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18 of 19 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A truly fine book about life in the Arctic, December 21, 2005
The author may well deserve the distinction of his title: "The Last Gentleman Adventurer." When 16 years old in 1930, Maurice joined the Hudson's Bay Company and journeyed off to a remote post on Baffin Island in the Canadian Arctic. White population: 7. Over the next five years the author learned the Innuit language and the skills of the north, including seal and caribou hunting, dog sledding, trapping, and survival in the long, sub-zero winters. This was no vacation sojurn as are so many "adventure" tales. Maurice was as far away from civilization as one could be, save for a radio that worked sporadically and a supply boat that called once a year.
Maurice had a genuine affection and admiration for the Eskimos (Innuit) who were both his customers and his companions. He writes as a naive boy slowly growing in maturity and comprehension rather than as a Great White Father presiding over a flock of primitive people. We are treated to discussions of how the Innuit build snow houses and keep the runners of their sleds from icing as well as amusing tales of making home brew and celebrating Christmas among his tiny community in the Arctic. He writes sadly of the epidemic that raged among the Innuit and his attempt to save them with little more than cough syrup. And, eventually, after a noble Victorian struggle against lust, he takes himself a temporary wife among the uninhibited Innuit.
Maurice writes in a deceptively simple manner. This is his only book and he wrote it in his old age and died at nearly age 90 before it was published. That perhaps accounts for the abrupt ending to the book with his departure on furlough after five years in the Arctic, although he was to return for a second stay. "The Last Gentleman Adventurer" is among the best books ever written about the Arctic and the Innuit.
Smallchief
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10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Coming of Age in the Arctic, March 13, 2006
"The Last Gentleman Adventurer" is a delightful, even beautiful account by Edward Maurice of his time as a young clerk for the Hudson's Bay Company in the Canadian Arctic of the 1930's. Maurice was working literally at the intersection of the Inuit and European worlds. We are most fortunate as readers that the author was unjaded, exceptionally observant, and open to the possibilities of life in that time and place.
Maurice's job was to run a trading post, swapping rifles, ammunition, and other finished trade goods for furs trapped by the local Inuit. His status as a company employee with a high school education often placed him in a position of responsibility in the local community. In addition, Maurice made the effort to learn the language and local customs, and through trial and error, the survival skills of his neighbors.
Maurice's account captures in often touching detail the way of life of the Inuit in a rugged land that provided only a thin living and little margin for error. The Inuit are portrayed as tough, resilient and generous people who live very much in the moment in a land where death from disease, accident, or starvation is never far away. Maurice's gradual acceptance of the Inuit, and their acceptance of him, form the core of the narrative. His efforts to care for his neighbors during an outbreak of disease and his organization of successful hunts to stave off starvation earn their trust to the extent that at least two women will consider him a very desirable catch as a husband according to the Inuit fashion. This acceptance makes his parting all the harder at the end of the story.
This book is highly recommended to those interested in life in the Arctic and to those looking for an excellent account of life in a different culture.
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9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Delightful Tale of Coming of Age in 1930's Remote Canada, January 16, 2006
A surprisingly good book about a lost time.
In 1930, sixteen year old Edward Maurice was assigned to the Hudson Bay Company (aka as HBC which some say really stood for 'Here Before Christ') fur trading post at Pangnirtung on Baffin Island, just west of Greenland. He was to stay in the arctic for nine years.
This is a book of love for the people, then called Eskimos; love for the arctic; love for adventure. It is a tale of coming of age as he leaves childhood at a boarding school in England for life in a much less inhibited part of the world. It is missing much of the bravado that is seen in the books published by older men who are more generally the leaders rather than the lowly apprentice.
It is also a tale of the impact that the diseases man brought to the area. Common diseases like flu and mumps, were deadly to the local natives. And there was little or no medicine to treat the ill. Many died.
This is a wonderfully written book, reading almost as easy as a novel. Mr. Maurice wrote it in his later years when he was a bookseller in rural England, but he had clearly left his heart in Canada.
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