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1955: A Tale of Two Trips
A look back at the season of Arthur Moffatt's ill-fated Dubawnt expedition and The Voyageurs Churchill run
By MICHAEL PEAKE Che-Mun Editor
It was the best of trips, it was the worst of trips. With apologies to Charles Dickens, it can be said that 1955 produced two northern canoe expeditions that defined a century.
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Art Moffatt's grave in Baker Lake
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A northern trip in that era was a relatively rare thing. But two groups of six men ventured north that summer on a pair of completely different trips which had repercussions still felt today. Both had books and stories written about them and here, almost a half century later at the dawn of a new millennium, it is worth another look at both.
In one group was Arthur Moffatt and his crew of young men who set out to paddle the Dubawnt River in its entirety over the course of the summer. The second was the group known as The Voyageurs who paddled a section of the fur trade route on the Churchill and Sturgeon-Weir rivers.
The two groups could scarcely have been more disparate. American Moffatt, 36, a relatively experienced outdoorsman took along a group of young men, most barely out of their teens. They were his minions. He was the Leader of the trip down to the the fact that he even had a much larger eating bowl than everyone else. He called the shots, decided the route, menu and travel schedule.
The Voyageurs also had a leader. Sigurd Olson, 55, was a well-known U.S. writer and advocate for wilderness but he was also a highly experienced woodsman. His fellow paddlers, all in or nearing their fifties, were likewise highly successful men in their own fields. Many were experienced canoemen. They respected Olson as their "Bourgeois" but the honour of that position also meant decisions were achieved by consensus, not fiat.
Olson wrote about the group's progress down the Churchill in his classic book, The Lonely Land. It was some time before a book by one of the Moffatt team appeared. George Grinnell penned A Death on the Barrens in 1996. Like the trips, the two books are poles apart. Olson's carefully crafted prose is crisp, clean and evocative of the northern canoeing experience of the time. It speaks of friendship, purity and a love of the land. Grinnell's polemic, begins on the beauty of the Barrens but descends into a tortured and cynical view of the world.
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The Voyageurs at the end of the Churchill trip;
l-r Rodger, Lovink, Olson, Morse, Solandt, Coolican.
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Of course, the Moffatt trip is now best remembered for the death of its leader. Arthur Moffatt drowned on September 14 on a rapid they had no business running that late in the year. He is buried in Baker Lake.
The trip schedule seemed non-existent. The weeks had flown by during the brief Arctic summer as they dawdled across the landscape.
The Voyageurs, although 30 years older on average, completed a 500 mile trip from Ile-a-la-Crosse on the Churchill to Cumberland House on the Saskatchewan River in 21 days. Despite near flood conditions, they had no mishaps, no accidents, no unplanned adventures.
For many of us, The Voyageurs were, and remain, a shining example of how a wilderness trip should be conducted-properly planned, perfectly executed with an awareness of the history and natural beauty of the area. Moffatt's crew, were no doubt spellbound by the Barrens, but perhaps their leader found it too intoxicating.
Sig Olson and his Voyageurs; Eric Morse, Tony Lovink, Omond Solandt, Blair Fraser, Elliott Rodger, Denis Coolican and Tyler Thompson were a vital lynch pin of history. They linked the sensibilities of the 19th century with the century they paddled in. They were born into an time that considered wilderness an enemy, something to be tamed and mastered. They helped foster our latter 20th century appreciation for the wilderness and to advocate its protection. From their sensibilities came Bill Mason and many others. But it was, and had to be, The Voyageurs who helped forge that vital link.
Sig's son Robert Olson, responding to a dedication of a plaque to his late father from The Voyageurs, said it best, "But, above all I think, you were Voyageurs of comradeship and camaraderie. You knew again what it meant to be men, to work and play, to strive together, to share the burdens and the laughter of the trail. And you forged in those days bonds that go beyond friendship and memories which can never fade. . . When in future days we might wander down to this spot and see this plaque now firmly and forever set in the living rock, we shall think of those things. . . of the Voyageurs and their exploits now passing into legend, but especially of their spirit which lives on and which has already enriched immeasurably the lives of us all."
This article first appeared in Che-Mun Outfit 99
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