Never mind, I rolled up my sleeves and with a bit more googling and I came up with this entry from Canadian Encyclopedia which seems to fit the bill (the right dates, Ottawa (where Morse lived), journalist, connection to the north, editor of a book about the north, "The Unbelievable Land," and the Irving is usually put as an an initial in all the library entires, so likely not used to address him every day. That was fun. [h=1]Smith, Irving Norman[/h] Irving Norman Smith, journalist, author (b at Ottawa, Ont 28 Oct 1909; d there 28 Jan 1989). He was a newspaperman for more than 40 years, mostly with the Ottawa Journal, where he began 1928. In the 1960s, following his father, E. Norman Smith, he became editor, then president, of the paper and did much to make it more than the party organ it had been. Also interested in the North, Smith served for a time on the NWT Council and edited The Unbelievable Land, a collection of essays about the Arctic.
Yellowcanoe, enjoy the read. The part about the loss of the portage on the Dog River-Savanne route (part of the Kamanistiquia River route west from Fort William) always made me upset. Since I was a kid and read my sister's copy of this book, I've always had a secret childish dream of going there and trudging through the swampy bush and blowdown there and finding some sign of the old portage, like an old clay pipe or some fur trade relic exposed in the roots of a tree, and thereby reconnecting the historical route across Canada.
