A Long River Through A Lonely Land

by G. B. Spenceley

It all started on Windermere. It was Tom’s suggestion that we spent the week-end on the water rather than the mountains. As Warden of the Outward Bound Mountain School in Eskdale, Tom Price had made a courtesy visit to a similar establishment in Minnesota and had learned the rudiments of Canadian canoeing. On his return, he bought a canoe of his own and was anxious for more. As he explained: “You don’t have to hump your kit around; the canoe does it for you.”

We launched his boat into the Brathay and headed for the lake. It was a hot and sunny June day and, as we gently paddled through the placid waters, leisurely skirting islands with near-naked beauties sunning on the banks, I agreed with Tom; this was a delightfully relaxed mode of travel, admirably suited to more than middle-aged mountaineers. It was then that I fell for his suggestion of a river in the Canadian North.

But Canada is a long way to go merely to find good canoeing. If we were to travel so far, it must be no ordinary river. We must pretend it was an expedition, if not of genuine exploration, at least a challenge of wilderness travel: a long river that would give five or six weeks of travel through remote, wild and little known country. Anything less, we could find much nearer home.

Naturally, it was Northwest Territory that fired our imagination; thirteen times the area of the British Isles and with a population of no more than a medium-sized English town, there was remoteness and space enough. We corresponded at length with Nick Nickels, Canada’s leading authority on wilderness canoeing, being careful to give no hint of our lack of skill. No doubt taking us to be experienced canoeists, he guardedly suggested the Hanbury and Thelon Rivers. Later, he was to retract his recommendation when he learned there were only two in the party—perhaps also he was beginning to suspect our amateur status. But by then we were committed and anyway we believed in the sound principle of planning boldly and executing prudently.

Having said that, I think we were both secretly worried. We were not so much concerned by the length of the journey and its remoteness, but with wild water and our limited ability to cope with this unfamiliar element. A few minutes’ immersion in water where last winter’s ice might still be lingering could be serious. Even worse, with the loss of the canoe and its cargo, the chances of survival would be remote indeed. Possibly we were being too ambitious, but I pinned great faith in Tom’s judgement and the measure of skill he had already acquired. No doubt Tom held some unjustified faith in my ability to learn lessons quickly.

That immense stretch of tundra that extends across the top of mainland Canada from Hudson Bay almost to the Mackenzie is usually called the Barren Grounds. The name suits it well. Except for the few weeks of high summer when the land bursts into colour and life, it is an endless empty space of rolling plain, shattered rocks, countless lakes and twisting rivers. For most of the year, it is held in the terrible desolate grip of winter.

Of the many river systems that give some pattern to the Barren Grounds, one of the longest is the Hanbury and Thelon. Together they form the best west-east canoe route through Arctic Canada; only the Back River compares in length and remoteness. The Hanbury River rises just over the watershed north-east of Great Slave Lake and, in the very heart of the Barrens, joins the Thelon which continues east, linking a series of considerable lakes, to empty into Chesterfield Inlet. In selecting this route, we should be following in the footsteps, or rather paddle strokes, of some earlier British travellers of unusual interest.

David Hanbury, now an almost forgotten English explorer, arrived on the Canadian scene in the late 19th century and, among a series of remarkable journeys, mostly with Eskimo companions, was the first to canoe the Thelon and the river which now bears his name. Of more poignant interest, the Thelon will always be associated with the name of more recent British travellers: John Hornby, an eccentric Englishman who, in his own lifetime, became a legend in the North, and a schoolboy from Dover College, whose deeply moving diary documented the story of a tragic winter that would otherwise have gone almost unnoticed. But more of that later. Of recent parties down these rivers, there have been quite a few Canadian and American, but no British since John Hornby’s party. No, it would not be exploration, but certainly a far cry from Windermere!

I was on the scene some weeks before Tom’s arrival, but I was not long alone. The Thelon has a reputation in the North and, when news got around that two Englishmen were bound on a venture so apparently bold (or foolhardy), much help was offered. In Edmonton, I bought six weeks’ food and, to a carefully considered ration plan earlier worked out, packed it in six 14 man-day bags, each item doubly waterproofed. This was dispatched the 1,000 miles north to Yellowknife.

Our chief concern was air transport. This was essential, for to start from Fort Reliance at the east end of Great Slave Lake and paddle and portage over the watershed, as the pioneers had done, would take too many weeks of an all too short summer, with the awful prospect of being frozen in before journey’s end. The pioneers had been prepared to winter and survive, if but precariously, on the profits of net, trap and rifle. Some, as we shall see, had not survived. Our journey was to be modest in comparison with those of earlier days. A light float plane could lob us down on some lake near the Hanbury’s source thus, in a few hours, cutting out some 300 miles of difficult and tedious travel. It would leave us just 500 miles of canoeing to the Eskimo settlement of Baker Lake which, even with the prospect of many unnavigable rapids and delaying winds, was a reasonable journey in the weeks available. Our concern was not over the necessity or availability of air transport, but the high cost of charter.

But friendliness is endemic in the Canadian North; opportunities offered, doors opened more readily than elsewhere.
 
Gateway Aviation agreed that $800 was a lot of money for the impoverished British and suggested I try the Army. Major Sprule was helpful. Yes, they had a Twin Otter and would be delighted to fly us out just as soon as the schedule permitted. Sadly this was not soon enough. It seemed we were committed to heavy expenditure. We would have been indeed if, by some favourable chance, I had not got off the lift at the wrong floor on my way up the Federal Building. I found myself on the floor below the one I required and met the one man in Yellow-knife who could help us. This was Doug Mackie, Air Transport Officer for the Indian and Northern Affairs Department. Surprisingly he seemed satisfied as to our fitness for the enterprise and casually remarked that he had a single engined Beaver on Charter. “Would that help?” he asked. “It should be available at the week-end.”

It was with this glad news that I was able to welcome Tom to Yellowknife on the 15th July, looking as if he were ready to step straight into a canoe. Instead he was swept into the social whirl that I had been enjoying for some days. We took off from Yellowknife on the 19th July, the 17-ft. Grummon alloy canoe lashed to one float, a practice the illegality of which is ignored by the bush pilots. We refuelled at the tiny Indian settlement of Snowdrift, hand-pumping the fuel from drums. Another two hours of flying over a vast water-laced wilderness and we landed on Hanbury Lake. We made camp at the head of the first rapids, where the Hanbury River exits from the eastern shore.

Until that moment, I think we had forgotten that devastating curse of the North: insect pests. They rose from the lichen at our feet and hung like a malevolent mist around us, both mosquito and black fly, the latter, not merely biting but with each bite taking a lump of us away with them. They flew into our mouths and nostrils, they found their way through the tiniest rift in our clothing, but their favourite place was the ear where they spun and tumbled deep down near the drum. Repellents and nets offered limited protection, and we could only arm ourselves with that most important of weapons: sheer resignation.

We cooked our meal and, like any novice in the North, we picked out black fly from food and drink, a futile task we soon abandoned. While Tom made a reconnaissance of the rapids, I fished at their head with a spinner almost as large as any fish I had previously caught. With my first cast, I hooked a monstrous lake trout (or salmon trout here) that leapt out of the water and promptly broke the line. This sad end to my efforts was to be repeated many times in the days ahead. These waters may offer the best sport fishing in the world, but required more skill, or stronger line, than I possessed.

The last but inescapable extremity of the canoeist is to portage, and on our first day there were more hours of this than paddling. Each required three relays of 80 lb. loads, the most unmanageable being the canoe. Carried inverted and balanced on two shoulder pads, one was highly vulnerable to wind. At other times we lined the canoe down on ropes fore and aft, through fast water we dared not yet run. Less confident in a canoe than on a mountain slope, and with more at stake, we were very cautious in those early days. We did run one rapid that first day and the outcome was not encouraging. Unskilled in swift control, we hit a rock, the canoe tilted and Tom fell out. The output of that first day of travel was a mere 10 miles. We would have to do better than that!

We did indeed do better on most days: 17 miles the next, and 27 the day after. There were still portages and rapids, but we were gaining some small degree of confidence and skill—or at least Tom was. At all difficult or dangerous places, he was the captain of the vessel, taking the rear position where he could exert more control. My task in the front was to shout directions as to route. It was exhilarating travel. Once committed to the current, there was no escape; one was swept inexorably forward at a speed which, from our low kneeling position, seemed highly alarming.

We delighted in our remoteness from human life, although perhaps privately a little fearful lest something go wrong. Nowhere on the Continent is there a place more isolated than the heart of the Barrens through which we now travelled. The nearest settlement, occupied cabin or tent, must now be some hundreds of miles away. Or so we thought until one day we swept round a corner and saw a canoe on the shore. On the bank behind were two wild and ragged Frenchmen crouching amid the bloody remains of two dismembered caribou.

Their enterprise in length and boldness put ours to shame. The convenience of an air lift was not for them, nor the security of adequate rations. No doubt inspired by the tales of the pioneers, with little more than a bag of flour, a rod and rifle, they had set out to cross the Barrens as few had done before, and none now ever did, relying entirely on the fruits of their hunting. Some weeks earlier, with ice still in the Lakes, they had left Fort Reliance. Twice they had capsized in stormy waters and swum ashore, narrowly escaping death from cold. They had meagre luck with their fishing and less with their hunting. Only the day before, weak with hunger, they had managed to shoot two young caribou. They were now resting up and regaining strength while drying slices of the flesh on stones in the sun. We exchanged porridge and potato flour with them in return for tender caribou steaks, and went on our way feeling rather humbled. We were to meet once again at Helen Falls, where a disaster befell them that might easily have ended their journey and their lives.

Our two hardest days of travel, and least rewarding in distance, were still to come. On one we covered only five miles— although we walked twenty—and on the next day a mere seven. It was portaging that delayed us. The longest of these was Dickson Canyon, a narrow and deep cleft through which the water furiously boiled for over three miles. That night, too tired to seek a better site, we camped in a place more than usually plagued with pests, the black fly pinging against face and tent like lead shot. By now, we were almost unrecognisable. We peered through narrow slits in faces grossly bloated and our bodies were mottled with a pattern of itching, swollen sores.

The fifth day of travel, with more portaging, brought us to Helen Falls. We approached them cautiously, which was just as well, for they were preceded by a five-foot step. We carried round this, then lined the canoe down in water increasing in speed to the head of the falls. There the river narrowed and leapt 25 feet into the canyon below where it continued at high speed along a boulder-strewn floor.

We had hardly established ourselves in camp above the falls when the Frenchmen came into sight. Paddling at a furious pace like veteran Voyageurs, they failed to see the step until too late. They were swept over it and capsized. Somehow they struggled ashore to the opposite bank but the canoe and its load continued at increasing speed down the centre of the torrent to plunge over the falls into the gorge below. So deep was the fall, so wild the water, we did not doubt it would be a total loss. The ultimate disaster, the nightmare that haunts the thoughts of any wilderness canoeist, had occurred, not to us thank goodness, but to two others for whose survival we must now be responsible.

But by a miracle we were to be spared this duty. Some distance down the canyon, dented but otherwise undamaged, we found the canoe wedged between boulders on our bank. We easily recovered it, one pack still intact inside. Others tied together were stuck between stones some way out from the shore. Tom lowered the canoe out on a rope and, using this to brace myself against the current, I was soon able to recover them. By a freak of fortune, we had all been saved from an unpleasant if not also serious situation.

Another portage and perhaps 25 miles of pleasant fast paddling and we reached the junction with the Thelon River. It had taken us six days to travel the first 100 miles, but there had been many portages and more miles of lining in rapids too perilous to run. We had 400 miles still to go, but the main difficulties were over; our chief concerns now were delaying winds and swell and surf in the big lakes further east.

At the junction with the Thelon and for 50 miles beyond, there was a strange change in the clothing of the landscape. Where elsewhere it was tundra bare of all but tiny growth, now on both sides of the river there was a line of sturdy spruce. This is that strange oasis of the Barrens, an island of comparative fertility, where tundra and tree line merge. This is the place for which John Hornby, our last British predecessor, was making for his winter quarters fifty years earlier.

On our second day of travel down the Thelon, we found the remains of the cabin, a rectangle of rough hewn logs set back a little from the river. It looked down on a grand sweep of the broad Thelon beside which musk ox now grazed. Small colourful arctic flowers grew in fantastic abundance. It was a peaceful and beautiful scene, but this was the stage on which was played the tragedy of that long drawn out winter and delayed spring of 1926-27, a human drama in which all the qualities of fortitude, courage, self-sacrifice and devotion were fully displayed. Three mounds of earth and stones and the three crude wooden crosses told of the final outcome.

Everyone north of Edmonton has heard of John Hornby. The son of a well known Lancashire and English cricketer, he went to Canada in 1904 and became obsessed with the mystique of the Barren Grounds. For years he wandered alone in the North like an animal, wintering in caves, living off the land. Prodigious in endurance, he sought hunger and hardship for their own sake, as others would comfort. In twenty years of travel, he had become a living legend.

But Hornby, with all his wealth of experience and uncanny knack of surviving, lacked foresight and judgement. This fatal weakness was all too evident on his last journey. In the summer of 1926, he appeared on Great Slave Lake with two unlikely companions: one Harold Adlard, an ex-RAF pilot, the other his second cousin Edgar Christian, an 18 year-old schoolboy from Dover College. With these two novices he proposed to do what not even the boldest trapper would consider: to winter on the Thelon. They left Fort Reliance in late July; they were never seen alive again.

The lifeblood of the Barren Grounds is caribou. Back and forth, from timber to tundra, the herds flow like a great tide. But the caribou are fickle. It is an unpredictable flow even if rhythmic. The caribou may pass the same spot in the same month for a dozen years running and the next year not come at all. For good reason it is sometimes called the land of feast or famine.

For the three men who built their cabin on the banks of the Thelon, it was a land of famine. A little meat and fish they found, but the caribou migration on which they depended had passed them by. An R.C.M.P. patrol found their bodies two years later, two rolled in blankets outside, one on his bunk within the cabin. The details of that tragic winter would only have been surmised, their deaths quickly forgotten, but for the labour of the schoolboy Edgar Christian. From October onwards, he kept a daily diary, a remarkable record without trace of fear or self pity, showing only concern for his companions. We learn that John Hornby died, exhausted by his efforts to find food, in April, and a few weeks later Adlard died too. Somehow, for another month, alone and with no hope, Edgar Christian remained alive, keeping the diary, recording in meticulous detail an account of each day’s search for food. This diary, which was later published, is now housed in the library of Dover College.

The bulk of our journey was still ahead of us, but there were fewer difficulties; only the need to cover distance before the coming of the worsening weather of autumn caused some concern. But the broad Thelon, now less troubled by rapids, gave us fast and relaxed canoeing. Such swift water as did occur we could usually run after an initial reconnaissance. On a good day we could cover 40 miles and still allow time to photograph and fish and observe the wealth of animal and bird life. Every day, we saw solitary wolves and caribou and small herds of musk ox. This area contains the world’s greatest concentration of the latter animals, now happily protected. Regrettably we failed to see the Barren Ground grizzly, although their tracks were clear and fresh on the river bank. Perhaps it is as well, for we had no defence against them unless we could frighten them off with flares. After many initial failures, we were now having some luck with our fishing and a 201b. lake trout or pike was a welcome addition to our otherwise rather dreary diet.

Our only cause for worry were the 100 miles of travel through the big lakes, Beverly, Aberdeen and Schultz, where we would often be forced to paddle in open water far from shore and highly vulnerable to wind. Many days were to be lost lying up while heavy surf broke upon the shore, sometimes still concealed by banks of last winter’s snow. We thoroughly frightened ourselves in the first lake. Crossing between two headlands, we misjudged the size of the swell. Fortunately, Tom in the rear showed much skill, heading us into the waves, for otherwise we should have been lost; even so we shipped much water over the bows. We learned our lesson and laid up for four days after that, until the wind dropped sufficiently for us to dare travel again. At the east end of Beverly Lake, we were surprised by a light aircraft which came in low over our canoe and circled. We were to learn later that this was the R.C.M.P. Officer from Baker Lake, who had chartered an aircraft for a 350-mile round trip just to assure himself of our safety. It was comforting to know we were not forgotten.

After another day and a half of lying up in windy weather, we made the link between Beverly and the much larger Aberdeen Lake, threading our way through a complex pattern of islands which caused us some difficulty. Even with good maps, navigation was not easy, for the low, uncertain shore gave us no conception of distance or shape.

It took us four days and a night to cover the 60 miles length of Aberdeen Lake, our progress being further interrupted by idle hours of waiting for calmer wind and waves. Although hardly mid-August, the brief summer was seemingly over; the cold and storms of autumn had begun. But one night at about 9 p.m., the wind dropped abruptly and, anxious to cover distance before the weather worsened more, we broke camp and pushed off into the lake to paddle with only a blood red backcloth to give us light. On a surface now quite still, we slid swiftly forward, the silence only broken by the dip of the paddles and the gentle murmur of water beneath the bows. With no light to read the map, we could but travel vaguely, skirting bays, rounding capes, threading our way by islands which rose before us like surfacing sea monsters.

We worked with unusual energy, but the rhythmic swing of arms alone was not enough to bring us warmth. Too numb to paddle further, we pulled ashore and for an hour or so lay in sleeping bags beneath the unpitched tent, listening to the unearthly howl of nearby wolves. We got up with the rising sun, frost thick on the ground and, with brief halts for food, paddled through the day. At 6 p.m. we made camp at the outlet from the lake by a cluster of ancient Eskimo cairns.

It was warmer the next day. Summer returned for a brief spell and, with it, the season’s last harvest of black fly. They hung in a cloud over each sun-baked rock like a pall of smoke.
The next 25 miles of minor lake and river was pure delight. We glided almost effortlessly over a glassy surface that made us feel as if we were suspended in a replica of the sky. Two more days of canoeing along the northern shores of Schultz Lake and an evening paddle in open water steering by compass and we reached the outlet of the Thelon.

We had now a mere 67 miles to go to the Eskimo settlement of Baker Lake. In a river with a constant current of six to eight miles per hour, and only one portage, this should only have taken us two days; in the event it took us five. Perhaps after nearly five weeks of almost continuous effort, we were tiring, but the real cause was the wind. Perversely, it blew hard against the flow of the river, whipping waves up through which we had had strenuously to force our way. When we entered Baker Lake, great blocks of last winter’s ice were stranded on the shore and, as we reached the settlement, the first snow of the next winter began to fall.