Westworld Saskatchewan

s u m m e r 2 0 1 5 | w E S t w o R l D 33 expedition is remote Beechey Island on day six, where the Franklin ships and crew had overwintered in 1846 and where three of his men, John Torrington, John Hartnell and William Braine, had died and were buried. A fourth grave, that of Thomas Morgan from the North Star, one of the search ships, was added in 1854. This stark and lonely grave- yard is one of Canada's iconic sites, and we all need to see it for ourselves. We nearly don't make it though. is frigid morning, with ici- cles hanging off the deck railings, the staff had ventured out to check the site, their zodiacs thrashing about in the spindrift waves. ey were to land ahead of us as they always did to secure the site (mostly against polar bears) before passengers could go ashore, but they soon return, soaked and windblown, coated with ice. The trip is called off, but the ship stays anchored out in the bay. ere is much moaning at the bar before lunch today, until sharp eyes on deck spot a polar bear ambling along the spit of land that, at low tide, joins Beechey to larger Devon Island. All binoculars rush out and telephoto lenses click. After lunch, the wind drops, the seas calm and, with the polar bear long gone, the grave- yard trip is on. We land clumsily on the gravel slope of Erebus Bay, an immense curving shore of rock and gravel, where the Arctic water is almost black. e grave markers are well-made replicas, the originals stored in the Yellowknife museum, but the bodies still lie there, uninter- rupted since they were exhumed, examined and then put back in 1984 by a University of Alberta anthropologist, Dr. Owen Beatty. I stand and

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