Standish author pens new children’s book on Arctic explorer Donald Baxter MacMillan.

Mary Morton Cowan, a prolific children’s book author, Westbrook native and 15-year resident of Standish, has just published a new work regarding polar explorer Donald MacMillan.

Cowan – who graduated from Bates College and whose family owned Paris Manufacturing Co. in South Paris – hopes her new book, written for children but suitable for all ages, will add to the knowledge of MacMillan, a humble, big-hearted hero of a man, who has inspired Cowan throughout her life, inspiration she hopes to pass on to the next generation.

Cowan has written three full children’s books, each of which focuses on either the timber industry or Arctic exploration. In addition to her books, Cowan has penned more than 70 articles for such noted children’s magazines as Jack and Jill, Highlights and Cobblestone. Her recent non-fiction children’s book, “Captain Mac, the Life of Donald Baxter MacMillan,” is published by the book arm of Highlights magazine, Calkins Creek.

The Lakes Region Weekly recently sat down with Cowan at her home on Hearthside Road in Standish.

Q: Why write about Donald MacMillan?

A: Because Donald MacMillan was known in my family for as long as I can remember. My great grandfather, Henry Franklin Morton, started a sled factory in South Paris, Maine, way way back before the turn of the last century and they made sleds, Paris Manufacturing Company.

Donald MacMillan was a man who had gone to the Arctic with Robert Peary on Peary’s last North Pole trip and then he decided after that that he wanted to keep going north, so he came to my family’s factory asking for special sleds to be made for him to take to the Arctic. He became friends with the Morton family and that’s how I learned about him.

And when I was a very little girl we went to Boothbay Harbor several summers when he was taking off for the Arctic in his boat, the Schooner Bowdoin, and we went back to Boothbay every time he came back home. So I saw him a few times when I was a kid and I remember him speaking and I remember him showing his movies. So when I took a children’s writing course, one assignment was to think of someone I’d known of to write about and I chose Donald MacMillan, and that was a long time ago.

Q: What were Captain Mac’s local ties?

A: Mac’s first job after graduating from Bowdoin College in 1898 was as a teacher-principal at Levi Hall School, which is now the United Church of Christ at North Gorham. Mac lived with the Manchester family for the two years that he taught there, fall of 1898 through spring 1900.

Q: How long did it take to write this book?

A: Between a lot of other things, I started writing it about 20 years ago. And then when I interviewed men who had sailed north with him on his schooner, it became a different book, because all those men said what a fabulous, fabulous summer they had with this Captain Mac, which is why it’s titled that. So I turned that into a historical novel, which was published in 1995 and titled “Ice Country.” It was a fictional account of a boy going north with Mac. And then I got into writing other things, and I came back to this in 2005. That’s when I put it on the front burner.

Q: Sounds like you can write a book many different ways, then?

A: Donald MacMillan – I’ve written two articles about him and two books. The fictional account was very different. But, after writing about the fictional boy who goes north, which was great fun to write, I wanted Mac’s true story to be told. Young kids today have not probably ever heard of Donald MacMillan. They’ve heard of Robert Peary, because he made it to the pole, supposedly, some refute that. But Peary is credited with being the first successful person to reach the pole, and Donald MacMillan kind of got lost in the shuffle. And it’s because he did not toot his own horn. Period. He was more interested in the Arctic, and the geography, and the people living in the Arctic and the subArctic than himself. So he did not promote himself. He took fabulous photographs and wonderful movies and he showed those all over the country. But he did that not to promote himself, but to raise money to go north again, because he could not resist going north.

I thought he was one of the most reputable, most honorable people I’d ever heard about. And I wanted kids to know about him, because kids don’t have a lot of good role models.

Q: Where did you do your research?

A: I did hundreds of hours of research, both at the Peary/MacMillan Arctic Museum (at Bowdoin College in Brunswick) where a lot of his photos and artifacts are and at the Bowdoin College Library. He wrote a lot: books, diaries, ship’s logs for every trip he ever went on. And he went north from 1908 to 1954, so that’s a long history. And in all that, I could not unearth anything about this man that was not honorable.

Q: What would be some of the dishonorable things other explorers did?

A:Oh, they would fake where they were. I think probably Peary was honorable in that he believed he made it to the pole, but there were questions and all kinds of shrouded material about Robert Peary. But nobody argues with Captain Mac. He was just really remarkable.

Q. Did Mac make it to the pole?

A. He did not. He flew later in 1957, but he never trekked to the pole.

Q. Was that his goal?

A: No.

Q: What was his goal, then?

A. His goal became to learn everything he could learn about the Arctic and subArctic; its people, its geography, its nature and share that with the world. And to do that he had this schooner built, the Schooner Bowdoin, and he took scientists with him. He’d take an ornithologist, an ichthyologist, a botanist, all these people, so he could learn everything he could about the north. And he came back and he shared it, and made reports for the Navy. But he was just forever learning more, and more, and more, about the Arctic.

Q: What has been the response so far to your book?

A: So far, so good. It’s just come out. The men that I interviewed for the book and gave copies to are very pleased with it, with the accuracy of it.

Q: How old are those men?

A: They’re in their 90s. One is in his 80s.

Q: Did you feel like you had to write it now?

A: Yes, you can’t wait much longer and talk to these guys. But a lot of them have died, including MacMillan’s widow, whom I interviewed in 1995 for the first book, “Ice Country,” and I’m glad I did because she died a short time after.

Q: Sounds like you use many primary sources.

A: Yes, absolutely. I interviewed close to a dozen people who sailed with him directly. And then, of course, all of his personal letters and diaries are primary sources. My own copy of the manuscript had 1,603 footnotes, so this was a tremendous amount of research.

Q: For a children’s book? You don’t think of children’s books as being footnoted.

A: I know. But that’s not true in non-fiction. The publishers feel, and I agree, that with children’s non-fiction, it’s critically important to get it right. I kind of say, adults are on their own, we can read and decipher what we want to know out of something, but children don’t. Children soak in whatever they read, and they believe it, so you have to make it true.

Q: How are you publicizing the book?

A: I want to take it to as many schools as I can get into. I have a lot of information and some artifacts to share with kids. Fifth grade, sixth grade, middle school, high school. Actually Maine Maritime College, which owns the (Schooner Bowdoin) now, wants to use it in their college classes. The people in Provincetown, Mass., where Mac was born, are excited to have something, anything about him. No non-fiction children’s book has been written about him. I want to take it to community groups: Rotary, Kiwanis. Senior college. I want to share it with everybody. I think Mac is a guy people should know.

Q: Is there a renewed interest in Arctic explorers?

A: There is. Partly because 2009 was the 100th anniversary of the discovery of the pole and MacMillan was on that expedition. That was Mac’s first trip north, with Robert Peary. And there’s also renewed interest because of climate change. In fact, I have a quote in the book about that. Mac knew it was warming. He was watching the ice recede. Every year, it was less.

Q: What is your writing schedule?

A: Everyday I write some. If I don’t write something on the book I’m working on everyday, I forget it, and I have to back up, and I don’t want to have to spend time backing up.

Q: Are you working on another book?

A: I’m working on a historical fiction book on logging. I go back and forth between the Arctic and the woods. And this one is World War I historical fiction set in a logging camp in northern New Hampshire. My dad grew up in a logging camp, so that’s what sparked my interest in it.

Q: Pretty rugged topics, eh?

A: Somebody asked me one time, and it probably was for a previous logging book I wrote called “Timber,” why would a girl like this book? And my answer was, a girl wrote it. I don’t know why I pick these topics. So far, of the three books I’ve had published, and the fourth one I’m working on, they’re either about the woods or the Arctic. And they’re connected, because as I’ve told you, Mac came to the Paris Manufacturing Company asking for special sleds to be made that you carry your gear on. The family company was in wood products, and you don’t get wood without having a logging camp. So they’re all connected. Mac wanted sleds, and my grandfather made sleds, and my family lived in a logging camp.

Q: Was Mac privately wealthy? How did he afford all these trips to the Arctic?

A: No, he was privately poor. He scrounged; he got sponsors. He had friends with money. Any money that he made, he spent to go back to the Arctic.

Q: Sounds like he was a missionary to the Arctic almost? Raising money and then going back into the field?

A: Almost. It was a mission that he had. He went all over the country doing illustrated lectures, which is what they called them at that time. We would call them travelogues. And he’d raise money, and all that money would go back into going north.

Q: You write that Captain Mac had a couple scrapes with polar bears, a walrus, and icebergs. His times in the Arctic were often grueling and dangerous. What drove him to such dangerous lengths do you think?

A: He was orphaned. He lost both parents by the time he was 12. So that probably colored it. He probably figured, I’ve lost the big things in life, I’m not scared of death. He wasn’t worried about dying. He was willing to take risks, because why not? When he went north, he was prepared for the very worst, but he hoped for the best, and he found it.

Mary Morton Cowan, author of “Captain Mac,” sits in her writer’s study with a copy of her new book. The children’s non-fiction book, which is available online and at area bookstores, took the Standish author nearly five years to write.
Staff photo by John Balentine