The Infatuation with the North:

Haycock made at least one and often two or three trips to the Arctic every year after retirement in 1965. His love of the north seemed to increase with each trip. Exhibitions were now held wherever he painted Yellowknife, Whitehorse, Alert, Thule, and Eureka to name a few. His work captured the feeling of the landscape. He was able to depict form and movement with powerful brush strokes. His paintings were and are immediately embraced by all familiar with the subject area of the country.

By the 1970's Haycock had become fascinated with early exploration in the Arctic. When he had originally gone north in 1926, he was actually a part of those early explorations. Other countries were mapping northern islands as well, and Canadian sovereignty of the Arctic Archipelago depended on Canada mapping and establishing RCMP outposts on the Arctic Islands. Now, in his travels Haycock was seeing well preserved cairns, remains of ships, dwellings, gravesites and caches from those days and centuries earlier. There were even remains of the early Denbigh Culture, ancestors of the Inuit, who migrated from Russia over four thousand years ago.

Haycock began a new quest. He desired to paint the history of the North. He absorbed everything he could about early settlement, the Search for the Northwest Passage, and especially the Franklin Expedition whose fate is still being unraveled. He acquired a large library of documents and was instrumental in several discoveries including the sunken barque Breadalbane in 1980. He also put together a huge collection of his own historical and geographical photographs, movies, slides, videos, and audio recordings.

And he amassed a phenomenal collection of paintings telling a story of early Inuit settlements, white man's exploration, and vast powerful vistas of land and sea.