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Manning & Wife
Profile: Thomas Henry Manning and Ella Wallace Manning
By MICHAEL PEAKE
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Ella Wallace Manning shown in a photograph from the front of
her 1949 book 'A Summer on Hudson Bay'
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The title of this piece -Manning and Wife-might be immediately offensive to the sensibilities of some in these penultimate millennial moments. But taken in the context of its time. the story of Arctic explorer Thomas H. Manning and spouse Ella Wallace Manning is quite aptly titled.
Indeed, in Ella's books about the pair's northern travels her nom de plume was Mrs. Tom Manning. Not something you see much these days. She wrote two books about their northern adventures together just before the Second World War; Igloo for the Night (1943) and A Summer on Hudson Bay (1949).
The recent passing of Mr. Manning was noted by this journal. What surprised us was the little we knew of him and we thought many of you would like to know more, so we dug a bit deeper.
One of the main reasons Manning was little known what that he published no books and relatively few technical articles. [Check out Canadian Geographic, or Canadian Geographical Journal as it was then called in Jan 1942.] Manning was obviously not in the business of promoting his trips for any of the various reasons people do so: money, ego, academic. Following in a fine tradition of Hanbury, Hornby and the like, Manning was the son of a prosperous English family, educated at Harrow and Cambridge who left it all for the colonial outreaches.
The story of what was essentially his proposal of marriage was recounted in Che-Mun Outfit 95. Suffice to say, a tersely worded telegram inviting a person to a foreign and hostile land is not your average overture of love. We use the term explorer rather loosely these days. Yet we call Manning one with certainty despite the fact his northern tenure was relatively modern, beginning in the the mid-30s. The far north at that point had not really changed significantly and he travelled under conditions remarkable similar to many years previous.
We are indebted to Ella Manning or 'Jack' as he called her (her maiden name was Jackson) for keeping a record of all of these early years, though they separated in the 1960s. The first publication of their adventures was in The Beaver which for many years was the chronicler of northern life in Canada and remains a treasure trove of fascinating history. In its September 1942 issue is an article entitled Explorer's Wife by E. Wallace Manning which recounts Ella's introduction to the North from spring 1938 until her husband joined the Royal Navy in late 1940. She later expanded the article to become a book-Igloo for the Night. It's a unique and fascinating story of a world that no longer exists which is why the Mannings can rightfully be called explorers. Though Ella Manning's books lack any real insight into the pair's thinking at the time they were doing these amazing trips, it remains an interesting read just the same.
Thomas Manning was employed by a number of different government agencies over the years to do work in the far north. He began with a three year study in 1936 with fellow Brits (see sidebar). He naturally adopted the ways of the Inuit in travelling using dog teams to move great distances. Manning and wife successfully survived in one of the most inhospitable climates in the world. While on the trail they built igloos each night during their winter trips and lived off the land where possible. .
Their principal work was the study of birds and flowers as well as charting the coast of Baffin island. Later Manning would chart northern coastlines for the Defense Research Board (which was headed up for several years by Omond Solandt of The Voyageurs fame).
Thomas Manning, 1911-1998, in a photo from his wifeÕs book 'Igloo
for The Night.' He is shown standing in his boat Polecat
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Clearly Manning was a solitary person in many ways who travelled hard and most likely reveled in that hardship for he surely had his share of it - with little complaint. They don't build them like that anymore. So many current northern expedition types write in length and great detail about their perseverance in the presence of impossible odds. Manning simply did it.
Perhaps the definitive Tom Manning story is published in Arctic, a journal published by the Arctic Institute of North America at the U of Calgary. In the October 1953 issue an improbably titled piece appeared - "Narrative of an Unsuccessful Attempt to Circumnavigate Banks Island by Canoe in 1952." One could easily put forth the argument that the word 'unsuccessful' was superfluous.
Manning left Edmonton on May 7, 1952 with Andrew Macpherson, a zoology student from Ottawa with whom he had worked the three previous summers. Their goal was to investigate the harbours offered by the large Arctic island and the best way to do that and travel very close to shore was in a canoe.
Their kit was 950 lbs of food, 70 gallons of naphtha, 30 quarts of oil and a 22-foot freight canoe weighing 270 lbs. Food would be supplemented by the carcasses of the birds and mammals they would collect for specimens. Planning to be out until September 18, they made camp on the southeast corner of the large island and explored the area as the land melted.
When the ice finally permitted them to leave, in mid-July, the headed west and began their work of sounding harbour depths and examining the coast. They looked for roomy camps where they wouldn't have to haul the carefully packed boat containing 3000 pounds of gear which took two hours to repack.
They made good progress considering the ice floes which moved in and out of their route. Manning was an avid student of history and his notes are interwoven with the recent and past explorations of the area. The pair found ample evidence of the McClure expedition which was trapped by the ice there 100 years previously. They paid a visit to McClure's raided cache and found nothing much beyond barrel staves, piece of iron and six tons of coal.
There in Mercy Bay a little more than half way around Banks Island is where the Thomsen River enters the ocean. Manning and Macpherson were forced by the signs of winter in late August to stop their trip and head up the Thomsen. They made it 12 miles before the water got too shallow and they cached the canoe and supplies and walked back with their sled some 200 miles to Sachs Harbour in two weeks! On their route back they found muskox to their surprise as they had been thought extinct there in Stefansson's time. Muskox flourish on Banks Island now.
Manning was a man of another age. One might wonder about not completing their mission of circumnavigating Banks Island and the fact that the title of his article points out it was not a success. The answer lies in a tiny asterisk in the article's title which states the trip was completed in 1953 by Manning and a Capt. Sparrow.
This story first appeared in Che-Mun Outfit 96 in 1999.
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