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Essay: 1912 -- The Last Great Year
In 1912, a door was swinging shut on the age of classic northern land-based travel. The world was on the brink of unprecedented global conflict. Technology, spurred by the these forces, produced flying machines that would forever change canoe travel in Canada's north.
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Oberholtzer |
It was the final thrust of a romantic and arduous era. Some of these 1912 trips remain alive thanks to superb books that appeared about them. It is amazing that accounts, like the Oberholtzer one (opposite page) can still pop up almost a century later. The Hide-Away Canoe Club has been privileged to follow in the footsteps of two of them - George Douglas and Robert Flaherty.
George Douglas' book Lands Forlorn is perhaps the finest example of northern canoe travel at the end of its classic era. When we re-did Douglas' traverse from Great Bear Lake to the mouth of the Coppermine River in 1991, 80 years after Douglas left on his two year sojourn, we could not duplicate the trip before the trip i.e. the traditional way of heading north before the advent of the airplane. Lands Forlorn shows and tells of the journey north from Edmonton to Athabasca Landing and the trip down the Athabasca, Slave and Mackenzie rivers that was part of the day's routine to thousands but was a trip in itself.
Many people are surprised at how busy the north was back then. There was a sophisticated transportation system of steamers and stagecoaches. And a lot of people were on the move north in 1912. On the stage ride to Athabasca Landing Douglas' party was joined by noted author Robert Service who was on his way up the Rat River and through McDougall Pass. When Douglas disembarked at Fort Norman, John Hornby was there, just finishing a trip of several years with Englishman John Melville.
Indeed, a photo near the front of Lands Forlorn shows the only photo of another noted trip of that era, the Radford & Street Expedition. Harry Radford, a American on a botanical survey of the north, hired Thomas George Street in Smith Landing to accompany him on a trip across the Barrens via the Hanbury and Thelon rivers. They later hired two Inuit guides who subsequently killed the pair near Bathurst Inlet. A RCMP investigation did not charge the natives who had been aggravated by Radford. Oblate Missionaries Rouviere and LeRoux, who crossed paths with Douglas and were guided by Hornby would later perish by the same fate - which did not remain unpunished.
George Douglas accurately captures in words and photos the look and feel of that era. It is truly a shame that his book has never been reprinted and is a hard-to-find and expensive prize.
Robert Flaherty also produced a book on his northern travels but he's more famous for something else. In 1912 he made a second traverse of the Ungava Peninsula going up the Payne and Vachon rivers and down to the village of Povungnituk (now called Puvirnituq) by what he called the Povungnituk River. We retraced much of that route and found, as we had assumed, the Povungnituk River that Flaherty named is not the one on the maps of today.
His book, My Eskimo Friends, tells of his northern experiences in Quebec. It is a wonderful book with some exquisite photographic portraits but is also a rare book and never reprinted. What Flaherty is really well known for is the movie he made in the region - Nanook of the North - filmed near what was then called Port Harrison (Inukjuak).
All these expeditions. Each coming at the tail end of their historic tradition, met people living on the land - who also were living at the end of an era. The nomadic lifestyle of Inuit and Chipewyans was about to end and Douglas, Flaherty, Oberholtzer each recorded these people and their ancient bond to the land that would be forever changed because they would no longer constantly roam across it.
For many northern paddlers, traveling through the limitless Barrengrounds means coming intensely close to the land and not seeing any people. That is quite the reverse of what a 1912 paddler could count on. In Lands Forlorn, some of the most remarkable of George Douglas' superb photos show Coronation Gulf Inuit hunting ptarmigan with bow and arrows.
His portraits of them show their completely organic clothing, spears, bows - living and prospering with merely what the land afforded them. Within a couple of generations that lifestyle would move as far as Europeans did in 2000 years. It may help answer some of the question about societal stresses in the north.
1912 was a cusp, a portal-a push from the brink of one age of mankind to another. We shall not see its like again.
This story first appeared in Che-Mun Outfit 104 in 2001.
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