J.P. Antonacci, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter, The Hamilton Spectator
Canadian explorer Hubert Darrell disappeared somewhere in the Northwest Territories in 1910 while on a solo expedition to map the largely uncharted western Arctic.
A search of the northern wilderness turned up no trace, and the most celebrated Arctic explorer of his day soon vanished from the history books.
Until now.
More than a century later, author and adventurer Adam Shoalts ventured into the same perilous land that swallowed up his predecessor, following clues he hoped would shed light on Darrell’s fate.
Shoalts chronicled the search in his new book, “Vanished Beyond the Map,” which launches Oct. 14 at the Playhouse Cinema in Hamilton before an event in the author’s home region of Norfolk County on Oct. 19.
“He was a legend in the north,” Shoalts said of Darrell, who joined the Klondike gold rush in 1897 but did little actual prospecting.
Explorers Hubert Darrell and Adam Shoalts are kindred spirits separated by a century. The photo on the left shows Darrell heading upriver in the Northwest Territories, with Shoalts retracing his route in the photo on the right.
Instead, he picked up various jobs — guide, trapper, fur trader, mail carrier, North-West Mounted Police special constable — that let him traverse long distances across the sparsely populated Arctic.
“He was known for his superhuman stamina,” Shoalts said. “He would go ahead on foot for 50 kilometres or more a day, breaking trails in deep snow. He was travelling in snowshoes, without even a dogsled team.”
Shoalts and Darrell are kindred spirits separated by a century, having both completed months-long solo journeys across the Arctic.
“He was basically the personification of the spell of the North, the call of the wild,” Shoalts said. “What really drew him on was his love of the land and the beauty of the north.”
Darrell was considered the leading non-Indigenous expert on the vast terrain between Hudson Bay and Alaska, and his daring exploits inspired the writings of Arctic poet Robert Service.
“Almost all the big names in polar exploration knew Hubert Darrell and admired him,” Shoalts said. “Roald Amundsen, the first man in the South Pole, famously said, ‘With men like Darrell, I could go to the moon.’”
Darrell’s disappearance was reported in the New York Times, but he fell out of the public consciousness until Shoalts got on his trail 15 years ago, after reading a short entry about the explorer in the “Dictionary of Canadian Biography.”
“I was like, ‘I need to bring this guy out of the shadows and tell his incredible story,’” said Shoalts.
“The odds were maybe one in a million that I would actually find anything. But I had good sources.”
To start, the McMaster-trained historian transcribed a trove of never-before-studied letters Darrell sent to siblings in England and relatives back home in Manitoba.
“Many of (the letters) had faded. They were only half legible,” said Shoalts, who spent months squinting through a magnifying glass to decipher clues written in faint pencil more than a century ago.
He read Darrell’s diary and pored over his sketch maps, hunted down reports from Mounties, missionaries and whaling captains, and read admiring accounts written by Darrell’s fellow explorers.
Shoalts made three expeditions to the Arctic in search of clues about Darrell’s disappearance.
“A lot of the detective work was not in the wilderness, but in the archives,” said Shoalts, who even journeyed to Darrell’s hometown of Birtle, Man. — population 625 — to interview 91-year-old Margaret Ashcroft, who personally knew Darrell’s fiancée and brother and could share family stories.
“That bread-crumb trail gave me a decent idea of where to search,” Shoalts said. “But you never know until you go and look.”
While Shoalts could use satellite imagery to get a perspective on the tundra unavailable to Darrell, the two explorers were beset by the same challenge — landslides.
“These landslides can be quite spectacular. We’re talking many hundreds of metres of riverbank just suddenly giving way and collapsing,” Shoalts said.
The shifting terrain meant landmarks and even entire rivers may have moved since Darrell’s time, leaving modern maps “not 100 per cent accurate,” Shoalts explained.
“That’s kind of nice — the old-fashioned feeling of the genuine unknown,” he said. “I’m heading down this river and I really don’t know what to expect.”
After years of searching, Shoalts believes he found the truth about Darrell’s final resting place and the lost explorer’s “rather dramatic” final moments, revealed in the book’s final chapter.
“Vanished Beyond the Map” also includes a warning about the danger of unfettered development.
Shoalts describes an Arctic landscape quite changed from the unsullied beauty that captivated Darrell, with mining operations proliferating ever deeper into what Shoalts called one of the world’s last “pristine wild places.”
“I think we’re making a huge mistake in Canada,” said Shoalts. “We’re failing at every level (of government) to protect green spaces. We’re just sprawling to an extraordinary degree.”
The dedicated conservationist hopes his latest book reminds Canadians of the “long-term value in keeping nature in nature.”
“I think if Darrell was here today, he would say the real precious gem he sought wasn’t gold, but the wild itself,” Shoalts said.
Adam Shoalts on tour
Shoalts’ 50-stop promotional tour includes talks, book signings and school visits. He will share photos and videos clips from his latest expedition, complete with footage of polar bears.
“That brings the story to life for an audience in a way that I can’t do otherwise,” Shoalts said, adding he is excited to return to the “gorgeous” Playhouse Cinema in Hamilton on Tuesday.
The author’s full itinerary is available at adamshoalts.com.
