On 22 April 1848, after three years in the Arctic, and 19 months spent ice-bound in northern Victoria Strait, the 105 surviving officers and crew of the Franklin Northwest Passage expedition deserted HMS Erebus and HMS Terror as the first step of their escape plan. They assembled at a camp south of Victory Point on the northwest coast of King William Island and made the final preparations for the next step, a 400 km trek along the frozen seashores of King William Island and Adelaide Peninsula to the Back River. All of the men died before reaching their destination, and their remains have been found at 35 locations along the route of the retreat. These discoveries have played a central role in reenactments of events thought to have occurred during the failed attempt to reach the Back River and to the disastrous outcome of the expedition. This paper presents a summary of these findings and examines the criteria used to attribute them to the Franklin expedition. It is suggested that approximately one-third of the identifications have been based on information that is inadequate to confidently assign the human remains as those of Franklin expedition personnel.

Caribou (tuktuit) are embedded in northern life, and have been part of Inuit culture and seasonal rounds for generations. In Inuit Nunangat (Inuit homelands), tuktuit are the most prevalent of country foods consumed, and remain interconnected with Inuit values, beliefs and practices. Despite co-management mandates to consider Inuit and scientific knowledge equally, the intertwined colonial legacies of research and wildlife management render this challenging. In Uqsuqtuuq (Gjoa Haven, Nunavut), community members identified the importance of documenting Inuit knowledge in order to be taken more seriously by researchers and government managers. To address this priority we worked with Uqsuqtuurmiut (people of Uqsuqtuuq) to articulate which types of tuktuit are found on or near Qikiqtaq (King William Island), provide a historical perspective of tuktuit presence/absence in the region, and describe seasonal movements of tuktuit on and off the island. In reflecting on potential intersections of our work with the Government of Nunavut strategy “Working Together for Caribou”, we identify several considerations in support of Qanuqtuurniq (information and knowledge acquisition): defining information needs, recognising and valuing Inuit knowledge, and developing and implementing credible research. By sharing lessons from our collaborative process we aim to contribute to broader cross-cultural research and co-management efforts in Nunavut.

After making a final landing with their hydrogen balloon on the Arctic pack ice on 14 July 1897 at 82°56′N 29°52′E, expedition members Salomon August Andrée, Nils Strindberg and Knut Frænkel began a slow march with very heavily laden sledges over the ice to try to reach a depot at Cape Flora. Two fundamental errors regarding where to go and what to bring sealed their fate. This note will explore the theory that, given the information they had at the time, the explorers should not have made these mistakes. In fact, the expedition members could have survived if they had instead travelled directly to their other depot at Seven Islands with more lightly laden sledges.

Parents’ perspectives on their children’s outdoor risky play behaviours influence their children’s adoption of safety strategies and their children’s approach to risky and dangerous situations (Brussoni & Olsen, 2011). Over the past decade, researchers have explored many Canadian mothers’ and fathers’ perspectives on this topic; however, to date, there has been a lack of research on Indigenous parents’ perspectives, particularly those of Inuit parents. This lack of research means that Inuit families are unaccounted for in research used to create and promote safety policies and practices in Canada. The present research commentary is the first to address the urgent need for research on northern Canadian Inuit parents’ perspectives on outdoor risky play. Specifically, outdoor risky play is defined, and Inuit children’s outdoor play experiences are compared to non-Inuit children’s experiences. Further, Inuit children’s experiences of injury are discussed to further situate the dire need to work with the most vulnerable population in Canada – Inuit – in child injury prevention research.

More than 100 years have now passed since Scott’s Terra Nova expedition to the Antarctic, which was quickly followed by the First World War. Out of the events of those times emerges the name of Edward Leicester Atkinson, the Royal Navy Surgeon and Antarctic explorer who was a member of the scientific staff of Scott’s expedition, and who went on to serve in the First World War. In his honour, the Edward Leicester Atkinson Prize will be awarded annually to a Royal Navy Medical Officer who displays the values of leadership and moral courage during the New Entry Medical Officer course, either at Britannia Royal Naval College or the Institute of Naval Medicine.