In contrast, several of his colleagues in the Geological Survey — such as Joseph Tyrrell and Robert Bell — left behind large volumes of letters, diaries and clippings which are accessible and which provide extensive insights into their professional and personal lives. Perhaps the illness that caused Low's retirement also deprived him of a productive period when many write their memoirs or organize their materials. Perhaps this dearth of memorabilia is due to a lack of surviving family members in a position to ensure that his materials were not lost. As noted, Low's two sons and wife died before he did. Only his spinster daughter survived him and little is known of her or what she may have done with any of her father's personal papers. The only known trove of Low's handwritten material is his survey notebooks housed in the Library and Archives Canada in Ottawa. Perhaps this dearth is due to Low's reticence to put himself in the public spotlight. He was a modest man. In contrast, and in the same decades, Joseph Tyrrell captured the public imagination with his trips across the central Barren Lands. His brother's report on the first expedition, “Across the Sub-Arctics of Canada” has become a well-known book for Arctic collectors. Tyrrell also had the luck to find dinosaur bones in southern Alberta, a discovery that ultimately led to a museum being named after him. Low, on the other hand, only wrote exceptionally detailed and accurate geological reports, which do not make vibrant reading — unless you are a wilderness paddler. His book, The Cruise of the Neptune, is a good read for those who are interested in the era and locale, but is long out of print. Lastly, Low's tenure in the office of director of the Geological Survey was short, and his tenure as deputy minister of Mines was marred straightaway by his debilitating illness, so that he had little time to make his mark as a senior bureaucrat.
In Low's time there were still vast unknown areas of Canada yet to be explored — a time when no one knew what riches were hidden just beyond the next bend in the river, or over the next hill; a time when basic knowledge of geography, vegetation, wildlife and the indigenous peoples who lived in these shadowy unknown lands could be revealed and brought into the knowledge and consciousness of the Canadian society, largely clustered to the south, close to the border with the United States. Canada then was a young and emerging nation, defining its dreams and visions of the future. When the first Canadian National Park, Banff, was established in the Rocky Mountains in 1885, Low was exploring vast Lake Mistassini in rugged country east of James Bay. The next year, the Canadian Pacific Railway was completed while Low was in wild country west of James Bay. The Northwest Rebellion, the Klondike Gold Rush, the death of Canada's first Prime Minister, Sir John A. MacDonald, the election of Sir Wilfrid Laurier's Liberal Party in 1896, all occurred in his time.
For those whose passion is history, it is well known that historical research can be both exhilarating and exhausting. Jim is determined to make known the exploits of this remarkable, yet largely unknown, Canadian explorer. Jim is also addicted to dark green, the colour of spruce. I too have a serious addiction — to watching landscape pass before my eyes at the speed of a canoe. So we put our addictions together and hatched a plan to retrace some of A.P. Low's exceptional canoe explorations. How better to come to know someone than to follow in his footsteps, to sweat over the same portages and to be bitten by direct descendents of the same blackflies and mosquitoes that bit him. Thus was born the A.P. Low Expedition 2002.
GETTING READY
This expedition begins in the depths of the Library and Archives Canada, where we find a wealth of Low's photographs and government reports. We strike gold; here are Low's original maps and his handwritten field notebooks. But sniffing out old documents only reveals what happened to him and what he did. There is still much missing. To really understand the character of A.P. Low, we need to follow in at least some of his actual footsteps. As canoeists in need of a good excuse for a trip, we decide to follow some of Low's canoe routes, to retrace the portages that he used, and face the same navigation challenges that he overcame. But we want to do more than simply retrace his canoe routes. We want to find a way into his mind and heart, and maybe even touch his soul. Only by doing so can we truly achieve an appreciation of the magnitude of his extraordinary accomplishments, his determination and his resourcefulness.
One evening in the darkness of January 2002, Jim came over to my home, to find me sitting cross-legged on the floor of the dining room, which at the time was covered with 1:250,000 scale topographic maps.
“Jim,” I said, bewildered by the array of information, “we'll never find our way through this country. It's a maze, and everything looks just the same.” By then I had been reading A.P. Low's reports to the Geological Survey and trying to transcribe the route he took onto modern maps. “Admit it, Jim. We're hopelessly lost and we're not even out of the house yet.”
However, with perseverance and help from the original maps drawn by Low and his assistants, we put together a route that combines several of his explorations. From the village of Mistissini14 on the lake bearing almost the same name, about 400 kilometres north of Quebec City, we will fly by floatplane to Lake Naococane, near the Quebec border with Labrador. We choose this as a starting point because the lake appears on the maps as a most amazing body of water, with thousands of islands, peninsulas and elongated bays. Here, even the redoubtable Low became lost in this maze of land and water while on his 1895 expedition,15 and turned back from his attempt to reach the then-operational Hudson's Bay Company post at Lake Nichicun. With the help of modern maps and our Global Positioning System (GPS), we hope to complete what we call “Low's Gap” and paddle to Lake Nichicun. From there, our plan is to work our way up the Nichicun River (a tributary of the La Grande River) and over the height of land to the Eastmain River. We will descend the Eastmain to another abandoned HBC post, Neoskweskau, and then travel through a maze of lakes and creeks, both upstream and downstream, along a once well-travelled route to Lake Mistassini. From there, we will follow the traditional trade route of the Hudson's Bay Company brigades from Lake Mistassini, descend the Natastan branch of the Rupert River, the Marten River, and finally the Rupert itself, to end at Waskaganish on the coast of James Bay. The trip is about 1000 kilometres in length, with some 87 portages.
Although this route is rarely travelled in its entirety by canoe today, the country it passes through is by no means forgotten or abandoned. This is the traditional homeland of the Cree, who continue to trap and hunt in this area, and to use these ancient trails as highways (often in winter as snowmobile routes). We are also keenly aware that the Grand Council of the Cree have signed an agreement with the government of Quebec that gives the go-ahead to Quebec Hydro for the construction of the next phase of the James Bay Project — to create a new 600-square kilometre reservoir on the Eastmain (above the existing diversion to the La Grande watershed and the turbines at the massive dam on the La Grande River called LG-2,16 and to divert the mighty Rupert River northwards so some of its flow will also end up turning the turbines at LG-2. We may be one of the last parties to see these rivers unfettered and free, flowing as they have since the melting of the great ice sheets of the Pleistocene Period. It is unnerving to think that the water flowing under the canoe on this trip is already destined for reservoir on the Eastmain River and ultimately the turbines. In a few years, this will become a reality. In this case, it is the hunger of our civilization for electrical power that is creating this devastation that we think of as “The Turbines That Ate the Rivers of Quebec.”
Both Jim and I discuss, somewhat hesitantly, our plans with our true loves, of course. We are not the wild men of our youth any more. In fact, I guess we never were, outside of our imaginations. And it is somewhat arguable, for me at least, whether or not I have worked off my diaper-debt to my wife, Connie, from my last excursion, the third summer of retracing Alexander Mackenzie's route across Canada.17 Connie is a biologist and has spent many long bug-infested days researching wildlife in various far-flung parts of Canada. She is no stranger to long expeditions and is not overly concerned with my safety. “Paddling the boreal forest,” she smiles, “I'd like to go along too, except for Isaac.”
Jim