stefansson-wrangel-09-13-039

Seeing him

TORONTO, ONTARIO, 1107 Bank of Hamilton Bldg., September 11th, 1923.

Vilhjalmur Stefansson Esq., New Court, Middle Temple, London W.C.2, England.

Dear Stefansson:-

I have just returned from the Pacific Coast and have received your interesting letters and all your cables promptly.

I am sure you have had a very trying time in your negotiations in England, but I hope that you have been compensated in some degree by the number of interesting people that you have met, and by the kindness that I am sure has been shown you in many quarters.

I think you are thoroughly in touch with everything of importance that has taken place, and I cabled you on Saturday and gave you to the best of my ability the present situation.

I am enclosing now a clipping from the Mail & Empire of Saturday which is unnecessarily vicious - so it seems to me - also a clipping from the Star of September 4th in which Mr. Tyrrell is quoted as having made some unkind statements that might well enough be left unsaid, but, in the main, the press has been remarkably free from personal references.

The whole public are naturally sympathetic with Crawford.

I have written to both Noice and LeBourdais as per copies attached, and I expect to hear from Noice about the 14th or 15th, and I hope to have him in Toronto about the 20th. We will know then what records he has brought with him, and what value these are likely to have to the newspapers and magazines. I have a fear that Crawford has taken his diary with him and that they are probably gone.

Vilhjalmur Stefansson Esq .. -2

Immediately on my arrival in Toronto I called upon Mr. and Mrs. Crawford and did what I could to encourage them in the hope that Allan Crawford might still be alive, and I really felt this hope until reading in the Star to-day the attached article by Noice dated September 8th and appearing as having been sent from Akutan.

Allan’s parents are very much cut up over his reported death, but they have nothing but sympathy for you and do not in any way share the opinion that has been expressed in one or two sections of the press that we are to blame for Crawford’s untimely end.

I am leaving for Chicago and will ask you to excuse me from writing more at this time.

Meanwhile with our very best to you, and hoping to see you soon on this side, I remain,

Yours sincerely.

A.J.T. Taylor

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