The New North

by Agnes Deans Cameron

The location of Fort McMurray is ideal. At this point the river breaks into two branches which encircle a high-banked and thickly-wooded island. Some hundreds of yards farther on the Clearwater River makes in; so here we have three streams. The fort has a foundation dating back forty years. This fur outpost will be the terminus of the Alberta and Great Waterways Railway, and one could not well imagine a more beautiful site for a great city. On the broad flat as we enter appear a handful of Indian houses and the little stores of the fur-traders.

Letters from the outside are not as eagerly looked for as one would expect. To the people who live within the North, the North is their world, and to them the news of who is to be appointed to the charge of the next post down the river is of more, importance than the partition of Turkey or a possible redistribution of the thrones of Europe. Mr. Brabant says, "Oh, by the way, Bob, there is a package of letters for you somewhere in the scow. Shall I dig them out for you?" "Never mind," says Bob, "I'll get them to-morrow. Have you got any whiskey?"

It is Sunday the fourteenth of June. On the long beach is strewn the water-soaked cargo of the wrecked scow, the abomination of desolation. Mrs. Harding, although all of her personal belongings and her "special orders" are ruined, smiles bravely. It is a point of honour in the North not to whine, whatever happens. All day we work trying to save some of the wrecked cargo. Bales of goods are unwound and stretched out for hundreds of yards in the sun. Bandanna handkerchiefs flutter on bushes. Toilet soap, boots, and bear-traps are at our feet. The Fire-Ranger of the district, Mr. Biggs, has his barley and rice spread out on sheeting, and, turning it over, says bravely, "I think it will dry." Mathematical and astronomical instruments consigned to a scientist on the Arctic edge are shaken off centre and already have begun to rust, and there are miles and miles of cordage and nets, with braids and sewing silks and Hudson's Bay blankets!

In the midst of his wrecked drugs and cherished personal effects the Doctor is a pitiful sight. By stage and by scow, he has been confiding to us that, in order to save bulk, his medicines have been specially put up for him in highly concentrated form by London chemists. One little pill-box of powder is potent enough to make a dozen quart-bottles of effective medicine. And now all these precious powders have melted together, and appear like Dicken's stew at the Inn of the Jolly Sand-boys "all in one delicious gravy." The Doctor is dazed, and offers to white and brown alike a tin box with "Have a pastile, do." He wanders among the half-breeds, offering plasters for weak backs, which they accept with avidity as combining two things that the red man specially appreciates,—something free and something medicinal. Sad-faced, the Doctor brings to me a glass case holding a dozen lozenge-shaped disks on each of which an infinitesimal piece of wood rests. "Here are some authenticated relics, but unfortunately the water has made them run and I don't know them apart. You see they have the seal of the Carthusian Monastery on the back. One of them is a piece of the true Cross, but I shall never be able to tell which it is." One by one the Doctor digs out from the wreck his water-soaked treasures,—a presentation "Life of the Countess of Munster," also a crucifix from her, and a beautifully-carved holy water stoup of French design which he declares to be "as old as the Conqueror." There is a medal of the Worshipful Company of Cutlers which carries with it the freedom of the City of London. Another order shows the Doctor to be a Knight of the Primrose League; and, fished from under a side of bacon, is a print of "my great-grandfather who discovered a cure for scurvy." A missionary's box of toys for some Christmas tree in Far North fastnesses is opened, and here a native stops work to lead along the sand a pink-and-blue alligator.

Miss Gordon, a Fort McMurray Trader

Although the wrecked scow has its grotesque features, the sight is a sad one, and we are glad to leave it and pull across the river to Fort McMurray. We call upon Miss Christine Gordon, a young Scottish woman and a free-trader, if you please, in her own right, operating in opposition to the great and only Hudson's Bay Company. The only white woman on a five hundred mile stretch of the Athabasca, she has lived here for years with the Indians for companions, her days being marked out by their migrations and tribal feasts. We question, "Are you not lonely, especially in the winter?" But she smiles and refuses to be regarded as heroic. "Often in the winter a trapper passes through, and the Indians are always coming and going, and they are full of interest."

We have not walked with Miss Gordon for half an hour among the tepees when we discover the secret of her cheeriness and content. Our happiness consists not in our havings but in our attitude of mind. The world is divided sharply into two classes. The classes are not the white and the black, the good and the bad, the sheep and the goats, as the orthodox would have us believe. We are all good and bad, not black or white, but varying shades of grey. Neither are we sheep or goats, but moral alpacas, all of us,—something between a sheep and a goat. But no less are we divided into two clear-cut classes. Each of us puts himself of his own volition into the class of the self-centred, or the self-forgetting, and in the act marks himself as happy or unhappy.

As Miss Gordon lifts the tent-flaps, smiles greet her from every home. The baby in the moss-bag is handed up for her inspection, and old blind Paul Cree, the Chief, knows her moccasined step, and rises on his elbow from his couch of spruce-boughs to greet her eagerly and salute any that she may present as friend. The Chief is in his ninety-sixth year and depends upon chance visitors for his companionship and food. Yet an assured air of dignity shows that Paul Cree is aware of the respect due to the Chief of the McMurrays. He addresses us in Cree, which Miss Gordon translates. "I am delighted that ladies have come such a long distance on purpose to see me. The white man is my friend. I think all white women must be good. Their mothers have taught them to be kind to old people. I am sorry I am blind. Be glad that you can see the water, the sky, the birds and flowers and the faces of little children," and the tired old head sinks on the fir-boughs and we are dismissed. "Be glad you are alive, and use that sight while you have it." It is the advice given by that other strong man laid on his back, Carlton in the Winnipeg Hospital.