Books, Big Ideas, Q&As

Beardmore Viking hoax highlights importance of questioning power, authorities, says author

It took two decades and the efforts of a high school teacher and a government geologist to debunk what leading scholars accepted, and defended, as history-altering fact.

A Library and Archives photograph, dated to 1936—the year the Royal Ontario Museum acquired the Beardmore relics—of the Leitch Gold Mines in Beardmore, Ont. James Edward Dodd, who sold the Beardmore relics to the museum for $500, held other claims in the area. Canada Department of Mines and Technical Surveys/Library and Archives Canada

Feature

BY LAURA RYCKEWAERT

December 17, 2018

The saga of Northern Ontario’s Beardmore relics marks a curious chapter in Canadian history, and it's one that author and historian Douglas Hunter explores and unravels in his latest novel, Beardmore: The Viking Hoax That Rewrote History. “Hoaxes are great detective stories, and the bo...

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