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... but nobody waved back!
Close
to Canada's Eastern seabord, at about the latitude of Greenland,
there is an island bearing the name of Sillem. Who might be the Sillem
it was named after?
Gerrit Sillem, from the Netherlands, who lives with his wife in Canada
tried to find out about it in the 1980s. At first he turned to the
secretariat of Geographic Names of Energy, Mines and Resources Canada. The
answer was that it was probably a whaler captain named John Burnet
Walker who named the island when he passed by the Baffin Bay
archipelago in 1877. Gerrit was advised to ask for more information
from the Scott Polar
Research Institute at
Cambridge University. There he learned that Walker originated from the
city of Dundee, north of Edinburgh, and that two logbooks of his
travels in 1871 and 1872 were preserved, but not that of 1877. It was
recommended to contact a Dr Ross who had done research on whaling in
the Hudson Bay in the 19th century. Gerrit Sillem's letter was not
answered. Now, 24 years later, due to a renewed interest in the origin
of the island`s name, Gerrit sought and found Dr. Ross's email address
on the Internet, and this is what Dr Ross answered:
Dear Mr. Sillem,
I see after going through my
correspondence records that you asked me about the origin of the name Sillem
Island in a letter of 10 July 1983. Perhaps I never replied, or perhaps you
failed to receive my reply:
1) I assume you have checked with the Board on Geographic
Names on Booth Street in Ottawa; they have files on place-name origins. If you
haven't contacted them you'll probably have to give them exact locational
informatiion. Sillem Island is at 70-56 N, 71-43 W.
2) It would help if you told me where you got the
information about J.B.Walker and the date 1877.
3) According to my list of whaling voyages, Walker took the
Dundee ship Erik to the Davis Strait fisher in 1877.
4) A book about that season mentions the Erik here and
there. It is by Mackintosh, Dr. 1884. A Whaling Cruise in the Arctic Regions. (
London: Hamilton, Adam). I don't recall anything about Sillem Island or Scott
Inlet, but a more thorough search might be productive.
5) As the Erik (or Eric) was a Dundee whaler you might fiind
out something from the Central Library, or the Whaling Museum, in Dundee, if
you provide as many details as possible.
6) I presume that Sillem was one of the crew, conceivably a
crewman who died and was buried there.
7) If there is a marked grave on the
island, there might be a record of the inscription at the Archeology
Survey of Canada.
8) I have checked my notes on the Dundee Year Books, but
they were not published, I believe, before 1878.
9) As far as I know, the logbook of the Active in 1877 has
not survived.
10) I'll keep the matter in mind in case I run across something.
Send me your postal address--is it still 106 Dalgleish Bay NW, Calgary T3A 1K8?
Sincerely,
Gil Ross
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