To the Arctic by Canoe records the experiences of a remarkable young adventurer during the first overland Arctic expedition led by Sir John Franklin. This expedition was the first to travel the northern coast of North America's Arctic; in two birch-bark canoes the party surveyed no less than 675 miles of Arctic coastline.

When supplies ran out, the return trek across the Barrens became one of the most tragic incidents in the history of Arctic exploration. Robert Hood was one of those who perished on this trip. Weakened by starvation, he was shot through the head by a member of the party turned cannibal.

A highly sensitive and educated man with a painter's eye for detail, Hood was an astute observer of the political and social ways of the North. The journal reveals his awareness, unusual in his time, of the adverse effects on Native peoples and their environment of the coming of the Europeans. Hood's paintings capture the beauty as well as the harshness of the North. His bird paintings in particular are of special artistic and historical interest.