Alone Against the North by Adam Shoalts Page A

FIRST DAY at Canadian Geographic ’s head office in Ottawa, I attended an editorial meeting. On the wall opposite from where I sat was a glorious collection of old charters for the magazine’s publisher: the venerable Royal Canadian Geographical Society. The Society, modelled on Britain’s Royal Geographical Society, was founded in 1929 by the explorer Charles Camsell and other like-minded individuals. Besides publishing Canadian Geographic , the Society sponsors expeditions, produces the Atlas of Canada and other maps, promotes geographical education, and bestows awards and honours on explorers and geographers. I had held the institution in holy reverence ever since my grandparents had given me a subscription to Canadian Geographic as a child for my birthday. I dreamed of carrying the Society’s blue flag, emblazoned with its crest—a white, eight-point compass overlaid with a red maple leaf—on an expedition of my own one day.
    Beside the old charters hung an antique Asian-looking sword with a golden hilt and decorative scabbard. With this curious artifact directly in my line of sight, it wasn’t long before I lost the thread of the editorial discussion and startedpondering the sword. Beneath the sword, a plaque mounted on the wall read:
    Presented to The Canadian Geographical Society by Sir Francis Younghusband, guest-lecturer, at the inaugural meeting of the Society in Ottawa. January 1930. This Tibetan sword was presented to Sir Francis Younghusband by the Chief of Bhutan in 1904.
    Sir Francis Younghusband—now here was a true adventurer and explorer. He had lived a life so extraordinary that it seemed like he was straight out of the imagination of some adventure novelist. Younghusband was born in 1863 in the British Raj, or what is now Pakistan, where his father was stationed on military service. He was sent to England to receive an education and attended the Royal Military College, Sandhurst. But it was as an explorer, not as a soldier, that Younghusband would make his name.
    In 1886, Younghusband participated in an expedition journeying from India to Manchuria. Impressed by his abilities, his superiors then dispatched him to explore the vast Gobi Desert of Mongolia and northern China. With only a few guides, he set off from Beijing on a journey through unknown territory, successfully crossing the Gobi Desert and then making his way over the Himalayan Mountains into India. For this remarkable journey, at age twenty-four, he was elected the youngest ever Fellow of Britain’s Royal Geographical Society. Next, Younghusband explored the border regions between India, China, and Russia, and the Hindu Kush mountains of Afghanistan, entering remotelands that time seemed to have forgotten. He wrote about these adventures in his book The Heart of a Continent .
    In 1903, he was tasked with leading an expedition to Tibet, one of the world’s least known and most mysterious countries. Tibet’s isolated location high in the snowy Himalayas and its policy of keeping out all foreigners made it something of an adventurer’s dream—an enchanted kingdom hidden in the clouds. Younghusband became one of the first Europeans to enter Tibet’s ancient capital, the Forbidden City of Lhasa. But the dream became a nightmare when Younghusband’s troops massacred Tibetan militia. The bloodshed and lofty mountains left a deep impression on Younghusband, and he underwent a spiritual epiphany. He became a mystic, contemplating founding his own religion and writing numerous books on the subject. Younghusband even mused about fathering a “god-child” who would become a prophet of the new religion he dreamed of creating. Regardless of his eccentricities, he was elected president of the Royal Geographical Society, and in that capacity began promoting an expedition to scale Mount Everest. In 1930, by then an explorer of legendary stature, he arrived in Ottawa with a memento from one of