With Grenfell on the Labrador

by Fullerton L. Waldo

Unhappily, there are many cases on authentic record when young children and old people, unable to defend themselves, have been devoured by dogs—not necessarily when the dogs were starving. A grewsome climax was reached when in the “flu” epidemic of 1918-19 on the Labrador the dogs fell on the dead and the dying and the enfeebled survivors could not stem the onslaught. No wonder, then, that Dr. Grenfell, with all his manifest affection for dogs that he has known, insists that the importation of reindeer is the salvation and the solution. Stubbornly the folk of the northern tip of the peninsula and the Labrador coast cling to the huskies that were banished, in favour of cows, horses, pigs and chickens, by their more sophisticated southern neighbours. Uncle Philip Coates at Eddy’s Cove is the only man on that shore, as far as is known, who keeps pigs.

A fisherman landing on an island off Cape Charles, on the side away from his home, found himself the object of the unwelcome attentions of a pack of dogs who were acting on the principle of the uncouth villager of the old story who cried: “ ’Ere’s a stranger, Bill—let’s ’eave ’arf a brick at him.” He is sure they would have pounced on him and polished off his bones, had he not seen one dog he knew—the leader. He called the dog’s name; the wolfish creature halted instantly. When the name was repeated, the dog slunk off, his ragged retinue at his heels.

It is sad to think that the dogs that will perform so nobly in the traces are such bad actors when they have nothing to do but to pick a quarrel in places where perhaps there is no foliage but the proud curled plumage of their tails. They are beside themselves with excitement when after the summer siesta they are harnessed to the komatik again. When the driver smartly rubs his hands and cries, “See the deer!”—or anything he pleases—it augments the fever. In Labrador “ouk, ouk!” turns the team to the right—perchance with a disconcerting promptness—and “urrah, urrah!” swerves it to the left. The corresponding directions in Newfoundland are “keep off!” and “hold in.” No reins are used—some drivers use no whip. The books of Dr. Grenfell abound in affectionate reference to the better nature of these animals and their extraordinary fidelity to duty. Like most of the people of the land, they do not fear to die. Their life is largely of neglect and pain: they spend much of their time crawling under the houses to get out of the way. Their pleasure is the greater when they find a human playmate ready to throw a stick into the water for them. Grand swimmers are they, and they will plunge into the coldest sea; and if they are hungry they dive in for a small fish without concern. It is hard to find a time when they are not ready to set their fangs to food—“full-fed” is an ideal condition to which most of them seldom attain. A square meal of whalemeat is their millennium. “I don’t see what satisfaction they get out of it,” said “Bill” Norwood—one of the volunteer “wops” building the Battle Harbour reservoir. “The meat in winter comes to them in frozen hunks, and they slide it down at one gulp, to melt in their stomach. That’s not quite my idea of enjoying a meal.”

In a yawl that the Strathcona dragged astern three plaintive huskies, to be committed to the pack at St. Anthony, hungrily sniffed the meat-laden breeze that blew from our deck. They were perturbed at finding themselves going to sea. I may add that when they got ashore the youngest of the three—a mere baby—jumped on a rock and bit the nose of the leader of the St. Anthony pack, Eric by name, thereby winning respect for himself and his two comrades among the aborigines who might otherwise have fallen upon them and rent them limb from limb.

The dogs at Battle Harbour live up to the name of the settlement. Like all other “huskies,” they are ready to fight on slight provocation, and the night is made vocal with their long-drawn ululations. Their appetite is insatiable—they devour with enthusiasm whatsoever things are thrown out at the kitchen door—they even ate a towel that went astray—and when nothing better offers they will wade into the water in quest of caplin, or cods’ heads. In their enthusiasm for food the dogs will dig through boards to get at cattle and pigs, and cows and chickens seldom live where the dogs are numerous.

The murderous proclivities of the dogs of the Labrador furnished one of the chief reasons, as has been said before, why the Doctor went to such great pains and to such a relatively large expense to import and domicile the reindeer.

“It was wildly exciting work, I can tell you, lassoing those reindeer and tying their legs in that country over yonder,” he said, as the Strathcona rounded the rugged bread-loaf island of Cape Onion. He pointed to the settlement of Island Bay behind it. “There we were blown across the bay on the ice—dogs, komatik and all—roaring with laughter at our own predicament, helpless before the great gale of wind.” Thus he recalls without bitterness the costly undertaking whose fruition has been—and still is—one of his dearest dreams. Conveying the captured reindeer across the Strait in a schooner to Canada with almost nobody to help him was a Herculean task. Some day the Legislature at St. John’s may see fit to divert a little money to establishing the docile and reliable reindeer in place of treacherous and predatory dogs. It is a greater loss to the island than to Grenfell that the scheme must wait.

With a mob of dogs in every village, a mob actuated most of the time by an insatiable hunger driving it forth in quest of any sort of food, it has been impossible in most places to keep a cow or a goat, and hay is prohibitively costly to import. Dr. Grenfell has described with pathos how Labrador mothers, in default even of canned milk for the baby, are in the habit of chewing hard bread into a pulpy mass to fill the infant’s mouth and thus produce the illusion of nutriment until it is able to masticate and assimilate “loaf” for itself. In few countries is milk so scarce.

The reindeer might be the cow of the Labrador. The reindeer is able to find a square meal amid the moss and lichens, and it yields milk so rich as to require dilution to bring it down to the standard of cow’s milk, while it is free from the peculiar flavour of the milk of the goat. The Lapps make the milk into a “cream cheese” which Dr. Grenfell has tried out on his sledge journeys and heartily endorses.

Nearly three hundred reindeer were obtained by Dr. Grenfell in Lapland in 1907, with three Lapland families to herd them and teach herding. They were landed at Cremailliere, (locally called “Camelias”), three miles south of St. Anthony. At the end of four years the herd numbered a thousand. In 1912, twelve hundred and fifty at once were corraled. Poaching and want of police protection made it desirable to transfer the animals across the Straits to Canada. Some of them, by virtue of strenuous effort, were collected in 1918 and transported to the St. Augustine River district where now they flourish and increase in number. Some day, it would seem from the great success of the reindeer-herds of Alaska—introduced by Dr. Sheldon Jackson and fostered by the United States Government—these fine animals will surely replace the dogs on the Labrador, when local prejudice against them has been overcome or has evaporated. They are useful not merely for the milk but for the meat and the skins, as well as for transportation. They live at peace instead of on the precarious verge of battle. The “experiment” has not collapsed in dismal failure. It is only in abeyance to the ultimate assured success, and it is not too much to predict that another generation or two will see the reindeer numerous and useful throughout the Labrador.