, but in 2003, lightning struck the house of his daughter, Kathy Haycock, when there was nobody at home; all of her collection of her father's paintings, diaries, slides, movies and correspondence, and the book manuscript, were destroyed in the fire. Subsequently, her sister, Karole Haycock, found an incomplete draft of the manuscript. Kathy Haycock pulled it together, and, combining it with copies of paintings that had survived elsewhere, she has managed to produce an exquisitely attractive book, full of her father's evocative paintings of Arctic landscapes, ice-scapes, and sea-scapes.
The book contains reproductions of 44 of Haycock's paintings, along with a substantial number of his on-site pencil sketches, and photos of the artist at work at many of the sites. The book is arranged chronologically, in terms of the dates of events or peoples with which each site is associated. Thus the collection includes paintings of a pre-Dorset site at Engigstciak, Yukon, near Herschel Island; an Inuit summer camp near Kugluktuk; Kodlunarn Island, associated with Martin Frobisher's expeditions of 1576–1577–1578; Parry's Rock, Winter Harbour, associated with Captain Sir Edward Parry, 1819–1820; the Beechey Island graves from Sir John Franklin's wintering in 1845–1846; the boiler from J.C. Ross’ steam pinnace at Port Leopold, Somerset Island, in 1848–1849; Captain Henry Kellett's cache at Dealy Island from the winter of 1852–1853; Lieutenant Adolphus W. Greely's ‘Camp Clay,’ where he and his men starved through the desperate winter of 1883–1884; Frederick Cook's winter quarters, at Cape Hardy, Devon Island, where he and his two Inughuit companions barely survived the winter of 1908–1909; Robert Peary's huts at Fort Conger, reconfigured from Greely's winter quarters; the RCMP detachment at Alexandra Fiord; and, finally, the camp of a research team at the North Pole, led by Fred Roots, in 1969.
In every case Haycock provides a thumbnail sketch of the significance of the particular site, and then relates the circumstances of his own visit to the site. Generally his historical outlines are accurate, although there are a couple of exceptions. Thus the Back River was explored by Commander George Back in 1834, not by Franklin in 1820–1821 (as is stated on page 74). But the most glaring gaffe is the knighthood bestowed on Robert Peary in the heading on page 84. While Peary (the biggest ego in Arctic history) would no doubt have dearly loved to be Sir Robert, this would almost certainly have been impossible, even had he been prepared to renounce American citizenship to achieve such a goal. One suspects, however, that this error was not perpetrated by Haycock, but at some later stage in the production of the book.
This egregious gaffe in no way detracts from what is a delightful memorial to one of the most talented recorders of the historic sites of the Canadian Arctic and from a charming collection of his sensitive paintings.
The book is available from the University of Toronto Press, and limited edition Giclée prints of all the paintings in the book are available from: www.Haycock.ca.
