She was manipulating and inventing her image of course, but she had reason to do so. Before she had escaped into Labrador on this expedition, the press had caught up with her and the speculations, gossip, and aspersions made headlines. As I carried out my research for the edition, I explored dozens of newspapers of the day, tracking down items and tracing the story presented by reporters. Comments like these are representative of what I found: “Mrs Hubbard Suspicious,” her “strange visit” (not expedition) to Labrador is “sentimentally inspired,” and Mina herself is described as “jealous,” “secretive,” and “a small, frail woman.”1 These quotations illustrate a few of the more common epithets, and through this research I could get in touch with her contemporary milieu and gain insight into the ways in which a woman leading a northern expedition in 1905 would be viewed and constructed in the popular, southern imagination. These insights, in turn, helped me to appreciate many of the choices and decisions she made, not least to keep her expedition a secret for as long as possible. Feminist theories and history also guided my thinking on these issues, as did my research into what Mina might have read. After all, she was a trained nurse and although that training definitely inculcated good practices of observation and note-taking, it did not provide her with narrative templates for a northern expedition. For that her models had to be male ones. However, when I began the process of comparative analysis with male expedition narratives I was struck by the differences as much as the similarities with A Woman’s Way. I have described these in detail in my introduction to the edition, therefore, I will just mention two differences in passing: first, in her narrative, she adopts an inclusive and multiple—what Bakhtin would call a dialogic—voice by interspersing her story with the stories of her dead husband and her guides (a narrative privileging unheard of in men’s narratives of the time); second, her photographs, while many are clearly taken with the expeditionary goal in mind, are remarkable for the care and attention she devotes to her guides, their work and individual identities, and to the native peoples she meets. What I was trying to do—and I think we must all make this attempt when we try to work with northern materials from an earlier period, perhaps especially when a woman is at the centre of the story—was to avoid as much as possible forcing my views onto the text or event. We must try to listen, with historically and theoretically sensitive ears, to the voices in the text or story, and we must keep the geographical, social, and political contexts of an expedition like Mina’s as clearly before us as possible. And yet, with the best will in the world we will still inevitably produce an invention.
Thus far I have focused on the context and background for this expedition, but I was working with a book that I wanted to bring back into print. No manuscripts appear to have survived. The plates of her hundreds of photographs have disappeared (something that has not happened with male explorers of the day). Where to begin? The archival challenges were considerable, but her original expedition journal did survive and was in the collection at Memorial University in Newfoundland, with a complete photocopy deposited in the National Archives in Ottawa. I have studied both and own a complete copy for research purposes. One of the most arduous but fascinating aspects of my research involved a careful reading—often a deciphering—of the journal and then a detailed comparison with her published text. What I learned through this work would require another article, so I cannot delve into the matter here. But I was very fortunate to have such a resource because it brought me a bit closer to the private woman, revealed her writing ability—which was considerable—and convinced me once and for all that Mina adored her dead husband and had no romantic interest in her handsome guide George Elson—oh yes, that is part of the inventing that continues to this day! It also assured me of her courage and endurance because not even in the privacy of this journal did she whine or complain about the hardships of her expedition—the voracious flies, the dangerous rapids, the paucity of clean clothes or feminine supplies of any kind (including a mirror). Her journal contains long passages of praise for the men and quotations of their conversation—when these were in English. Her chief frustration lay in the extreme care that Elson and the men took of her; they balked at her requests to roam freely or to photograph rapids because, as she came to realize, they were terrified that she would fall or come to harm, in which case they would be accused of the most evil behaviour and, as George told her on one occasion, then they would never be able to return to their homes. In other words, comparing the journal with the final text reveals a great deal about what she learned, about how she adapted to rough northern conditions and was changed by her experience, and about what it came to mean to her. At one point in the journal she writes that she never wanted to go back to civilization and that if she were only a man she would stay in the North. This comment, however, does not make its way into the published book.
- For a full discussion of the newspaper reaction to Mina’s expedition, see my introduction to A Woman’s Way (xxiii-xxx); a complete list of the sources consulted is provided in my bibliography. [↩]
