Transcript of an article, "Stefansson Bobs Up Again," from the Montreal Standard, 21 January 1922

Date21 January, 1922

ms numberStefansson Mss-91: Harold Noice Papers, Box 1, Folder 3

abstractCorrespondence, newspaper articles, and other material related to the ill-fated 1921 expedition to Wrangel Island.

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From Montreal Standard, Saturday, January 21, 1922 (editorial)

STEFANSSON BOBS UP AGAIN "In justice to our own tried and trusted officials at Ottaw there should be an investigation into Hjalmar (Vilhrjālmur) Stefansson's conduct of the last Arctic expedidition under the auspices and at the expense of the Canadian Government.

"Brushing aside the fact that the North Pole is not absolutely necessary in our business, and that Arctic expeditions as a rule make a great cry and bring back little news, we still maintain that our Canadian scientists who took part under orders in this uncomfortable voyage, are entitled to a square deal from the importedadventurer who makes the Arctichis stock in trade. The more so when Mr. Stefansson goes out of his way to write a book ^(Friendly Arctic)^and insult them to our faces.

"Mr. Stefansson is within the mark when he says that stories were rife when the Karluk expedition got back after losing eleven good men, one of whom was not Mr. Stefansson. Stories were rife and few of them were to the credit of Mr. Stefansson, who seemed to be more anxious to disover a rich magazine or an opulent newspaper to cache his copy - we say cash advisedly - than to spill the fruits of his search freely and copiously to the general public. Mr. Stefansson has a real yellow flair for sensation and when he wrote his "White Eskimos", it was forjudicious persons to laugh, remembering that the white sailor was there long before Mr. Stefansson risked frost-bitten nose on those icy seas.

"For some time now Mr. Stefansson has been behaving more like an exploiter than an explorer and when he capped his extravagance - the expedition cost ten times more than the estimate - by demanding a monopoly of the reindeer market for Canada, the Government shut him off. Indeed, so patent was it that Mr. Stefansson did not represent the pure scientific spirit, that one Ottawa club in which he sought membership, most heartily and unanimously blackballed him."