Louie Kamookak

LOUIE KAMOOKAK, the Inuit oral historian and Honorary Vice-President of The Royal Canadian Geo graphical Society who changed the course of searches for the long-lost Sir John Franklin expedition, died on March 23, 2018. “We have lost a great friend,” says John Geiger, CEO of the RCGS. “Louie was a lovely man, the last great Franklin searcher and a teacher of incredible wisdom not only for the Inuit but for us all.” The following tribute was written by journalist and author Alanna Mitchell, who travelled on King William Island with Kamookak during one of his final expeditions.

- Alanna Mitchell

WHEN LOUIE KAMOOKAK was about seven, his father took him to see his first human skeleton, half-hidden in a makeshift coffin set on the wild mosses of King William Island, Nunavut. It was the remains of an early fur trader, a fellow known as Russian Mike. The story was that Mike had made a lot of moonshine, done a lot of fighting, fallen into terrible trouble and finally shot his dogs and himself.

But the seven-year-old, though terrified, took a good look at the bullet’s entry wound in the bleached skull and eventually concluded that it had gone in from the top, not the bottom. This was more likely a murder.