‘Arctic Sovereignty? Canada owes it to Joseph-Elzéar Bernier!’ gushes the promotional material for this book. Well, not really. Bernier undoubtedly played a very important role in maintaining Canadian sovereignty during the early decades of the twentieth century, and a full length biography such as this one is long overdue. However, Canada's claim to the Arctic archipelago does not rest first and foremost on Bernier's voyages. The true foundation was the formal transfer of sovereignty from Great Britain to Canada in 1880. But Bernier, like many other polar explorers, had a large ego, and it suited him to promote the idea that he, and he alone, had taken possession of the northern islands in his country's name.
Marjolaine Saint-Pierre accepts Bernier at his own valuation and recounts his exploits with breathless, entirely uncritical admiration. Books treating any explorer in this unabashedly hero-worshipping manner are now rare, but Saint-Pierre cheerfully admits in her introduction: ‘I love heroes . . . Their journeys move me profoundly. They speak to me of passions, dreams, determination, love, failures, challenges to be met and missions to be accomplished’ (page 21). To her, Bernier is a larger than life, legendary figure, who for some perverse reason was never given his due by the Canadian government. She dedicates an entire chapter to identifying the house where he was born, in a manner better suited to a biography of Napoleon, Abraham Lincoln, or some other world-renowned figure. Elaborate genealogies are provided not only for Bernier himself but for his two wives and his adopted daughter. An appendix informs us of Bernier's whereabouts on his birthday for each year of his long life.
The major problem with the book is that it is based mainly on the papers and other materials preserved by Bernier himself and his relatives. Inevitably, Saint-Pierre sees Bernier only as he wished to be seen. She has done a small amount of research in the government files at Library and Archives Canada, but not enough to provide her with another perspective on either her subject's personality or the motives of the politicians and civil servants with whom he dealt. As a result, her portrait of Bernier's fellow French Canadian, Sir Wilfrid Laurier, is little better than a caricature. The explorer and the prime minister appear as polar opposites. As Saint-Pierre tells the story, Bernier was a poorly educated but tough and determined visionary, Laurier an overly refined, cunning, and rather effete political animal. From 1898 to 1905 Bernier bombarded the prime minister with pleas that the government should finance his planned North Pole expedition. Laurier defended his refusal by observing that Robert Peary would probably reach the pole if it could be reached at all. What was the use of spending large amounts of money only for the Canadian expedition to arrive second or fail altogether? Saint-Pierre describes this reasoning as evidence of Laurier's ‘indifference’ to Bernier's northern dream (page 169), but in fact it was a shrewd, realistic assessment. Bernier's plan was to drift across the polar basin from Siberia to Spitsbergen; both Fridtjof Nansen before him and Roald Amundsen in later years attempted the same feat without success.
The plan to uphold Canadian sovereignty over the Arctic archipelago by regular government patrols was Laurier's, and Bernier accepted the post of commander only with reluctance. Yet here again Saint-Pierre presents Bernier as the northern visionary and Laurier as the mere politician. Criticism of Bernier by members of his crew is dismissed as petty jealousy. The diary of Fabien Vanasse, who acted as official historian on these voyages, is filled with complaints. Saint-Pierre writes indignantly, ‘[h]is main target was always the captain, without any real reason and without provocation on Bernier's part, simply because he detested [Bernier's] authoritarian leadership, his ostentatious actions, or because his table manners disgusted him’ (page 246). To a biographer less enamoured of his or her subject, authoritarian leadership and ostentatious actions might seem like cause for at least some criticism. As for the scandals created by Bernier's practice of trading the ship's stores for furs which he later sold at an enormous profit, Saint-Pierre defends her hero by noting that his contract with the government did not specifically forbid such commercial transactions (page 247). To further enhance Bernier's reputation, she claims that his relations with the Inuit were excellent and always based on mutual respect. As evidence, she cites passages from a book by Bernier's comrade Alfred Tremblay, insisting that they preserve authentic echoes of Bernier's own voice (page 255). Alas, the quotations Saint-Pierre provides reflect a highly paternalistic attitude (which is hardly surprising, given that Tremblay shamelessly plagiarised the material in question from Peary's The North Pole).
Despite such problems, this handsomely produced book has considerable value as a detailed record of Bernier's life and times. Though the information in the chapters on his career as a sailor is drawn mainly from his ghostwritten autobiography, Master Mariner and Arctic Explorer (Bernier Reference Bernier1939), the numerous and well chosen illustrations provide wonderful glimpses of the world in which he grew up and spent his youth, the nineteenth-century world of wooden sailing ships and busy North Atlantic trade. The son of a merchant shipbuilder and captain, Bernier made his first sea voyage at the age of three and was a captain himself at only 17. That a man who had prospered in this milieu should turn his ambitions towards the North Pole may seem almost inevitable in retrospect, but in fact Bernier's nation wide campaign for a polar expedition set him dramatically apart from the majority of French Canadians. The illustrations in this part of the book are especially fascinating, and indeed the whole topic of Bernier's press campaign will appeal to anyone interested in the cultural history of polar exploration. Almost as an aside, Saint-Pierre observes that Bernier and Laurier, so different in all other ways, were both Quebecers who followed the unusual course of seeking success in English Canada (page 161). Both had to adopt the rhetoric of Anglo-Canadian nationalism, which was then strongly imbued with British imperial ideals. It is unfortunate that she did not explore this theme more fully. In doing so, she might have taken a major step towards placing Bernier's northern career in its proper historical context.
