Note from Andrea: This post was originally supposed to go up in April, but as many of you know, my husband was hospitalized for Crohn’s Disease around that time. While we didn’t know it at the time, the entire ordeal lasted two months and involved two operations. And towards the end of that period, I started a six-week condensed summer course. It is only thanks to the help of many people that I was able to keep everything going. I’d like to especially thank Anne Dance, Catherine Ulmer, Stacey Zembrzycki, Claire Campbell, Danielle Lorenz, Krystal Raven, Krista McCracken, Jenny Ellison, Jessica DeWitt, Maddie Knickerbocker, Shannon Stettner, Lynne Marks, and Sarah York-Bertram for their support during this entire ordeal. I would also like to thank all of the wonderful people who reached out to me during this time, including all of the lovely people who asked how Lee and I were doing at the CHA. Special thanks to the wonderful contributors who moonlit on the blog while I was away, including Sarah York-Bertram, the CHA Reads contributors (Krista McCracken, Ian Jesse, Carly Ciufo, Dan Horner, and Carmen Nielson), Rachel Bryant, Andrew Nurse, Heather Green, and Shannon Stettner. And of course, none of this would have been possible without Stephanie Pettigrew, who basically took over managing the website while I was away. Seriously, you folks are all awesome, and I will never be able to fully express my gratitude. Finally, extra special thanks to Stéphanie Verner, Sylvie Raymond, and Karen Ryan for being so patient with this long-overdue blog post! As for Lee, he’s been home for a month now, is recovering well, and is overwhelmed by your good thoughts.
I’ve always been fascinated by historical mysteries. I was the history dork who actually signed up for archaeology classes in elementary school (such as they were), and spent hours pouring over mysteries like Tutankhamun’s curse and the fate of the Maya. The Franklin Expedition was one of the those mysteries, and, like so many others, I never thought it would be solved.
If you’ve been following this blog for a while, you know that we have extensively covered both the rediscovery of the HMS Erebus and HMS Terror, as well as the work done to bring the story of the Franklin Expedition to life in museum exhibitions in the UK and Canada. So when I was offered the chance to interview the curator of the new Franklin Expedition exhibit (say that ten times fast) at the Canadian Museum of History, Dr. Karen Ryan, you won’t be surprised to learn that I jumped on this opportunity. As is the case with the blog post on the Hockey exhibition, this blog post is the result of my conversation with Ryan, and provides a behind-the-scenes look at the Franklin Expedition exhibit and Ryan’s work on the project.
*Special thanks to Stephanie Pettigrew, Stéphanie Verner, Sylvie Raymond, and the Canadian Museum of History for arranging this interview, Jenny Ellison for her assistance and fantastic suggestions for questions, and Karen Ryan for agreeing to speak with me!
**Please note that all images are courtesy of the Canadian Museum of History, and used with permission.
Karen Ryan joined the Museum’s staff in 2010, and her curatorial responsibilities touch on the prehistory and history of Canada’s North. She collaborates on land claims and repatriation requests, and is currently researching the ill-fated Northwest Passage expedition commanded by Sir John Franklin in 1845.
Dr. Ryan has conducted archeological fieldwork throughout Nunavut, Nunavik and Nunatsiavut, as well as in Newfoundland, and has published articles on the social and cultural prehistory of the Canadian Arctic, traditional ideology and shamanism, hunter-gatherer domestic architecture and the application of contemporary technologies to archaeological practices.
Dr. Ryan holds an Honours BA in Anthropology and History from Memorial University of Newfoundland, an MA in Anthropology from McMaster University and a PhD in Anthropology from the University of Toronto.
