The New North

by Agnes Deans Cameron

ATHABASCA LANDING

"I am the land that listens, I am the land that broods;

Steeped in eternal beauty, crystalline waters and woods;

I wait for the men who will win me—and I will not be won in a day;

And I will not be won by weaklings, subtle, suave and mild,

But by men with the hearts of vikings, and the simple faith of a child."

—

Robert Service

Athabasca Landing

Athabasca Landing, a funnel through which percolates the whole trade between the wheat-belt and the Arctic, is the true gateway of the North. Seeing our baggage tucked away in the bar-room of the Grand Union Hotel, and snatching a hasty supper, we walk down to the river, its edges still encrusted with fragments of winter ice. It is an incomparable sunset, the light a veritable spilt spectrum, spreading itself with prodigality over the swift river.

The Athabasca, after dipping to the south, here takes a sudden northward bend. Its source is in the crest of the continent far back in the Committee's Punch-Bowl of the Rockies, the general trend of the river being northeasterly. It is the most southerly of the three great tributaries of the mighty Mackenzie, and from its source in Rockies to embouchure in Athabasca Lake it is about seven hundred and seventy-five miles long; through a wooded valley two miles wide it runs with perhaps an average width of two hundred and fifty yards.

We are in latitude 55° North, and between us and the Arctic lies an unknown country, which supports but a few hundred Indian trappers and the fur-traders of the Ancient Company in their little posts, clinging like swallows' nests to the river banks. The wheat-plains to the south of us are so fertile and accessible that the tide of immigration has stopped south of where we stand. But that there stretches beyond us a country rich in possibilities we know, and one day this land, unknown and dubbed "barren" because unknown, will support its teeming millions. Chimerical? Why so?

Parallels of latitude are great illuminators. When we run this line of 55° westward what do we strike in Asia? The southern boundary of the Russian Province of Tobolsk. Superimpose a map of that Province on a map of Canada and we find that the great Mackenzie waterway which we are to follow cuts Tobolsk almost directly through the centre. In the year 1900, Russian Tobolsk produced twenty-one million bushels of grain, grazed two and a half million head of live stock, exported one and a half million dollars' worth of butter, and supported a population of one and a half million souls. There is not one climatic condition obtaining in the Asiatic Province that this similar section of Canada which we are about to enter does not enjoy.

Off a little jetty some lads are fishing. There is a camaraderie felt by all fishermen, and soon I have a rod and access to the chunk of moose-meat which is the community bait. Within half an hour, rejoicing in a string of seventeen chub and grayling, we wend our way back to the little village. The elements that compose it? Here we have a large establishment of the Hudson's Bay Company, an Anglican and a Roman Mission, a little public school, a barracks of the Northwest Mounted Police, a post office, a dozen stores, a reading-room, two hotels, and a blacksmith shop, and for population a few whites leavening a host of Cree-Scots half-breeds.

Athabasca Landing is part of the British Empire. But English is at a discount here; Cree and French and a mixture of these are spoken on all sides. The swart boatmen are the most interesting feature of the place,—tall, silent, moccasined men, followed at the heel by ghostlike dogs. From this point north dogs are the beasts of burden; the camel may be the ship of the desert, but the dog is the automobile of the silences. The wise missionary translates his Bible stories into the language of the latitude. As Count von Hammerstein says, "What means a camel to a Cree? I tell him it is a moose that cannot go through a needle's eye." The Scriptural sheep and goats become caribou and coyotes, and the celestial Lamb is typified by the baby seal with its coat of shimmering whiteness. Into the prohibition territory that stretches north of this no liquor can be taken except by a permit signed by an Attorney-General of Canada, and then only "for medicinal purposes." By an easy transferring of epithets, the term "permit" has come to signify the revivifying juice itself.

Necessity Knows No Law at Athabasca

One illusion vanishes here. We had expected to find the people of the North intensely interested in the affairs of the world outside, but as a rule they are not. There is no discussion of American banks and equally no mention of the wheat crop. The one conjecture round the bar and in the home is, "When will the rabbits run this year?" The rabbits in the North are the food of the lynx; cheap little bunny keeps the vital spark aglow in the bodies of those animals with richer fur who feed upon him. Every seven years an epidemic attacks the wild rabbits, and that year means a scarcity of all kinds of fur. As surely as wheat stands for bullion in the grain-belt, little Molly Cottontail is the currency of the North.

It is at this point we join the Fur-Brigade of the Hudson's Bay Company making its annual transport to the posts of the Far North, taking in supplies for trading material and bringing back the peltries obtained in barter during the previous winter. The big open scows, or "sturgeon-heads," which are to form our convoy have been built, the freight is all at The Landing, but for three days the half-breed boatmen drag along the process of loading, and we get our introduction to the word which is the keynote of the Cree character,—"Kee-am," freely translated, "Never mind," "Don't get excited," "There's plenty of time," "It's all right," "It will all come out in the wash."

When the present Commissioner of the Hudson's Bay Company entered office he determined to reduce chaos to a methodical exactness, and framed a time-table covering every movement in the northward traffic. When it was shown by the local representative to the Cree boatmen at The Landing, old Duncan Tremblé, a river-dog on the Athabasca for forty years, looked admiringly at the printed slip and said, "Aye, aye; the Commissioner he makes laws, but the river he boss." It is only when ice is out and current serves that the brigade moves forward. Old Duncan knows seven languages,—English, French, Cree, Chipewyan, Beaver, Chinook, Montagnais,—he speaks seven languages, thinks in Cree, and prevaricates in them all.

The Missionary Hymnal for the Indians

At the foot of the hill we visit the English parsonage, with its old-time sun-dial at the garden-gate. Within, we find what must surely be the farthest north printing-press. Here two devoted women have spent years of their lives printing in Cree on a hand-press syllabic hymns and portions of the Gospel for the enlightenment of the Indians. We wander into the school where a young teacher is explaining to his uneasy disciples the intricacies of Present Worth and Compound Interest. Idly we wonder to what use these bare-footed half-Cree urchins will put their exact banking knowledge.

Everywhere around us the wild flowers are a great joy; we hail with the gladness of released children the posies that sweetened childhood meadows—the dwarf cornel (Cornel Canadensis), dandelions, strawberry blossoms, wild roses, the pale wood-violet on its long stem, and amid these familiars the saskatoon or service-berry bushes, with blueberry vines, and viburnums of many kinds. On the street the natty uniforms of the Mounted Police are in evidence, and baseball has penetrated as far north as this. In the post office we read,

"It is decided to hold sports on the first day of July. The Committee promises a splendid programme,—horse-races, foot-races, football match, baseball game. There will also be prizes for the best piece of Indian fancy-work. Dancing will be in full swing in the evening. All welcome."

Opposite the hotel is a reading-room built by a Methodist parson who also made the furniture with his own hands; magazines, books, writing-material, games are available to all. This practical work of one man who accepted the responsibility of being his brother's keeper appealed to us. In a store near the hotel we see a Cree boatman purchasing a farewell present for his sweetheart. As he turns over the fancy articles, we have bad form enough to observe his choice. He selects a fine-tooth comb, for which he pays fifty cents, or as he calls it, "two skins," and asks, as he tucks it into his jerkin, if he can change it "if she doesn't like it."

In the evening it rains, and the room assigned us becomes a living illustration of the new word we have just learned,—"muskeg," a swamp. Putting the precious cameras on top of the bureau, we let the rest of the things swim at their pleasure. Starting with the rest of the unattached community of Athabasca Landing to go down to the pool-room, we catch sight of Dr. Sussex and the Cree priest, who have found a little oasis of their own around a big stove in the upper hall and, with chairs tilted back, are enjoying some portable hospitality from below. The doctor arises to escort us through the flood, and when I rally him about his liquid refreshment, he says, "Oh, I had lemonade."

"I see. And the priest?"

"He had—what he liked."

If local colour and local smell is what we have come north for, we find it here. Mr. Brabant comes up with "I wonder if that bunch of nuns is going to get here in time to take scows with us," and we pass into the billiard-room and watch the game. The players gliding round in moccasins are all half-breeds. The exclamations are for the most part in Cree or bad French, and as I crowd in looking for some local terms all that I hear intelligible is, "That is damn close, I think me."

For thirty-six hours on end it rains. That roof was full of surprises; you never knew where it would spring a fresh leak. One room is a little better than the rest, and we all gather there and make the best of it,—smoking, writing, telling yarns. A bumping noise from across the hall and the cry of a child startles us. It proves to be Sergeant Anderson's baby whose cradle has started afloat, and there is a general rush to rescue Moses from his bulrushes. Everybody is in good humour.

As we calm the baby, South Dakota says "It reminds me of the Englishman and his musical bath." We demand the story. "Well, a rich American took a great liking to an Englishman he had been travelling with, and sent him for a birthday present a Yankee invention to set up in his country-house—a musical bath. As you turned on the spigot, the thing played a tune while you were washing, and sort of relieved the tee-deum. The two gents met next Christmas in New York, and the Yankee he sez, 'And how did you like the bath?' 'Oh, thank you very much, it was kind of you indeed, but I found it a little irksome standing all the time, you know.' 'Standing, what the blazes do you mean?' asked the Yankee. 'Well,' says the Britisher, 'the tune you furnished, you know, with the bawth, was God Save the King, and as soon as it began, you know, I had to stand, and it's rather tiresome taking your bawth standing, you know."

Sergeant Joyce tells how at a Mounted Police dinner at Fort Saskatchewan a parson, who was a guest, in proposing a toast, facetiously advised his entertainers to have nothing to do with either a doctor or a lawyer. It was interesting to watch the parson's face when there arose to reply a lawyer and a doctor, each a constable in the rank and file.

Mrs. Leslie Wood of Athabasca Landing adds her quota to the Tales of a Wayside Inn. We could have listened to her for a week and regretted neither the rain nor the waiting scows. As a girl she remembers being shocked at seeing men hold tin cups to the throats of newly-slaughtered buffalo, drinking with gusto the warm blood.

"What are the two greatest things on earth?" Mrs. Wood, as a young girl, asked the dusky disciples of her Sunday School class. "The Queen and The Company," was the ready response. "And of these, which is the greater?" Little Marten-Tail rubbed one moccasin over the other, and the answer came thoughtfully in Cree, "The Company. The Queen sometimes dies, but The Company never dies."

"The Company," of which the little girl spoke, "The Governor and Company of Adventurers trading into Hudson's Bay," deriving its charter in 1670 from the Second Charles of England, is the oldest chartered concern in the world, with a present-day sphere of influence as large as Great Britain, France, Spain, and Germany combined. From lone Labrador to the Pacific littoral and from Winnipeg to the Frozen Ocean are scattered the two hundred and fifty fur-trading forts of this concern in charge of its two thousand strong silent servants. Last year it paid to its stockholders a profit of forty-five per cent on the invested capital, and for two hundred and thirty-nine consecutive years it has been declaring dividends. The motto of the Company, Pro Pelle Cutein, is prominently displayed at Athabasca Landing. Literally translated, the phrase means "Skin for skin"; but why the promoters should have chosen as war-cry the words which Satan used when fighting with the Lord for the soul of Job, is not so apparent.

As we watch the trading goods being carried in the rain from warehouse to scows, we think how, weaving its cross-Atlantic way through the centuries and joining the periwigged days of the Stuarts to this day, the one man-made thing that has persisted is this commerce-shuttle of the H.B. Co.

In the days when The Company had its birth, the blind Milton was dictating his message and the liberated Bunyan preached the spoken word, the iniquitous Cabal Ministry was forming in England, and Panama was sacked by Morgan the buccaneer. New York merchants of Manhattan met every Friday at noon on the bridge over the Broad Street Canal for barter, South Carolina was settled on the Ashley River, Virginia enacted that "all servants not being Christians, imported into this country by shipping shall be slaves," and her Governor, Sir William Berkeley, was inspired to exclaim piously, "I hope we shall have neither free schools nor printing these hundred years, for learning has brought disobedience and heresy and sects into the world, and printing has divulged them. God keep us from both!" It was not until two years later that Addison was born, and that Marquette and Joliet sailed down the Mississippi, even as we now are essaying the Athabasca.

Unique in commercial annals is the Royal Charter which gave, with power of life and death, to the Company of Gentlemen Adventurers, less than twenty in number, "forever hereafter" possession and jurisdiction over a country as large as Europe. Liberty here for utter despotism, the widest of excesses. We marvel that from the first Prince Rupert of the Rhine to the latest Lord Strathcona and Mount Royal, the Governors of the Ancient Company have, with Duncan-like demeanour, borne themselves so meek in their great office.

It has been fashionable to paint the H.B. Co. as an agrarian oligarchy. Organized for the purpose of "making fur" before the time of the Habeas Corpus, two decades ahead of the Bank of England, sixty-two years before Benjamin Franklin began publishing "Poor Richard's Almanac," and a century in advance of Watt's steam-engine, it is true that The Company, throughout the years, devoted itself to peltries and not to platting town sites. This was its business. From the beginning it has consistently kept faith with the Indians; the word of The Company has, for reward or for punishment, ever been worth its full face value. It was not an H.B. Scot who exclaimed feelingly, "Honesty is the best policy, I've tried baith."

The feeling of devotion to The Company is as strong today as it ever was. When the present Commissioner took office he penetrated the North on a tour of inspection. At Athabasca Landing, since it was not known just when the Head would arrive, the local official charged all his clerks and minions to be ready at the sound of a whistle to salute and fall into line for inspection. The call to arms came on Sunday morning during divine service. Every attaché of The Company with one exception obeyed the signal. Young Tom Helly, the paid organist, stuck to his post; and next day he was called on the carpet. "It was a special service; I was in the middle of the anthem, sir, and didn't like to leave the House of God." "Couldn't you show some respect?" roared the local officer. Man was near in Athabasca Landing and God far away. Down in the big office at Winnipeg is a Doomsday Book where the life-record of every servant of The Company is kept, for no man who has ever served The Company is lost sight of. When there is a good fur-winter, every employé of The Company is handed an envelope which contains a bonus-cheque,—ten per cent of his yearly salary.

C.C. Chipman, Commissioner of the H.B. Co.

The Commissioner of the Hudson's Bay Company and the head of one of Canada's big department stores were dining together at a Toronto Club. "After six o'clock I don't want to see or hear of an employé—he doesn't exist for me until eight o'clock next morning," said the head of the department store. "Well, I'm more curious than you," smiled the Commissioner of the H.B. Co., "I want to be reasonably assured of what every man-Jack of my people is doing all the time. I want to know what he reads, and if he treats his wife well, and how his last baby is getting along—you see, he's a working-partner of mine."

There came out of Northern British Columbia last year the Indian wife and half-breed daughters of an H.B. Co. Factor. They were bound for Montreal and it was their first trip "outside." The Commissioner at Winnipeg contradicts the old saw, and surely has "a soul above a beaver-skin"; like Mulvaney, too, he "has bowels." Quickly went forward a letter to a tactful woman in the border-town through which the visiting ladies must pass—"Meet them, and see that they get the proper things to wear in society circles in Montreal. I don't want them to feel ill at ease when they get there." Stories like these give us glimpses of the kind of paternalism exercised by the Ancient Company, the one trust that has never ground the faces of the poor, and in whose people to-day appears the "constant service of the Old World."

The big books of The Company a year or two ago in unmistakable round-hand declared that one Running Rabbit, lawful widow of Blueskin, was entitled to draw from the coffers clear-side bacon and a modicum of flour. But one quarterly paysheet, returned to Winnipeg from Fort Churchill, showed that Running Rabbit in addition to her food allowance had been handed out forty cents' worth of cotton. Stern enquiry, backed by red-tape and The Company's seal as big as a saucer, was sent up to the Churchill Factor. Why had the allowance of Mrs. Blueskin (née Running Rabbit) been exceeded? By "return mail" nine months later the Factor reported,

"The widow's gone,

Her tent's forsaken,

No more she comes

For flour and bacon.

N.B. The cotton was used for her shroud."

The Ancient Company was penny-wise, but in spite of the copybook line, not pound-foolish, as its dividend paysheets conclusively prove.

There is no desire to show forth these silent ones of the North as infallible men and immaculate. They make many mistakes; they were and are delightfully human, and we couldn't picture one of them with a saintly aureole. But in the past, as in the present, they were large men; they honoured their word, and you couldn't buy them. Men of action, whether inside fort walls, bartering in the tepee of the Indian, or off on silent trails alone,—it has been given to each of them to live life at firsthand. In every undertaking the determining factor of success is men, and not money or monopoly. And because the North still breeds men of the H.B. type, the eye of The Great Company is not dimmed, its force not abated.

We spoke with no fewer than three men at The Landing who came into the North in the year of the Klondike rush, that is, just ten years ago. Into the human warp and woof of the Great Lone Land of Northern Canada the Klondike gold-rush intruded a new strand. The news of the strike on Yukon fields flashed round the world on wires invisible and visible, passed by word of mouth from chum to chum, and by moccasin telegraph was carried to remotest corners of the continent. Gold-fever is a disease without diagnosis or doctor—infectious, contagious, and hereditary; if its germ once stirs in a man's blood, till the day of his death he is not immune from an attack. The discovery of gold-dust in Dawson sent swarming through the waterways of sub-Arctic Canada a heterogeneous horde,—gamblers of a hundred hells, old-time miners from quiet firesides, beardless boys from their books, human parasites of two continents, and dreamers from the Seven Seas.

Coastwise they sought the North by steamers from 'Frisco, Seattle, and Vancouver Island, and of the numbers of these the shipping offices have some records. But of that vast army who from the east and from the south travelled inland waterways towards the golden goal no tabulation has ever been made. Singly they went, in groups, and by partnerships of two and three. There was no route marked out by which they were to reach the glittering streams of which they dreamed; the general direction of north and west was all that guided them. Athabasca Landing was the portal through which they passed, and by every northward stream they travelled,—down the Athabasca toward the Mackenzie and up the Athabasca to the Peace, leaving stranded men and stranded boats on every shore. By raft and dug-out, scow and canoe, men essayed to travel rapid waterways who had never handled craft before, and the Indians still point out to you near Grand Rapids on the Athabasca the site of the Mounted Police Station where Sergeant Anderson rescued a dozen tenderfoots from drowning.

To the Indians of this vast country the unwonted inundation of the whites was a revelation. Before this, their knowledge of Europeans had been limited to men of the Hudson's Bay posts and the few black-robed Fathers of the missions. The priests had told the Indians that in the outside world French was the accepted language of the white man and that only the degraded and debased spoke English. Most of the Northern Indians who speak English will tell you that they got their first lessons from the Klondike miners.

And what of the men who followed the gleam? Some reached Dawson. These were few. Those who gained fortunes, were fewer still. In the old books of the H.B. Co. a favourite phrase of the Factor is "a band of Indians cast up from the east," "the Express from the North cast up at a late hour last night." On the way to Dawson, and filtering backward from that point, hundreds of gold-miners are "cast up" on every interior shore. Acting as attachés to Hudson's Bay posts, engaging as free traders, manipulating missionary boats for Protestant and Roman Catholic seekers for souls, trapping off their own bat, and, in one instance at least, marrying the missionary, they were constantly passing us. Round the home hearths wives wonder about them, and the old bent mother still prays for her absent son. A silence like this once entered upon is hard to break, and the wanderer in the silence wraps tighter about him the garment of the recluse. Outcropping from the strata in striking individuality, they belong to a different race to the plodding people of the Hudson's Bay posts, and are interesting men wherever you meet them. Keen of vision, slow of speech, and with that dreamy look which only those acquire who have seen Nature at her secrets in the quiet places,—they are like boulders, brought down by the glacial drift and dropped here and there over the white map of the North.

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