My guest on this episode is Ken McGoogan. Ken is the author of sixteen books—most of them nonfiction narratives, but also a few novels. His books include Fatal Passage, Lady Franklin’s Revenge, and Canada’s Undeclared War: Fighting Words from the Literary Trenches. Ken has won the Pierre Berton Award for Popular History and the University of British Columbia Medal for Canadian Biography. A fellow of the Explorers Club and the Royal Canadian Geographical Society, McGoogan sails as a resource historian with Adventure Canada. Ken’s most recent book is Searching for Franklin: New Answers to the Great Arctic Mystery, which was published by Douglas & McIntyre in 2023. The Vancouver Sun wrote about that book, that “there's a raw immediacy, a forceful current of white-knuckle suspense, to McGoogan's recreation of events."

Ken and I talk about his brief time as a firewatcher and how that directly inspired at least one of his books, about whether Searching for Franklin really is his last book about the search for the Northwest Passage (short answer: probably, but it depends), and about his upcoming book, in which he shifts his subject from the Franklin expedition to fascism.

Ken McGoogan: kenmcgoogan.com

Music: "simple-hearted thing" by Alex Lukashevsky. Used with permission.

Contact Nathan Whitlock at nathanwhitlock.ca/contact