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* Nagle, Ted; Zinovich, Jordan. The prospector north of sixty / Ted Nagle and Jordan Zinovich. Edmonton, AB: Lone Pine Pub., 1989. 286 p. See Hornby/Christian pages p.71-72,132
"Hornby's eccentricities had caught up with him in a cabin on the Thelon River ... It did not surprise me that he had died, but it was very unfortunate that he took two boys with him." p.132
* "New pieces of satellite uncovered." Globe and Mail, February 9, 1978, p.8. Mention of Hornby.
* Newsletter of the Biological Survey of Canada (Terrestrial Arthropods). 21(2) (Fall 2002). Site: http://www.biology.ualberta.ca/bsc/news21_2/arctic.htm (Viewed Feb. 22, 2003)
"The route from the Hanbury River to Beverly Lake included many points of historical, geological, and anthropological interest. Early in the trip, near the beginning of the Thelon Oasis, we passed Warden's Grove, a cluster of cabins established in 1928 by the first custodians of the sanctuary -- W.H.B. "Billy" Hoare and A.J. "Jack" Knox. Farther downstream near the end of the oasis, we found the ruins of the cabin where John Hornby and his two companions starved to death in the spring of 1927. The grave of the legendary trapper, along with those of nephew Edgar Christian and Harold Adlard, are marked by simple wooden crosses bearing their initials."
* Peake, Michael. "The listing canoe." Che-Mun's last list of the millenium - Part I Site: http://www.goodyeardriveforgold.com/che-mun/99list2.html (Viewed Feb. 22, 2003, not working 2005)
"3. The Tragic Trips 1926-7 - Hornby, Adlard and Christian on the Thelon. All three died after overwintering and missing the caribou migration. Christian's diary was the basis for this legendary and tragic trip and the book Unflinching: death on the barrengrounds."
* Peake, Michael. "The listing canoe." Site: http://www.goodyeardriveforgold.com/che-mun/99list2.html (Viewed Feb. 22, 2003, not working 2005)
"18. Most Meaningful Canoeing Spots - Hornby's cabin--Thelon River. To read Edgar Christian's journal of their demise while sitting beside the cabin is one of the most moving moments of northern paddling."
* Peake, Sean. "Letter to the editor." Globe and Mail, April 1, 1995, p.D7.
Passing mention of Hornby and other explorers on Great Bear Lake.
* Pelly, David F. "The legend of John Hornby (a Thelon river tale)." Above and Beyond. November/December, 2002, p.30-31,33,35,37,39. Site: www.above-n-beyond.com/articles/Hornby.pdf and www.above-n-beyond.com/story_hornby1102_00.html (Viewed May 5, 2003, not working 2005)
"The confidence expressed by this young man amounts to nothing short of hero-worship." p.33. On Edgar Christian's diary Unflinching and Cold burial by Clive Powell-Williams.
* Pelly, David F. "Book review." [Malcolm Waldron. Snow man: John Hornby in the barren lands]. Arctic. 53(1) (March 2000): 81-82.
"Hornby's most famous -- and most foolhardy -- exploit began in the summer of 1926 when, together with his 18-year-old cousin Edgar Christian and another young man, Harold Adlard, he overwintered in a grove of trees beside the Thelon River. He had spotted this place the year before, on his trip with James Critchell-Bullock. Snow Man is based on Critchell-Bullock's diaries of that previous expedition. Hornby and Critchell-Bullock survived their ordeal; the threesome that followed did not."
* Pelly, David F. Thelon: a river sanctuary / David F. Pelly. Hyde Park, ON: Canadian Recreational Canoeing Association, 1996. 202 p.
See Hornby section: "Legend by death," ch.6, p.46-57; see p.56 George Douglas is quoted: "For he [Hornby] was certainly no hunter. He was highly inconsistent and in most things quite unreliable." (See also Robb)
* Pelly, David F. "[Review] Thelon: a river sanctuary." Arctic. 49(4) (December 1996): 394-395.
"What is mysterious are forces and motivations that would drive a man like John Hornby to set himself and his friends up for such a sorry end, a question that is ingeniously explored by Thomas York's novels Snowman [1976] and The Musk Ox Passion [1978], mentioned in this book only as an apparent bibliographic afterthought. And there are other plays and novels set in the Thelon River valley--among them Lawrence Jeffery's 1993 play Who look in stove, and M.T. Kelly's challenging 1995 novel Out of the whirlwind. These works of fiction address the "mysteries" of life in powerful ways (not available in traditional non-fiction sources) and could well have been considered alongside conventional analytical texts."
* Penguin Books. "New this month: Cold burial by Clive Powell-Williams. Site: http://www.penguin.co.uk/static/packages/uk/articles/p_williams.html (Viewed Feb. 22, 2003, not working 2005)
"In the clear, bright spring of 1926, three Englishman set off into the remote wilderness of Canada; the Barren Lands. One of them, Jack Hornby, was already a legendary figure: 'Hornby of the North'. He prided himself on his ability to live off the land and feared the incursion of 'the white man' into these beloved open spaces.
In an extraordinary story of endurance, courage and downright insanity, Clive Powell-Williams brings us the tale of this ill-fated expedition. Hornby's team of three Englishmen, consisting of himself, his naive 18-year-old cousin, Edgar Christian, and an old friend, Harold Adlard, were doomed to die of starvation. Their bodies, along with Christian's heart-rending diaries and letters, were found two years later."
* Pitt, Kathleen; Pitt, Michael. Three seasons in the wind / Kathleen Pitt and Michael Pitt. Vancouver, BC: Hornby House Publications, 1999.
An account of a trip down a longer stretch of the Thelon.
* "Police go to scene of Arctic tragedy: Hornby party's resting-place will be marked by constables." Globe (Toronto), February 21, 1929, p.3
* Powell-Williams, Clive. Cold burial: a journey into the wilderness / Clive Powell-Williams. London: Viking, 2001. 264 p.
To father:
"Jack alone was one man in this world who can let a young boy know what this world & the next [are]. I Loved him ... he Loved me. Very seld[om] is there true Love between 2 men!" p.240To mother:
"Please dont Blame Dear Jack. He loves you and me only in this world & tell no one else this but keep it & believe."
Powell-Williams, Clive. Cold burial: a journey into the wilderness / Clive Powell-Williams. London: Viking (Penguin), 2001. 265 p.
* Powell-Williams, Clive. Cold burial: a true story of endurance and disaster / Clive Powell-Williams. New York: St. Martin's Press, 2002, c2001. 264 p.
Publisher Comments:
"In the Spring of 1926, Edgar Christian, a young man of eighteen fresh out of public school, joined his dashing cousin, the legendary (if somewhat self-styled) adventurer Jack Hornby, and a friend named Harold Adlard on an expedition into the Barren Lands of the Canadian Northwest Territories. The plan was to hunt caribou and trap for fur. For young Edgar, the Barrens expedition offered a chance to prove himself and to find his direction in life; for Hornby, a veteran of the Great War as well previous forays into the Northwest (he was known in some quarters as "Hornby of the North"), it represented his latest dare with disaster. Together they would demonstrate that civilized men could survive, even thrive, in one of the world's most inhospitable regions. They were proved wrong."
* Powell-Williams, Clive. "Review." Cold burial: a true story of endurance and disaster. Kirkus Reviews, December 1, 2001.
* "Privation and death in 'the barrens.'" Toronto Star, August 9, 1987, p.A8. (Reprint of original Toronto Daily Star, December 28, 1929, p.1,4).
"Young Christian, the son of Lieut.-Col. W. F. Christian and Mrs. Christian, accompanied his cousin, John Hornby, an experienced Arctic explorer, on an expedition across the barren lands in the North-West Territory to find a route from Great Slave Lake through the Thelon game sanctuary to Chesterfield Inlet and Hudson Bay. Hornby was a member of a well-known Cheshire family, his father being the late Mr. A. N. Hornby, of Natwich, famous as captain of the Lancashire County Cricket Club.
They were joined by Harold Adlard, aged 29, the son of a Bloomsbury publisher. They reached the sanctuary in the late summer of 1926, and they were not heard of again until July 21 last year (1928), when a patrol of the North-West Mounted Police, searching for the lost expedition, found the bodies of the three explorers who had settled in a log cabin which they had built at the junction of the Thelon and Hanbury rivers. It seems clear from the diary that Hornby died on April 16, 1927, Adlard on May 4 and Christian probably on June 1 or just afterwards.
The diary, penned by a young man filled with the dreams and ambitions of conquering youth, is written with the directness and simplicity of phrase such as imply a spirit demanding action rather than words. But no literary artifice could add to the starkness of its pages. [Christian's last letters are quoted, with a few lines missing, i.e., I loved him he loved me...]"
* Raffan, James; Davis, Richard C. [Bark, skin & cedar: exploring the canoe in Canadian experience.] Arctic. 53(3) (September 2000): 318-319.
"Chapter eight shifts north to spin familiar tales about John Hornby, George Douglas, John Franklin, J.B. Tyrrell, George Grinnell, and others who have put the canoe to good use."
* Reed, Lesley. "Editorial reviews [Powell-Williams Cold burial]." Amazon.com
"He was known as Hornby of the North, the Brit who rejected his wealthy background for the frontier life of Canada's frozen north. In 1926, Jack Hornby, the living legend, took his young cousin, Edgar Christian, and Harold Adlard to the remotest part of the Barren Lands, accessible only by canoe and dog team. Except he didn't bring dogs, nor enough clothing or supplies. Instead, he staked their lives on the fifty-fifty chance of meeting with the great caribou migration. In his diary, the young Edgar wrote, 'We live on our rifles and see nobody.' Two years later, the diary would be found stashed in the stove near the skeletons of the three men. Powell-Williams has meticulously reconstructed this chilling and controversial adventure, considered by some a noble repetition of Mallory and Scott's expeditions, by others a pitiful folly, and by those who lived it, an expression of honor, camaraderie, and courage."
* Return to the barren ground: Edgar Christian (documentary; one-hour) Great North Productions, Edmonton, Alberta. Site: http://www.greatnorth.ab.ca/News1.html (Viewed Feb. 1, 2003, not working 2005)
"Through the diary of a 17-year-old boy who travelled with a 28-year-old companion and his older cousin to the Barren Lands of Canada in 1927, we uncover a story rich in characters, intrigue and tragedy. Was it inevitable that all three men should have starved to death? Co-production with Cwmni Da for S4C (Wales) and History Television Inc."
* Robb, Jim. "Arctic exploration accounts provoke enduring dreams." Ottawa Citizen, June 5, 1994, Final Edition, p.B4.
"The book [John Moss' Enduring dreams] also features that death-willing English eccentric John Hornby, who perished miserably on the Thelon River decades ago when the caribou failed, taking a young cousin with him."
* Robb, Jim. "A sense of wonder with nature and time." Ottawa Citizen, March 24, 1996, Final Edition, p.C10.
Pelly recounts the history of the Thelon, and the development of the sanctuary and some of the remarkable characters drawn to it including the eccentric Englishman John Hornby, who led two men, one of them his 17-year-old nephew, to death by starvation in 1927.
* Ross, Anne. "John Hornby: letter to editor." Globe and Mail, March 21, 1978, p.6.
On Maxine Hoffer and Harold Wilson discovering the bodies of Hornby, Adlard and Christian.
Royal Canadian Mounted Police. Report, "G" Division, H.Q. File No.25, D.1.L.6, August 12, 1929.
Royal Canadian Mounted Police. The Hornby case. Report for the year ending September 30, 1929. p.105-107
Royal Canadian Mounted Police. Report for the year ending September 30, 1932. p.127
* "The royal couple's wilderness wasn't always so hospitable." Toronto Star, August 9, 1987, p.A1.
Small reference to 18-year old Edgar Christian's death and his diary with reprint from December 28, 1929.
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| Alan V. Miller |
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