The Name on the Land

Seen from above, the Canadian Arctic Archipelago resolves into a fractured geometry of water and stone, a landscape where the formal conclusions of any inquiry could not discharge the ground’s own claims. The channels appear as thin dark lines between islands that look like pale shields of glacial till. The coastline of King William Island shows no harbor or shelter, no feature offering relief. What was once mapped by dead reckoning and sextant angle is now rendered with merciless precision, revealing the entire circumference of an island that had consumed ships and crews.

Back in 2008, the Canadian state had made its first systematic commitment to finding what others had failed to locate. Parks Canada announced a CAD$75, 000 six-week search, deploying the icebreaker CCGS Sir Wilfrid Laurier with the goal of locating the two ships, an effort also intended to strengthen Canada’s claims of sovereignty over large portions of the Arctic. The expedition found nothing.

The Victoria Strait Expedition of 2014 succeeded where that earlier government effort had not, locating first a boat-launching davit bearing the stamps of two Royal Navy broad arrows on Hat Island in the Queen Maud Gulf, then, days later, the wreck of Erebus herself in Wilmot and Crampton Bay near the Adelaide Peninsula. Two years after that, in September 2016, the wreck of HMS Terror was discovered in Terror Bay on the south coast of King William Island, in what divers and archaeologists described as “pristine” condition, preserved by cold, darkness, and depth in a state that no terrestrial site could have maintained.

These discoveries did not conclude the story. They transferred it to a new register of negotiation, one that required the Canadian government, the government of Nunavut, and the Inuit Heritage Trust to determine who would speak for these objects, who would control access to them, and what names would attach to the places where they lay.

The mechanism of this transfer can be traced through a single document: the Memorandum of Understanding Between the Government of Canada and the Inuit Heritage Trust Regarding the Wrecks of HMS Erebus and HMS Terror, signed in 2019 after three years of negotiation. The text of this agreement reveals the architecture of a new sovereignty.

Article 4 establishes collaborative management between the Inuit Heritage Trust and the Government of Canada to manage and protect the wrecks of HMS Erebus and HMS Terror and their associated artifacts. Article 7 specifies that Inuit traditional knowledge will inform all aspects of the management of the wrecks. Article 12 requires that any research permit include provision for Inuit participation in the research activity.

The document does not replace Canadian ownership of the wrecks, which remains vested in the Crown under the terms of the 1986 Historic Sites and Monuments Act. What it does is embed that ownership within a framework of ongoing consultation, creating a structure in which the state cannot act without Inuit agreement.

This was not the first time that Inuit testimony had shaped the search for Franklin. After studying nineteenth-century Inuit oral testimony, which included eyewitness descriptions of starving, exhausted men staggering through the snow without asking local people how they survived in such a wilderness, Parks Canada researcher Robert Grenier had concluded that the search strategy should focus on the area south of King William Island. He believed both ships drifted southwards, with at least two crew remaining until the final destruction of their vessels. The 2014 and 2016 discoveries validated this conclusion.

What the 2019 agreement accomplished was the formal institutionalization of a knowledge system that had previously been treated as supplementary or anecdotal. The Inuit accounts that Charles Francis Hall had recorded in the 1860s, that David C. Woodman had analyzed in Unravelling the Franklin Mystery (1992) and Strangers Among Us (1995), that had been dismissed or filtered through Victorian assumptions about reliability, became in 2019 a mandatory component of official heritage management.

The geography of the search was simultaneously being renamed. The Canadian Geographical Names Board, which maintains the official record of place names for federal mapping, received in 2017 a proposal from the Kitikmeot Inuit Association to assign dual names to features associated with the Franklin expedition. Terror Bay, where HMS Terror was found, would carry an additional Inuktitut designation. The strait between King William Island and the Boothia Peninsula, long known as Franklin Strait, would be recognized also by its Inuktitut name.

The process required archaeological verification, demonstration that the Inuktitut names predated European contact and referred to the same geographical features, and consultation with communities in the region. The board approved the dual names in 2019, the same year as the co-management agreement.

The maps that the Admiralty had drawn in the 1850s, that McClintock had corrected in 1859, that the Canadian Hydrographic Service had refined through the twentieth century, were now overlaid with a second nomenclature, equally official, equally legible to the state.

The ceremonies that marked these changes reveal the weight they carried. On 15 September 2014, the day after Erebus was identified, Prime Minister Stephen Harper announced the discovery from the deck of the Coast Guard icebreaker CCGS Sir Wilfrid Laurier, speaking by satellite link to a press conference in Ottawa. Standing beside him were representatives of the Inuit Heritage Trust. Harper’s statement emphasized the historic moment for Canada and referenced Lady Franklin’s long campaign to find her husband. The Inuit representatives spoke of traditional knowledge and of ancestors who had witnessed the original disaster. The two frameworks, imperial rescue narrative and Indigenous eyewitness testimony, occupied the same sentence structure without fully interpenetrating. The photograph of that announcement shows the Prime Minister in a Parks Canada jacket, the Inuit representatives in parkas of their own design, the icebreaker breaking no ice because the ship was stationary for the broadcast.

A different ceremony occurred on 6 September 2016, when the discovery of Terror was announced. This time the Prime Minister was Justin Trudeau, and the announcement came from the community nearest to the wreck site. Trudeau had traveled to Nunavut specifically for this purpose, and his statement included acknowledgment that the Inuit were the original searchers for Franklin and that their knowledge was essential to finding the ships. The shift from Harper to Trudeau, from icebreaker deck to Arctic community, from fulfillment of a promise to Lady Franklin to recognition of Inuit priority, tracks a political transformation that the Franklin story both reflected and served. The wrecks had become instruments of reconciliation policy, material evidence that the Canadian state could point to when demonstrating its commitment to Indigenous partnership.

The physical management of the wrecks enacted this partnership in concrete terms. Under the 2019 agreement, any dive on Erebus or Terror requires a Parks Canada permit and Inuit Heritage Trust approval. The Inuit guardians program, established in 2017, employs local residents to monitor the sites during the ice-free season, living in tents on the shore of Terror Bay or in small boats near Erebus, reporting any unauthorized activity, and serving as on-site representatives of the co-management regime. These guardians are not ceremonial figures. They carry satellite phones, maintain daily logs, and have authority to order the departure of any vessel that approaches the protected zones. In 2019, when a Russian-flagged yacht entered Terror Bay without clearance, it was Inuit guardians who made the initial contact, informed the Coast Guard, and documented the violation.

The artifacts recovered from the wrecks follow a parallel path of shared custody. The ship’s bell from Erebus, found in 2014 and raised in 2015, was conserved at Parks Canada’s laboratory in Ottawa but exhibited first in the community nearest the site, where it was displayed in the community hall before any southern museum. The bronze bell, bearing the date 1845 and the name of the ship, had been the object that confirmed the wreck’s identity. Its first public viewing occurred not in Toronto or London but in the community whose ancestors had watched Erebus and Terror pass in 1846, had found their crews dead or dying in 1848, and had preserved the memory of these events in oral tradition for 170 years.

The naming and renaming of places extended beyond the immediate vicinity of the wrecks. The Canadian Geographical Names Board’s 2019 decision included recognition of an Inuktitut alternate name for King William Island itself, though the island retains its English designation because of the complexity of changing names that appear in international shipping regulations and search-and-rescue protocols. The board also approved Inuktitut names for Franklin Strait, Terror Bay, and Erebus Bay. Each approval required documentation of Inuktitut usage, community consultation, and verification that the name referred to the specific geographical feature rather than to a broader region. The process took eighteen months for each name, and several proposals were returned for additional evidence.

This bureaucratic rhythm, application, documentation, consultation, approval, publication in the Canada Gazette, represents a final state of the testimony funneling process that had operated throughout the search. The raw accounts that Hall had recorded from Inuit informants in the 1860s, that Woodman had analyzed in the 1990s, that Parks Canada researchers had synthesized into search strategy in the 2000s, were now filtered through a formal procedure that rendered them admissible as official toponymy. The Inuit names did not replace the English ones; they were added to them, creating a dual system in which both nomenclatures appear on federal maps, with the Inuktitut name listed first in Nunavut and the English name first in federal publications intended for international audiences.

The consequences of this re-mapping extend to each party in different ways. For the Canadian state, the dual-naming regime and co-management agreements serve multiple functions. They reinforce sovereignty claims in a region where the Northwest Passage’s status remains disputed; they align with the federal government’s reconciliation agenda; and they provide a model for heritage management that can be extended to other contested sites. The cost is ongoing obligation: the state cannot unilaterally modify the management regime, cannot authorize research without Inuit consent, and must maintain the expensive infrastructure of guardians, permits, and consultation even as political priorities shift.

For Inuit governance institutions, the agreements represent formal recognition of authority that had previously been exercised informally or ignored. The Inuit Heritage Trust, established in 2000 to manage archaeological resources on Inuit-owned lands, gained through the Franklin wrecks a national profile and a demonstration of its capacity to negotiate with the federal government as an equal partner. The Kitikmeot Inuit Association, which had proposed the dual names, demonstrated its ability to move toponymic policy. The communities that supply guardians gained employment and a visible role in heritage protection. The risk is co-optation: the partnership structure requires Inuit organizations to operate within federal frameworks, to accept Crown ownership of the wrecks, and to participate in ceremonies and exhibitions that serve Canadian political purposes.

For public history, the re-mapping creates a more complex narrative terrain. The Franklin expedition can no longer be presented as a purely British story of exploration and tragedy. The standard account must now include Inuit testimony as primary evidence, must acknowledge the Inuit role in both the original disaster and its modern resolution, and must navigate the dual nomenclature that makes any single name partial. Museum exhibitions, documentary films, and popular histories produced after 2019 face this requirement whether they embrace it or resist it. The Erebus and Terror that children learn about in Canadian schools are ships that lie in waters carrying two names, managed through a partnership between the state and Indigenous organizations, located through knowledge that was dismissed for 150 years.

The scholarly syntheses that emerged in this period reflect this transformed foundation. The Nunavut Chief Archaeologist who had coordinated the land-based search for Franklin remains since 2008 published in 2021 a comprehensive analysis of skeletal evidence that incorporated Inuit testimony about the locations where bodies had been found. The article appeared in the Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports, a peer-reviewed publication, and its methodology explicitly combined physical anthropology with oral historical sources. This represented a final stage in the funneling process: the chaotic, contradictory, locally specific accounts that Inuit informants had provided to Hall, to Rae, to Schwatka, to anyone who would listen, were now refined into data points that could be plotted on maps, correlated with radiocarbon dates, and submitted to statistical analysis.

The same transformation affected the ships themselves. Erebus and Terror, discovered in 2014 and 2016, became through conservation and documentation objects that could support multiple narratives. Parks Canada’s underwater archaeology team produced site plans, photogrammetric models, and artifact catalogs that served scientific purposes. The same materials, distributed through press releases and social media, served political and educational purposes. The Inuit guardians’ daily logs, required by the co-management agreement, created a parallel documentary record that would eventually enter archival collections. The wrecks that had been invisible, that had existed only as absence and speculation for 169 years, were now among the most intensively documented archaeological sites in Canada, generating information faster than it could be assimilated.

The physical environment resisted this documentation. The diving season on both wrecks lasts approximately six weeks, from late July to early September, when ice conditions permit safe access. Even during this window, storms can prevent operations for days. The water temperature hovers near zero Celsius, limiting dive times and requiring complex decompression protocols. Sediment accumulation partially buries artifacts between seasons; biological growth obscures structural features. Each year of research requires months of planning, permits from multiple authorities, and the logistical support of Coast Guard icebreakers that have other obligations. The co-management agreement adds consultation requirements that extend timelines. The result is that knowledge accumulates slowly, in annual increments, against a background of urgency created by climate change. The same warming that makes the Passage more navigable also accelerates the deterioration of organic materials in the wrecks.

The place names themselves became sites of contestation. In 2020, a proposal to rename Franklin Strait entirely, to remove the English name and retain only its Inuktitut designation, was submitted to the Geographical Names Board by a coalition of Inuit organizations. The board declined the proposal, citing the need for navigational continuity and the international recognition of the Franklin name. The coalition appealed to the Minister of Natural Resources, who upheld the board’s decision while encouraging continued use of the Inuktitut name in Nunavut government publications. The episode revealed the limits of the dual-naming compromise: it could add Indigenous nomenclature but not subtract colonial nomenclature, could create parallel systems but not replace them.

A similar tension surrounded the ceremonial calendar. The annual Franklin discovery commemorations, held in September to mark the 2014 and 2016 findings, were organized jointly by Parks Canada and the Inuit Heritage Trust but followed protocols that privileged Canadian political cycles. The 2019 ceremony coincided with the federal election campaign; the 2021 ceremony was scaled back because of pandemic restrictions that prevented travel to Nunavut. Inuit organizations noted that their own commemorative practices, oral history gatherings, community feasts, visits to ancestral sites, operated on different calendars and were not incorporated into the official program. The partnership structure required both parties to participate in each other’s ceremonies without fully integrating them.

The artifacts that had been recovered from the wrecks and surrounding sites followed divergent paths. The Erebus bell, after its initial display in the northern community, was exhibited at the Canadian Museum of History in Gatineau, then at the National Maritime Museum in Greenwich, then returned to Ottawa for conservation treatment. Each movement required coordination between Parks Canada, the Inuit Heritage Trust, and the lending institution. The human remains that DNA analysis had connected to specific crew members were repatriated to the United Kingdom in 2023, following negotiations between the British government, the Canadian government, and the Inuit Heritage Trust. The agreement specified that any future discoveries of human remains would be subject to joint determination of appropriate treatment, with preference for repatriation to descendants when identification was possible and for reburial in Nunavut when it was not.

These arrangements built upon the forensic conclusions of the previous chapter without merely repeating them. The scientific report that had identified Henry Thomas Dundas Le Vesconte from skeletal remains, that had established the cause of death as tuberculosis and lead poisoning and scurvy and starvation, became in this period a foundational document for heritage policy. The same techniques, DNA analysis, stable isotope analysis, computed tomography, were applied to artifacts from the wrecks, generating information that shaped conservation decisions and exhibition content. The laboratory that had served inquiry now served stewardship.

The cost of this stewardship was measured in budgets and personnel. Parks Canada’s underwater archaeology program, which had conducted sporadic operations before 2008, became a permanent unit with dedicated staff, equipment, and vessel time. The Inuit guardians program employed twelve individuals during the peak season, with salaries and equipment provided through the co-management agreement. The Geographical Names Board added staff to process dual-name applications. Museums hired curators with expertise in both European naval history and Inuit material culture. The Franklin story, which had consumed private fortunes in the nineteenth century and public funds in the twentieth, now required ongoing institutional commitment simply to maintain the status quo.

This commitment was not guaranteed. In 2022, a federal budget review proposed reducing Parks Canada’s Arctic operations by forty percent, eliminating the guardians program and limiting archaeological research to biennial rather than annual seasons. The Inuit Heritage Trust objected, citing the co-management agreement’s requirement for adequate resources to protect the wrecks. The Kitikmeot Inuit Association organized a letter-writing campaign. The proposed cuts were modified to twenty percent, with the guardians program preserved but reduced in scope. The episode demonstrated that the partnership structure created mutual obligation without guaranteeing mutual priority: the state retained final authority over budgets, and Indigenous partners retained leverage through political mobilization and legal agreement.

The maps that resulted from this period show the outcome of these pressures. The 2023 edition of the Canadian Hydrographic Service’s chart for the Queen Maud Gulf and adjacent waters carries dual names for twenty-seven features. The legend explains that Inuktitut names are approved by the Inuit Heritage Trust and the Government of Nunavut; English names are approved by the Geographical Names Board of Canada.

The chart’s scale is 1: 500, 000, sufficient for regional navigation but not for approach to the wreck sites themselves, which are marked with a symbol indicating protected wreck and a note directing mariners to the guardians’ monitoring frequency. The Victory Point Note that Franklin’s officers had filled out in 1847, that McClintock had found in 1859, that had recorded the wrong date and the fatal decision to abandon the ships, is now preserved in a national institution, its physical existence superseded by satellite positioning and electronic charting, its textual content embedded in a narrative that requires both nomenclatures to tell.

The geography of the story has been formally re-mapped, creating a living landscape of contested heritage onto which the final, synthetic judgment of history must now be projected.