Stephen R. Bown > Quotes

“The only currency that we really have to spend during our lives is time. Everything else is just a sub-category.”
― Stephen R. Bown

“A hero, in his mind, was not someone who suffered disaster after disaster, heroically pulling through with great endurance, but rather one who focused his intelligence and skills to avoid disaster, thus succeeding by good planning and crafty decision making.”
― Stephen R. Bown, The Last Viking: The Life of Roald Amundsen

“Although I have had offers of wireless installation for the Fram,” he said in one rambling interview, “that also I declined. I don’t care for it. It is very much better to be without news when you cannot be where the news comes from. We are always more contented if we get no news. A good book we like, we explorers. That is our best amusement and our best time killer.”
― Stephen R. Bown, The Last Viking: The Life of Roald Amundsen

“Gjøa was later presented as a gift to the city of San Francisco, remaining on display in Golden Gate Park until 1972, when it was returned to Norway. It now resides in Oslo harbour, next to two other famous Norwegian ships, Fridtjof Nansen’s Fram and Thor Heyerdahl’s Kon-Tiki.”
― Stephen R. Bown, The Last Viking: The Life of Roald Amundsen

“Amundsen slept with his window wide open at night even in the winter, claiming to his mother that he loved fresh air, but really “it was a part of my hardening process.” He organized small expeditions for himself and a few friends, such as overnight treks on skis under a star-studded sky, enlivened by the otherworldly swirling of the aurora borealis, into the winter wilds to improve his toughness.”
― Stephen R. Bown, The Last Viking: The Life of Roald Amundsen

“It wasn’t Amundsen’s job to make his men happy, but to lead them to victory, alive.”
― Stephen R. Bown, The Last Viking: The Life of Roald Amundsen

“Before Lind's experiments, scurvy was not clearly defined as a disease.The term was used as a catchphrase to include all manner of nautical ailments.”
― Stephen R. Bown, Scurvy: How a Surgeon, a Mariner, and a Gentleman Solved the Greatest Medical Mystery of the Age of Sail

“The construction of the Canadian Pacific Railway was the defining event of its era, around which most other events orbited—a catalyst for the powerful global forces that were pushing the land toward something new. Its story is a sweeping tale, with technological, political, economic, geographical and social components. It involves the dreams of politicians in Ottawa, Toronto and Montreal; the financing genius and manipulative shenanigans of railway promoters to devise a business plan that would justify the expense; the feats of engineers to push a railway through the rock and bog around Lake Superior and through the rugged mountains of British Columbia; the adventures and hardships of explorers and surveyors; the occasional resistance of Indigenous peoples; and the terrific and horrific work of the labourers who poured their lives into it.”
― Stephen R. Bown

“The Admiralty commissioned John Byron to command a ship to do some preliminary exploration in the South Pacific while monitoring the effects of fresh provisions on the incidence of scurvy in his crew. It proved to be a short voyage returning in under two years, in April 1766—and Byron’s conclusions regarding antiscorbutics were sketchy and unreliable. The men had suffered terrible ravages from the disease, but owing to the Admiralty’s instructions for Byron to purchase and outfit the ship with fresh vegetables whenever convenient, there were not a large number of deaths. Byron ordered scurvy grass and coconuts for his men, and while he claimed that the scurvy grass was of “infinite service” it was the coconuts that saved them from certain death. “It is astonishing the effect these nuts alone had on those afflicted … . Many in the most violent pain imaginable … and thought to be in the last stage of that disorder, were in a few days by eating those nuts (tho’ at sea) so far relieved as to do their duty, and even to go aloft as well as they had done before.” For the return voyage, Byron stocked up on more than two thousand coconuts and kept scurvy blessedly at bay. Byron’s unscientific opinion that coconuts were a useful antiscorbutic was of little practical value to the Admiralty, however, as coconuts were not readily available in England. All in all, it was not a very illuminating trial.”
― Stephen R. Bown, Scurvy: How a Surgeon, a Mariner, and a Gentlemen Solved the Greatest Medical Mystery of the Age of Sail

“unofficial agents of European colonial expansion.”
― Stephen R. Bown, Merchant Kings: When Companies Ruled the World, 1600–1900

“An empire is often understood to be an aggregate of subject states, subdued by force and exploited for their resources to the aggrandizement of the heartland. It’s hard to dispute that this was Canada’s origin. But empire can also be construed as meaning to build, to connect or to unify. The older, now archaic word empyreal was used to denote something pertaining to the sky or heavens, something inspiring of awe. In a practical sense, relating to a political entity, the inspiration of awe could flow from the seemingly invincible power to control and direct and exploit; yet it could also flow from a string of grand or noble universal achievements. For many people these days, it’s unclear from which tributary of history we have sprung, in which world we now live.
It shouldn’t be unclear to which world we should aspire.”
― Stephen R. Bown

“It might be, as is sometimes said, that the world heals itself by forgetting. But it can also heal by remembering.”
― Stephen R. Bown, Dominion: The Railway and the Rise of Canada

“It doesn’t seem that an individual being led through a land by the land’s occupants should count as discovering it, except in a personal sense. Mackenzie and his team should more accurately be called travellers. They were not exploring a land devoid of inhabitants; they were touring distant, populated lands for eastern economic interests. They were discovering new markets, which is not to be sneered at, as these were difficult and dangerous expeditions through geography unknown to them and into lands with people of foreign customs who were not necessarily friendly or welcoming to strangers”
― Stephen R. Bown, The Company: The Rise and Fall of the Hudson's Bay Empire

“nascent”
― Stephen R. Bown, The Last Viking: The Life of Roald Amundsen

“This quickly led to a fatalistic attitude. Company trader William Walker wrote in 1781 that “they are frightened of going nigh one to another as soon as they take bad, so the one half for want of indulgencies is starved before they can gather Strength to help themselves. They think when they are once taken bad they need not look for any recovery. So the person that’s bad turns feeble that he cannot walk, they leave them behind when they’re pitching away, and so the poor Soul perishes.” Many travellers, including such astute observers as David Thompson, wrote of how the men in particular, when under the influence of a raging fever, would throw themselves into the freezing water, and thereby perish from exposure.”
― Stephen R. Bown, The Company: The Rise and Fall of the Hudson's Bay Empire

“As the shape and interior of the puzzle became clearer, those who possessed this information began to imagine controlling it. Empires exist because they can be conceived.”
― Stephen R. Bown, The Company: The Rise and Fall of the Hudson's Bay Empire