Joseph Elzer Bernier

Joseph Elzer Bernier was born in January 1852 at L'Islet on the southern shore of the St Lawrence river. At the age of 14 he made his first voyages clocking up over a hundred before becoming governor in a Quebec jail. He spent his time on shore reading about Arctic exploration and formed a desire to be the first to reach the North Pole and sail the Northwest Passage. In the end he achieved neither feat but he did conduct a series of voyages around the Canadian Eastern Arctic in Arctic the onetime expedition ship of the German South Polar Expedition, 1901-1903 (then named Gauss . Bernier died in December 1934

From the guide to the Joseph Bernier collection, 1919, (Scott Polar Research Institute, University of Cambridge)