The Beaver, Vol. 1, No. 05, February, 1921

by Hudson's Bay Company

Vancouver Welcomes H.B.C. Arctic Navigators

Captain Henry Hendriksen and Engineer Rudolph Johnson Return to Vancouver after Six Years in the North
By MRS. JACK HAWKSHAW

Captain Hendriksen (left) and Engineer Johnson (right)

WHETHER it’s because of the climate or because the hearts of those in the West are big, we know not, but the fact is recognized that no branch of the Company’s service gives a heartier handshake and welcome to the Company’s employees than does Vancouver retail. When Captain Hendriksen and Engineer Johnson dropped in recently after spending six years in the frozen north, they were royally welcomed here as brothers in the H.B.C.

Captain Hendriksen and Engineer Johnson operate the H.B.C. gas schooner “Fort McPherson,” a boat of fifty tons which, together with the “Ruby” left Vancouver in 1914 to carry provisions to the Company’s Western Arctic posts together with lumber and materials for the building of a post at Herschel and Baillie Islands.

Fair weather and good luck attended the expedition until it reached Point Barrow where ice was encountered and they were compelled to fall back to Tellar Point, a hundred miles north of Nome, Alaska, before returning south, where the cargo of the “Ruby” was discharged and the “Fort McPherson” beached for the Winter. In July, 1915, the “Ruby” returned from the south, picked up her cargo again, and with the schooner “Fort McPherson,” set sail for Herschel Island, arriving there in August, 1915.

Since August, 1915, the Company has opened seven fur trade posts in the Western Arctic, the first being at Herschel Island; then followed one at Baillie Island, two hundred fifty miles east of Herschel and since then others have been established at Kittigazuit, Aklavick, Fort Thomson, Three Rivers, Kent’s Peninsula and Shingle Point.

The “Fort McPherson” is the Company’s supply boat which during the Summer distributes the goods sent to Herschel Island and to the small posts in the Arctic.

Captain Hendriksen and Engineer Johnson are on their way to Winnipeg on vacation. During their leave of absence, the “Fort McPherson” will remain at Kittigazuit. It is the Captain’s intention to continue this trip to the home of his aged mother who is about to celebrate her centenary in Denmark, and whom he has not seen for thirty years.

The journey to the coast was, as they term it, an uneventful one, being the same kind of an experience they are accustomed to and which is part of the daily round of all the Company’s employees in the Arctic. But to us it reads like a fairy tale.

Imagine, if you will, two men starting on a twelve hundred mile “mush” from Herschel Island to Fairbanks in a sleigh drawn by four large “huskies.”

The frozen country they traversed is broken only by the remains of a once great forest, an ice-locked lagoon, horizons bounded by irridescent glaciers whose tips pierce the sky–and over all the sparkling arctic sunshine flooding the wide plains which stretch away to the Mystery of the World. In their long hike they met no human being except one roving band of Indians. But they saw immense herds of cariboo, many moose, and now and then a cinnamon or grizzly bear. And all the while, the thermometer ranged from 47 to 70 degrees below zero.

At night they rested under the canopy of the stars in a small tent perched impertinently in one of earth’s most awful and majestic solitudes.

Picture to yourself the long trail, the occasional pause in the wilderness to stalk and kill a cariboo or moose for food to replenish the larder of the voyageurs and their faithful dogs.

Their journey lasted for forty days. Arctic blizzards crossed their path. These stout hearted men, however, were able to make their way through to seaboard and embark for civilization for the first time since before the great war.

H.B.C. Salespeople Will Be on Qui Vive During Coming Outfit

STORES generally realize that the coming six months will test the worth of salespeople more than for many months past. We haven’t been selling goods; we’ve been handing them out. People have been anxious to buy.

A change has taken place. The public is inclined to look for further price reductions. H.B.C. people know that the goods on our shelves have been bought wisely and well. Every advantage of our buying organization was used in their assembling. The same goods cannot be purchased elsewhere for less money; that gives the sales-person confidence in selling.

Let us prove to the Company that we are salespeople–not order takers; let’s do this by being willing, courteous and eager to please.

ACKNOWLEDGING receipt of the Company’s Anniversary Brochure, Mr. David Russell of Departure Bay writes:

“If I may be allowed to quote Kipling (with slight alteration) to illustrate the inseparable connection between the history of the growth of the Hudson’s Bay Company and Canada as a nation, I would say,”

God took care to hide that country

Till he judged his people ready,

Then He chose you for his whisper,

And you’ve found it, and it is ours.

It is sentiments like this from people who have been customers of the Company for years that should spur us to honour the great name that our Company has earned during its two hundred and fifty years of serving the people of Canada and make us the more proud to be servants of this great institution.