THUNDER BAY - On July 9, 1845, Warrant Officer John Gregory, an engineer aboard HMS Erebus, sent a letter from Greenland to his wife Hannah before sailing off with the ill-fated Franklin Expedition into the Canadian Arctic and into an enduring historical mystery.
For 176 years that letter was the last Gregory’s descendants had known about his journey, but now they have an ending to his story, as his remains have become the first from the expedition to be identified genetically with the help of researchers at Lakehead University’s Paleo-DNA Lab.
“Everybody wants to know what happened. That’s the big question,” said Stephen Fratpietro, technical manager at the Centre for Analytical Services Paleo-DNA Laboratory.