On Display: The Inuit carvers and their translator at the 1959 Stratford Festival Exhibitions tells another part of the life of J. David and Ruth Ford. Native Born Son: The Journals of J. David Ford, Marnie Hare Bickle’s first book, recounted Ford’s early life growing up in the East Arctic. On Display takes place almost 30 years later after J. David’s time as a Hudson’s Bay Company trapper/trader and in the Second World War. He has married his war-years pen pal Ruth Hawkins and they are living in Canton, Ontario north of Port Hope.

J. David Ford was hired by the federal government to translate for two Inuit carvers who travelled from Cape Dorset (Kinngait) to Baffin Island to demonstrate their craft for the duration of the Stratford Shakespearean Theatre’s Festival Exhibitions in 1959. Ford and the carvers enjoy meeting hundreds of visitors to the exhibit, an introduction and chat with Queen Elizabeth II and Prince Philip and spending time with the Shakespearean actors.

This small exquisitely presented book captures the story of a magical summer for Kiwak Ashoona and Eegyvudluk Pootoogook, the carvers, through Ford’s letters home to his wife are interspersed with archival pictures, photos, clippings, a letter in Inuktitut by Ashoona and a recollection by his daughter, Goota Ashoona, the renown sculptor of the largest Inuit sculpture to date that resides at the entrance of the Winnipeg Art Gallery’s new Inuit Centre, Qaumajuq.