Otherwise (28 page)

It had been our original intention to establish a base at Windy River from which to study the caribou herds as they emerged from the taiga forests on their northward migration into the tundra plains. After they had passed by, and after the spring thaw had opened the lakes and rivers to canoe travel, we had planned to follow the deer north to the Ihalmiut camps, there to study the interactions between deer and people. Later, when the herds moved on to their summering grounds we had hoped to be airlifted still farther north to rejoin
la foule
.

Our late arrival at Windy, together with the lack of a suitable canoe had made nonsense of these plans. In mid-June, taking advantage of a rare opportunity when the radio seemed to be functional, I sent another
SOS
message on behalf of the Inuit, to which I added a request that the relief plane also bring us in a proper canoe and enough extra gas to fly us and our gear from Windy direct to Angikuni Lake.

We had heard nothing in reply but, on July 1, a strangely misshapen Norseman came thundering over Windy Bay to splash down off Cache Point. It was Gunnar’s, with a seventeen-foot freighter canoe lashed to one of his plane’s floats. We were in no way ready for it but we jumped into
the Bathtub and hurried out to query Gunnar, who greeted us with his usual mocking grin.

”Surprise … surprise. You guys sure musta stirred up the shit in Ottawa. They’ve sent me in on special charter with a load of crap for them Huskies up on the Kazan. Huskies’ll have to come down here to get it though ’cause I can’t fly it on up to ’em. The drag of that fucking canoe made me burn more gas on the way in here than a hundred-mile-an-hour headwind. I’ll be lucky to make it home.”

”What about our trip to Angikuni?” I asked anxiously.

”Not to worry. That’s laid on. Be back in a couple weeks. Right now, get your Husky pet to help unload this junk.”

While Ootek put the freight ashore, Andy and I hastened back to the cabin to fetch our outbound mail. Included was a long letter I had written to the minister detailing the perilous condition of the Ihalmiut. Before sealing it, I scrawled a postscript pointing out that the relief supplies we had just received – white beans, flour, five sheet-metal stoves, a dozen galvanized iron pails, six shovels, twelve lumberjack axes, and two dozen fox and wolf traps,
but no ammunition and no fishnets
– were unlikely to solve either the immediate or the long-term problems of the Ihalmiut.

Gunnar had also brought us a bundle of personal mail which we had had no time to read before he took off on his return flight to Churchill. My share included several letters from Fran. I opened and read these as soon as I could – and felt as if I had been kicked in the stomach.

She was seriously unhappy, envisaging a future of perennial choices between accompanying me on long and arduous expeditions to the back-of-beyond or of remaining in Toronto and seeing me only in passing.

Although her letters filled me with distress and apprehension, there was nothing I could do for the moment except get myself into a state. Andy admonished me:

”You can’t do damn-all to straighten things out ’til Gunnar comes back, maybe in a couple of weeks, so hustle back to your wolves and do some work.”

I took this advice and immersed myself in the comings and goings of the four adult and four juvenile wolves who constituted the family at Wolf Knoll.
Their
world at least seemed to be unfolding as it should.

Soon after Gunnar’s brief visit, Ootek returned to his family, to be replaced by Ohoto, who arrived at our cabin a few days later in poor shape, having eaten nothing for three days except one small, rotten sucker he had found dead beside a stream.

He brought bleak news. The migrating caribou, which by now were well north of the Kazan camps, could provide no more meat. The spawning run of fish in the rivers was coming to an end and, without kayaks, the people could not fish the lakes.

Andy and I tried our best to transmit another
SOS
to Churchill. When there was no indication our signals had been received, we sent Ohoto back to the Kazan camps with orders to bring the people to Windy Cabin, where we would give them all the grub we could spare and provide a canoe and nets with which they could fish Nueltin’s deep waters, where lake trout and fat whitefish abounded.

On July 10 all but one of the able-bodied Ihalmiut men and youths arrived on our doorstep. They told us most of the old folk and children were now too weak to make the journey so the women had stayed behind to care for them.

We also learned that Ootek’s wife, Howmik, was too ill to look after the couple’s sole surviving child so Ootek had chosen to remain with them.

He had, however, sent us a present – a black-and-white male puppy. Yaha delivered the scrawny little creature, explaining that, having failed to keep the rest of the litter alive on a diet of fish scales and bones, Ootek hoped
we
would be able to save this last pup’s life. We named him Tegpa and fed him so much canned milk that for the first few days he threw up as much as he was able to keep down.

After a day at Windy Cabin, mostly spent eating and sleeping, all the men except Ohoto headed for home again, laden with as much of our food and fish as they could carry. As I watched them go, I was filled with fury on their behalf – and with shame, for was I not a
kablunait
, one of the invaders of their land?

In the cabin that evening I tried to explain to Ohoto how I felt. He listened in silence then, as he went off to his own small tent, touched me lightly on the arm and softly spoke a single word:

”
Ayorama
” … it cannot be helped.

A
s I awaited Gunnar’s return I had to decide whether or not to go out with him to Churchill, and perhaps on to Toronto, to deal with my personal problems and to raise what hell I could about the Ihalmiut situation.

In the end I decided not to go. As far as Frances was concerned, I hardened my heart. Surely, I thought, she could possess her soul in patience until October when we would be reunited at Brochet. To help her accept the situation, I prepared a packet of encouraging letters, journal notes, funny poems, and sketches that Gunnar could mail to her.

I also wrote a long and scathing report on the Ihalmiut situation to be forwarded by registered mail to the commissioner of the Northwest Territories.

Gunnar finally appeared (more than a week overdue) and landed with his usual panache. Although we were greatly cheered to see him, we were angry to find he had nothing for the Ihalmiut. According to his account, the Churchill
RCMP
detachment (which was responsible for
”native administration”) had received no authorization to release relief supplies.

I scribbled an angry telegram about this for Gunnar to dispatch to Ottawa. There was no time to do more since Gunnar was anxious to get us to our destination and return to his base before daylight ended.

Hastily we loaded our gear and ourselves (including an apprehensive Tegpa) aboard the Norseman. Without the least hesitation, Ohoto, whom we had persuaded to accompany us, climbed into the co-pilot’s seat nodding his understanding of Gunnar’s pantomimed warning not to touch any of the controls.

Overloaded with supplies for six weeks, an extra forty-five gallons of avgas for Gunnar’s return to Churchill, and the new canoe lashed to the starboard float, the Norseman at first refused to fly. Roaring down the bay at full throttle, we were perilously close to the Duck Islets before Gunnar was able to rock it free of the water. I thought we were goners as we passed over the islets with only inches to spare, but Ohoto, leaning as far forward as his seatbelt would allow, was ecstatic.

”Dwoeee!
Dwoeee!
” Faster!
Faster!
he shrieked with delight.

Gunnar flew at about five hundred feet, a height from which Ohoto could see for several miles horizontally while still being able to recognize familiar detail directly below us. Under his guidance we rumbled north into a world that seemed more aquatic than terrestrial – an amoeboid water-world gleaming with uncounted lakes, streams, and rivers and pocked by varicoloured ponds, bogs, and muskegs.

We had been flying over this watery confusion for about an hour when Ohoto began bouncing in his seat. Suddenly he gave a shout we could hear even above the thunder of the engine.

”
Inuit Ku!
”

This was the great River of Men Joseph Tyrrell had known by its Chipewyan name, Kazan. But, try as we might, we three white men could not pick it out among what looked like a million glittering shards of broken mirror blindingly reflecting the light of the westering sun.

The Norseman laboured up to 2,500 feet. Despite Ohoto’s anxious attempts to point us in an easterly direction, Gunnar now took a northwesterly course. From close behind Ohoto’s shoulder, I watched what seemed to be a distant haze gradually become a water horizon of such magnitude it seemed oceanic.

Shaking his head in exasperation, Ohoto pointed at it:

”
Angikuni Nowk … No
… Tulemaliguak!”

Tulemaliguak was the Inuit name for the largest body of water in the Barren Lands – the vast lake we now call Dubawnt.

Gunnar glanced at the crumpled map spread across his lap.

”Could be. Look at the size of the fucker! So where the hell’s Angikuni?”

When I shouted the question into Ohoto’s ear he replied by jabbing a finger eastward and downward. Gunnar nodded. The plane banked in that direction and began losing altitude. Twenty minutes later Ohoto turned to me, his broad face made broader still by an enormous smile.

”There! Angikuni! The Great Lake! My people’s place!”

Gunnar set the Norseman down in a little cove backed by a naked headland near which, so Ohoto proudly told us, he himself had been born.

In a tearing hurry to be rid of us, for it was growing late and he would have to find his way back to Churchill in semidarkness, Gunnar remained in the pilot’s seat, keeping the engine ticking over while the three of us launched the canoe and ferried ourselves and our gear to a tiny gravel beach.

We had not seen any Caribou during our flight and their absence had made Andy and me distinctly uneasy for, despite Ohoto’s assurances that vast herds
would
appear, we could not get on with our investigations of their lives while they were absent.

While Andy and Ohoto pitched our two tents, I climbed the long slope of the brooding hill behind the cove for a closer look at the country. The view from the crest was stunning. To the north, west, and east the tundra rolled into infinity like gigantic billows in a frozen sea.

Although old caribou trails were everywhere, neither the deer nor any of their normal consorts – wolves, wolverines, ravens, gulls – were to be seen. The almighty sky was empty of wings; the glittering surface of Angikuni Lake was itself unmarred by any living being. The entire enormous panorama appeared devoid of life except for two tiny human figures and a puppy down by the cove, diminished by distance to the size of insects … and, ah yes … except for insects.

When the blessed breeze eased for an instant, a roiling mass of blackflies and mosquitoes lifted from the mosses and lichens like a rising tide and enveloped me. They were
understandably insatiable because, until the deer returned, there was precious little good red blood for them to eat.

Our camp was on an ancient gravel beach fifty feet above the current level of the lake and, thankfully, exposed to every wind that could blow bugs away. The site also commanded a superb view over Angikuni’s principal southwestern bay, and of a great lumpen hill called Kinetua several miles to the westward, from which the people who once lived here had taken their local name, Kinetuamiut.

We anchored our large wall tent and one-man pup tent with heavy stones for it was impossible to drive stakes into the rocky and permanently frozen ground. The big tent, which had a more-or-less bug-proof door, became a refuge for all of us and provided sleeping quarters for Andy, me, and Tegpa. By his own decision, and for reasons he did not reveal, Ohoto chose to sleep in the pup tent.

Nearby we built a stone fireplace for use when the flies permitted and when we could scrounge enough twigs, moss, and berry bushes for fuel. Otherwise we cooked inside the big tent on a stinking, roaring gasoline stove whose fumes the blackflies could not tolerate.

Because Barren Lands lakes are subject to ferocious and almost instant storms, we took particular care of our precious canoe, hauling it well above high-water mark and lashing it down to heavy boulders.

In the absence of caribou and wolves I tried to discover what I could about the Kinetuamiut. When Tyrrell arrived among them half a century earlier, they had been so numerous they had given his two canoes an escort of
twenty-three
kayaks. His sketch map of Kinetua Bay showed five ”camps” on its northern shore.

Rather reluctantly Ohoto accompanied me on my first exploration, which was to the nearby cove where he had been born. At first I could see nothing to indicate that the grassy bench behind the beach had ever been occupied by human beings. Then Ohoto peeled some moss away from what proved to be a ring of boulders twenty feet in diameter that had once anchored a deerskin
topay
– a tent.

The topay which had once stood here had belonged, Ohoto said, to his grandfather Utuwiak and both Ohoto and his father had been born in it. Poking around the rest of the site I found seven more tent circles, all apparently of about the same age. Together they may have housed fifty or sixty people.