Fonds consists of three textual series: Correspondence, Manuscripts, and Whaling Journal.
Fonds also consists of photographs depicting personnel of the R.N.W.M.P. detachment, Cape Fullerton, Northwest Territories; skulls of members of the Franklin Expedition, King William Island, Northwest Territories.
Fonds also includes sound recordings which consists of 4 episodes of CBC children's radio program Adventures of Ookpik entitled: Ookpik meets the lynx and the White-tailed deer; The weasel and the wolf; The moose and beaver; and Ookpik re-visits the wolf pack.
Copland, Dudley, 1902- : Dudley Copland, fur trader, author, and arctic advisor, grew up in the whaling port of Peterhead in Northeastern, Scotland, a traditional recruiting point for the Hudson's Bay Company. He signed on with the Company for a five year term as an apprentice clerk in 1923 at the age of 21. Copland served with the Company for the next 17 years becoming fluent in Inuktituk. His first posting was to Chesterfield Inlet on Hudson Bay. He served at many posts in the Eastern Arctic including Lake Harbour, Fort Chimo, Coral Harbour and Frobisher Bay rising to the rank of Section Manager for Southern Baffin Island and briefly for Ungava. He was promoted to District Manager of the Western Arctic based in Aklavik in 1935, where he moved with his wife. He was moved to Edmonton and then to Winnipeg, where he served his last year with the Company as their Arctic advisor.
He joined the RCAF in 1940 as a Squadron Leader, responsible for establishing radio bases and posts in Northern Newfoundland, the Labrador Coast and Ungava Bay. He was named a Member of the British Empire-Military Division in 1945. He served with the Department of National Defence until his retirement as a northern advisor. He wrote the first Arctic survival handbook for the (DEW) Distant Early Warning Line personnel entitled Living in the Arctic.
Dudley Copland was a prolific author and broadcaster. He was heard for many years on CBC radio in the North. His most popular program was "Ookpik the Arctic Owl" a children's program which he broadcast in a series of over 200 programs. He published the book Ookpik: The Oogling Arctic Owl, 1963. This book encouraged the production of fur Ookpiks by the Inuit on a large scale. Copland published Livingstone of the Arctic, 1967, a biography of L.D. Livingstone, a pioneer doctor of the Mackenzie Delta and his own autobiography Coplalook, Chief Trader, Hudson's Bay Company 1923-1939, 1985 and numerous periodical articles.
