Robert Service by Elle Andra-Warner

Author:Elle Andra-Warner
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781772033328
Publisher: Heritage House
Published: 2020-05-08T18:32:55+00:00

Steaming On The Mackenzie

The SS Mackenzie continued on, taking its passengers across Great Slave Lake and up the Mackenzie River, Canada’s longest river, flowing over 1600 kilometres to the Beaufort Sea. As the steamer plied the waters, Robert was given advice by seasoned northerners onboard. They warned him about going alone on the journey to Dawson.

“Young man, you’re going to your doom,” said one Indian agent, an ex-parson. A priest with a long silvery beard then cautioned him, “Whatever you do, don’t go alone. To travel by oneself in the Arctic is to court death. I know, because I’ve lived here all my life. A single slip and you are lost.”

But Robert was undaunted, and he continued on. By the time the steamer got to Fort Simpson—the oldest settlement on the river—Robert had bought a birchbark canoe for twenty-five dollars from an elderly Indigenous canoe-maker. It was a patchwork of colour: purple, scarlet, primrose, and silver. Its maker had specially selected the bark, sewn it with wood fibre, and lashed it with willow wands. It had taken him a year to make it. Of the sale Robert wrote, “He looked at it with the sadness of an artist who sees his finest work being sold.” Robert named his canoe Coquette. (The following year, 1912, Robert sent his friends a Christmas picture-postcard of his Coquette.)

Robert Service’s route along the old Edmonton Trail to Dawson City. After Fort Simpson, the SS Mackenzie passed the Smoking Hills riverbank, with its perpetually burning seam of coal, then arrived at Fort Norman, a Dene community at the confluence of the Mackenzie and Great Bear Rivers. The community (now called Tulita) was built against Bear Rock Mountain, a tower of limestone that rises over 1500 feet above the water.

The Douglas expedition dropped off at Fort Norman to travel up the Great Bear River to Bear Lake, where they rigged up a sail to their York boat and sailed (along with an Indigenous family) to the eastern end of the lake. Their plan was to overwinter near the abandoned site of Fort Confidence and journey to the Coppermine River the following spring.

Robert continued going up the Mackenzie River with the steamer, stopping next at Fort Good Hope, a Dene community (now called Radeli Ko) established in 1804 as a Roman Catholic mission. A short distance later, Robert crossed the imaginary line of the Arctic Circle and soon after, the mighty Mackenzie River widened to three kilometres across.

The vastness of the Mackenzie Basin impressed Robert, and he developed a deep respect for the people who lived and travelled in it. “There was only a score of them yet they were as well known as if they lived in a village. Stefansson was the uncrowned king of the Arctic, but the others were fearless, hardy, tried, and true. Nearly all met tragic deaths. The Mackenzie was more murderous than the Yukon. Its law was harder, its tribute higher. It killed most of those I knew.”

The last

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.