Captain W. J. Jackson of Baffin Island

Extract

There have been many great men in the history of the Canadian eastern Arctic, and it must be admitted from the start that Jackson was not one of them. He was a minor figure, but in the early years of this century he exerted an influence in the region out of proportion to his own importance. It may be that he did nobody any good, and it is true that nobody had any good to say of him. What Jackson did was to promote his own fantasies until solider men fell under his spell, and these men then took actions that ended disastrously. But, when surveying the career of Captain Jackson, one may depart from the usual opinion that he was a rogue and a liar. He was unstable—unstable to, and probably beyond, the point of insanity—and he deserves more sympathy than he received from his contemporaries.