The Hudson’s Bay Company offices in Montreal were in McGill Street, and though half our number had taken the train westward, there seemed to be quite a crowd of us milling about in the comparatively small office space. We met the men in charge of our areas and most of the apprentices were told where they would be going. Another boy, Ian Smith, and I were ‘odd men out’ for whom a home would be found during the course of the summer travels.
To relieve the congestion, a party of us were sent down to the docks to work on the Nascopie, the ship that the archdeacon had told us about at school, now loading up for her annual trip with the year’s supply for the distant posts.
After the majestic liner which had carried us so smoothly across the Atlantic, the Nascopie seemed very small and insignificant. Her decks only just rose above the level of the wharf, whereas the liner had towered up above the dockside. Her paintwork was dark and workmanlike whereas the Duchess had gleamed and dazzled in white. None the less, many of us were, in the years to come, to form an affection for the little ship which no ocean liner could ever have inspired. Sometimes she was naughty. In rough weather there were few tricks that were beyond her, particularly when coming down the Labrador coast with only a few light bales of furs in her holds. She would then creak and groan in the most alarming manner, but survived the worst hammerings the North Atlantic and the Arctic seas could serve up, to return each year, like a faithful friend, to keep us company for a few hours or a day or so in our northern solitude.
More than once the Nascopie took on a double duty, when lesser craft than she gave up the unequal struggle against fog and ice. The old ship had been built during or just before the First World War, and was one of the finest steel icebreakers ever constructed. During the war, she was employed smashing the ice in the White Sea, and according to all reports was well ahead of the Russians in this field. Once, in a convoy in heavy ice, the huge Russian icebreaker leading the convoy got stuck. The Nascopie bustled up alongside and hailed the Russian.
‘Shall I go ahead, sir?’ shouted the captain.
‘How the devil can you go ahead when I’m stuck?’ roared back the Russian.
‘Shall I try?’
‘Oh, go to hell if you want to,’ snapped the Russian.
The Nascopie broke through the ice jam to lead the convoy into harbour, and for good measure, on the way home, she sank a submarine. Small wonder that she grew on us almost as though she were human.
On that first Monday morning, however, we were not greatly impressed. In fact by the time we had finished carrying the heavy mail boxes – and it is extraordinary how heavily a year’s mail can weigh – we were not sorry to see the last of her for the day.
We soon made friends around our temporary home. One Saturday night, a French Canadian family held a wedding reception in the building. Two or three of us were hanging about so they invited us to join the party. During the evening, we were approached by a rather unsteady-looking man who, after casting a glance at a priest standing near by, said in a deep but penetrating whisper: ‘H.B.C. eh? Do you know what that means? “Here before Christ,” that’s what it means!’
He told us that he had been trading with the company for over thirty years. Ian asked him if he had retired and the man roared with laughter.
‘Retired?’ he shouted. ‘I’m never going to retire. They’ll find me one day somewhere along the trail and I hope they’ll leave me there.’ He waved his arm round the room then went on.
‘This sort of thing’s not for me. I only came because she happens to be a niece. I’ll not be down this way again. Victor’s my name. They’ll know me up the river. I don’t have much in this world but I’m free. I go where I like when I like and I’m off home in the morning.’ He waved his arm and marched off towards the table where the food was set out. I was often to think about Victor in the years to come, his boisterous good health, his obvious contentment with the life he had chosen, and his best clothes, which looked as if they had not been worn for many a long day.
We met three sisters at the wedding too who had come from Three Rivers and had made the trip down with their father and mother. They were good fun and Ian Smith and I and another chap took them out for a picnic the next day, as they spent the weekend in the city. It was the first time that I had ever been out with a girl other than my sister, and one of them, Laurette, said she would write to me. I rashly promised to write and send her a fur from wherever I was. She did write too but alas did not receive the promised fur.
By the end of the next week, so far as we could see, the Nascopie was just about fully laden. We were not surprised to be told to pack up again in preparation for moving on. Then at the last minute, because of the shortage of accommodation on the ship, Ian, myself and three others were told that we were to take passage on another freighter, which was going up as far north as the Labrador coast and Ungava Bay. Somewhere up there we should join up again with the Nascopie. This meant that we should be sailing a few days later.
The evening before we parted we all clubbed together to buy some beer and had a small party – at least we sang songs and were generally very noisy. Now that we knew that we were to be northerners, an air of easy comradeship settled over the gathering and it seemed likely that we should have much to do with each other over the next few years. Such is the remoteness of life in the Arctic that I was only to see three of the dozen or so present after that season.
The five of us that were to be left behind went down to the docks to see the rest of our party depart. Prepared for laughter and banter, we had not expected the sailing of the little ship to be so stirring. The vessel was bedecked in pennants, apart from the Red Ensign at the stern and the Blue Peter at the mainmast. A detachment of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, in their scarlet uniforms, was drawn up on the deck for inspection by a high-ranking officer. There were priests, government officials, traders, doctors and scientists. In her holds, we knew, were the supplies for a territory ten times the size of England. We shook hands with our friends. Some of the ladies farewelling their nearest and dearest cried, while another group was singing.
Then the siren sounded out in long blasts, the propellor churned the water and she was away. A nearby harbour tug blew her a rousing farewell and more and more sirens sounded their good wishes. Black smoke belched from her funnel and as she moved out into the stream we could see clearly all the things lashed to her decks. Boats. Canoes. Drums of gasoline. All sorts of queer-shaped things covered with tarpaulins.
Ian and I watched her manoeuvre into midstream and then head out of the harbour, the white pennant of the Royal Mail slapping in the wind at the top of her mast. Down river, the Canadian navy, in the form of two destroyers, dipped flags in salute as she steamed by. Just beside me somebody’s friend had forgotten a last message, bawling out ‘Happy Christmas’ in the forlorn hope of being heard on the ship. We began to understand why they had told us that to think about the Arctic without thinking about the Hudson’s Bay Company was like writing a book about sea without mentioning ships.
A few days after the departure of the Nascopie, the remaining five of us set off quietly for the docks, taking with us all our worldly possessions. By ten o’clock that morning we were assembled in a rather gloomy shed at the city end of the wharf, where the van had unloaded us. The ship on which we were to take passage, the Ungava, was alongside the far end of the wharf, so we had a fair way to go with all our baggage.
One of our party could hardly move, so heavily laden was he with cases and packages, and his crab-like motion attracted the attention of a passing wharfie.
‘Why didn’t you bring your bed, boy?’ the man guffawed. ‘Where the devil are you off to with all that load?’
‘I’m going north for five years,’ came a voice from behind the parcels and cases.
‘Well