even if they print my reply, which they
probably won’t, it will be too late even to limit the damage. The
Montreal Star
has already done an editorial echoing Porsild and I expect the rest of the establishment will follow that line
.
Hugh Kane at McClelland and Stewart tells me the H.B.C. is spreading the story they are going to sue me and the publishers but he says they won’t really do it – just bluffing to make us keep quiet. Hope he’s right
.
Ten days later I wrote again:
Hugh Kane has been in touch with the H.B.C. They say they don’t intend to print my reply. When Kane asked them to print a paid ad for the book in which the more salient points of my reply would appear they refused to do that either
.
It’s been suggested I start a libel suit against them but this seems impossible for financial reasons and because the Bay would appeal again and again until I was too broke to stand upright
.
Perhaps I am taking this all too seriously, but it is certainly not doing my disposition any good. Frankly, I am getting so upset about the whole affair that my writing is grinding to a halt. So where do I go from here?
Dudley’s advice was that I get back to work and bury myself in a new book until the storm blew over. I partly did as he suggested, but the work I chose had nothing to do with writing. I decided to leave that strictly alone until sufficient scar tissue had formed. Instead I built a workshop-cum-garage where I could fool around making furniture or doing maintenance on Lulu Belle. I also enlarged our house, which had been cramped to start with and would be even more so when we started a family. I added a wing containing one large and one small bedroom.
By the end of August, I had almost succeeded in pushing the
People of the Deer
imbroglio to the back of my mind. However, in September it came thundering out again when fellow freelance writer Scott Young sent an op–ed piece called “Storm out of the Arctic” to the Toronto magazine
Saturday Night
.
Young’s piece was not so much concerned with buttressing my accusations against the northern establishment as with my right, indeed obligation, to make such charges. However, without informing Young,
Saturday Night’s
editor, R.A. Farquharson, sent a copy of “Storm” to Dr. Porsild, at the same time offering him three pages of the magazine in which to reply. Both pieces appeared, side by side. Scott was outraged, especially so when Farquharson denied him space for a subsequent rebuttal.
While Scott fumed, I dashed off a response of my own. It read, in part:
No anthropologist in Canada or elsewhere has attacked my book. Botanist Dr. Porsild is the sole academic or scientific accuser. A formidable list of reputable authorities, including Dr. Ralph Linton, chairman of Yale University’s Department of Anthropology; Dr. Wm. S. Carlson, president of the University of Vermont and leader of the Fourth Greenland Expedition; Vilhjalmur Stefansson, renowned arctic explorer; Lord John Tweedsmuir, one-time arctic trader for the Hudson’s Bay Company; Dr. E. Carpenter, an expert on Eskimo ethnology at the University of Toronto; and Mr. Hugh MacLennan, one of Canada’s foremost writers, have given their support to my book and to my contentions in whole or part, and the majority of them have done so in print
.
Furthermore, in 1951 the “non-existent” Ihalmiut were visited by M.J. Michea, an anthropologist from the French National Museum who is now preparing a monograph on the Ihalmiut. M. Michea has been kind enough to give me a statement that in his opinion my book is accurate in all important aspects, and that it is the best study of an Eskimo group he has ever read
.
It has proved impossible to obtain information about the current state of the Ihalmiut from official sources which continue to claim that the Ihalmiut do not exist. However, contacts in the Canadian military, which has established a weather station at Ennadai Lake in the centre of the
probably won’t, it will be too late even to limit the damage. The
Montreal Star
has already done an editorial echoing Porsild and I expect the rest of the establishment will follow that line
.
Hugh Kane at McClelland and Stewart tells me the H.B.C. is spreading the story they are going to sue me and the publishers but he says they won’t really do it – just bluffing to make us keep quiet. Hope he’s right
.
Ten days later I wrote again:
Hugh Kane has been in touch with the H.B.C. They say they don’t intend to print my reply. When Kane asked them to print a paid ad for the book in which the more salient points of my reply would appear they refused to do that either
.
It’s been suggested I start a libel suit against them but this seems impossible for financial reasons and because the Bay would appeal again and again until I was too broke to stand upright
.
Perhaps I am taking this all too seriously, but it is certainly not doing my disposition any good. Frankly, I am getting so upset about the whole affair that my writing is grinding to a halt. So where do I go from here?
Dudley’s advice was that I get back to work and bury myself in a new book until the storm blew over. I partly did as he suggested, but the work I chose had nothing to do with writing. I decided to leave that strictly alone until sufficient scar tissue had formed. Instead I built a workshop-cum-garage where I could fool around making furniture or doing maintenance on Lulu Belle. I also enlarged our house, which had been cramped to start with and would be even more so when we started a family. I added a wing containing one large and one small bedroom.
By the end of August, I had almost succeeded in pushing the
People of the Deer
imbroglio to the back of my mind. However, in September it came thundering out again when fellow freelance writer Scott Young sent an op–ed piece called “Storm out of the Arctic” to the Toronto magazine
Saturday Night
.
Young’s piece was not so much concerned with buttressing my accusations against the northern establishment as with my right, indeed obligation, to make such charges. However, without informing Young,
Saturday Night’s
editor, R.A. Farquharson, sent a copy of “Storm” to Dr. Porsild, at the same time offering him three pages of the magazine in which to reply. Both pieces appeared, side by side. Scott was outraged, especially so when Farquharson denied him space for a subsequent rebuttal.
While Scott fumed, I dashed off a response of my own. It read, in part:
No anthropologist in Canada or elsewhere has attacked my book. Botanist Dr. Porsild is the sole academic or scientific accuser. A formidable list of reputable authorities, including Dr. Ralph Linton, chairman of Yale University’s Department of Anthropology; Dr. Wm. S. Carlson, president of the University of Vermont and leader of the Fourth Greenland Expedition; Vilhjalmur Stefansson, renowned arctic explorer; Lord John Tweedsmuir, one-time arctic trader for the Hudson’s Bay Company; Dr. E. Carpenter, an expert on Eskimo ethnology at the University of Toronto; and Mr. Hugh MacLennan, one of Canada’s foremost writers, have given their support to my book and to my contentions in whole or part, and the majority of them have done so in print
.
Furthermore, in 1951 the “non-existent” Ihalmiut were visited by M.J. Michea, an anthropologist from the French National Museum who is now preparing a monograph on the Ihalmiut. M. Michea has been kind enough to give me a statement that in his opinion my book is accurate in all important aspects, and that it is the best study of an Eskimo group he has ever read
.
It has proved impossible to obtain information about the current state of the Ihalmiut from official sources which continue to claim that the Ihalmiut do not exist. However, contacts in the Canadian military, which has established a weather station at Ennadai Lake in the centre of the
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