How did explorers and travellers become authors? If we suspend the straightforward assumption that those who explored and travelled were uniformly capable of writing entire books, we must ask if a book of travels or explorations contains only what its author saw with his/her own eyes and recorded on the page. In both writing and sketching, the case of the artist-traveller Paul Kane (1810–1871) — sometimes called the founding father of Canadian art in English-speaking Canada — provides rich grounds for inquiring into the habit of readers suspending their disbelief and according authority to the published word and image. Professor MacLaren will discuss the repercussions for Indigenous people in North America of the process by which Kane’s field notes and sketches evolved into a published book and oil-on-canvas paintings.

About Ian:

  From 1985 to 2016, Ian MacLaren taught at the University of Alberta in the departments of English and Film Studies, Canadian Studies, and History and Classics. He was also an adjunct professor at the Canadian Circumpolar Institute. He has published many articles about Arctic exploration, early Canadian literature, the history of national parks, and exploration and travel writing. He has authored, co-authored, and/or edited four books: Arctic Artist: The Journal and Paintings of George Back, Midshipman with Franklin 1819–1822 (1994); The Ladies, the Gwich’in, and the Rat: Travels on the Athabasca, Mackenzie, Rat, Porcupine, and Yukon Rivers in 1926 (1998), Mapper of Mountains: M.P. Bridgland in the Canadian Rockies 1902–1930 (2005), and Culturing Wilderness in Jasper National Park (2007).