Parks Canada, Inuit ink deal on Franklin artifacts

OTTAWA • Parks Canada and the Inuit Heritage Trust have come to an agreement on how the artifacts from the ill-fated Franklin expedition will be preserved and studied.

All artifacts from the wrecks of HMS Erebus and HMS Terror will be protected based on traditional Inuit knowledge and presented publicly from an Inuit perspective.

Every effort will be made to have the artifacts displayed in Nunavut under the agreement signed Monday.

Any museums or cultural institutions that want to study or exhibit the artifacts plucked from the sunken shipwrecks will only be able to do so on a temporary basis.

Sir John Franklin and 129 men left England on the two ships in 1845 on a search for a northern passage connecting the Atlantic and Pacific oceans.

The ships, however, became ice-bound and were abandoned by the crew, none of whom returned to England.

The final resting place of both ships and the full story of what happened to them was one of the world’s most enduring mysteries. Canada launched a new effort to locate the ships in 2007.

Inuit guides helped Parks Canada officials find the Erebus in shallow waters off the coast of King William Island in 2014. The Terror was found two years later about 100 kilometres away.

The two ships make up a massive and complex underwater archeological site that still contains thousands of artifacts, which the United Kingdom gifted to Canada last year.

Sixty-five artifacts already recovered from Erebus — including parts of clothing, boots, plates and the ship’s bell — remain British property.

JUSTIN TANG / THE CANADIAN PRESS FILES The ship’s bell from the HMS Erebus sits in pure water. Parks Canada and the Inuit Heritage Trust have come to an agreement on how the artifacts from the ill-fated Franklin expedition will be preserved and studied.