stefansson-wrangel-09-15-126-002

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and misunderstood - they think I was wrong when the fact was only that my
views were wrongly understood. Please try, therefore, to impress firmly
on anyone who wants to bring me up in Parliament that he must not do so
until some very competent person has read all my books in chronological
order and has consulted me or some other person who is well informed about
any doubts that remain in his mind after the reading. This is the very
minimum of preparation necessary. Really I believe Mr. D. M. LeBourdais is
the only Canadian who knows my work well enough so that he can interpret
or defend it. There are a number of people who know it well in the United
States and some in Europe, but if any Canadian has made a sufficient study
I am not aware of the fact.

Should someone in Ottawa intend to bring up the issues
of northern development, I think it would be worth while for Mr. LeBourdais
to go to Ottawa in that connection. He is as much interested in these
things as you or I and would not be representing us but only himself in
what he did. I am sure if he knew that the matter was coming up he would
take the first train for Ottawa.

I give you a carbon copy of a letter I have just
written Mr. Pickering.

I am giving you a galley proof of Appendix VI, "Dis-
cussion in the Parliament of Canada about Wrangel Island," copied from
House of Commons Debates. Please read this carefully. We may not have
got everything but this is all that could be found by a friend of mine who
made the excerpts for me. Anyone who takes this up in Parliament should go
through Hansard thoroughly and post up not only on the things we have quoted
here but anything else that may have been said there.

Senator Fowler's committee on the Hudson's Bay Railway
situation has a lot of information in its reports, some of it from me. I
think there may have been a good deal of discussion about Wrangel Island in
the Senate but my friend for some reason did not look it up. The omission
did not occur to me until now when it is too late to incorporate it in the
book.

I am giving you also half a dozen mimeographed copies
of an article from the Royal Geographical Society's Journal, which will be
published in the appendix of my book. I think you have read this before
but you ought to re-read it. It is an authoritative statement by an
impartial investigator who, I think, no doubt is the Secretary of the Royal
Geographical Society, Mr. Arthur R. Hinks, although no one quoting the
article should give the name without his permission, for it was published
unsigned.