Connie loans us her beat-up old Toyota Tercel for the two-day drive to Mistissini. My mechanic friend Tom Gifford assured me that the car had a 90% chance of getting there. (“Don't ask me about the odds of it making it back to Ottawa,” he quipped.) But our friend Don Haines looks doubtful, and generously volunteers to accompany us to Mistissini in his somewhat spiffier station wagon. And so, on August 2, we load our gear — consisting mainly of one green 17.5' Hellman “Prospector” canoe and three huge very hard-to-lift packs — into our vehicles and start the long drive north.
2 A Brief History of Boating andCanoeing in Quebec-Labrador
LONG BEFORE EUROPEANS came to this land, the Aboriginal Peoples — the Inuit, Cree and Innu (the latter formerly called the Naskapi and Montagnais) — had long explored its convoluted waterways and regularly travelled long distances from inland to the coast. And no doubt also coast to coast when the spirit moved them to do so. Summer and winter travel followed traditional routes to procure food and trade with neighbours. Many of the ancient routes were well-established, with the portages cleared and trodden innumerable times by moccasined feet.
Europeans have nibbled around the edges of this land since the Vikings sailed to the coast of Labrador over 1,000 years ago. In the 1400s, fishermen from the Basque region of Spain came to the coast of Labrador in search of whales and established settlements along the coast. Other Europeans came here in search of the fabled northwest passage to China. In 1535 Jacques Carrier explored the St. Lawrence River. He and his men endured a very cold winter where today we can relax in hot tubs in the luxurious hotels of Quebec City. Samuel de Champlain set up the first trading posts at both Quebec City and Tadoussac in 1600. In 1610, Henry Hudson sailed into the bay that now bears his name and his bones after being set adrift by his mutinous crew.
A few Europeans dared to travel far inland in the Quebec-Labrador region before 1700, in the quest for furs and souls. In 1667 two French entrepreneurs, Pierre-Esprit Radisson and Médard Chouart Sieur des Groseilliers1 travelled overland to James Bay, and then worked with the Hudson's Bay Company to set up their first trading post on the coast of James Bay at Rupert House. By this time ships came not in search of a passage to the orient, but for furs. Soon other coastal posts were set up on both the east and west shores (the East Main and West Main) of Hudson Bay and James Bay.
When A.P. Low took this photograph of Rupert House in the 1880s, the Hudson's Bay Company operated a dairy farm there. Note the cow in front of the shed on the left. Courtesy of LAC photo collection, PA-038089, A.P. Low.
The ongoing search for furs led inland along existing Cree and Innu routes, although most fur traders were reluctant to leave the security of the coast. Some Europeans followed the water routes inland, not in search of furs, but in search of souls. In 1672 Father Charles Albanel,2 an adventurous Jesuit priest, became the first European to travel overland from New France, from Tadoussac on the shores of the St. Lawrence to James Bay, via Lake Mistassini and the Rupert River. This is a route also followed by Low and, from Mistissini down the Rupert, by us. In the early 1800s, two expeditions are reported to have reached as far inland as Lake Nichicun, and established posts there.3 The Hudson's Bay Company may have established a trading post4 on Lake Nichicun some 500 miles (806 km) inland from James Bay as early as 1816. Or was it 1834? The records from this period are confusing, and no one seems to really know. In 1819–20, James Clouston, an Englishman in the employ of the Hudson's Bay Company, explored as far inland as Nichicun. Clouston drew a rough sketch map of his inland routes, which A.P. Low found in 1888 at the HBC post at Great Whale River and used in his travels.
In 1827, Dr. William Hendry,5 travelled from Richmond Gulf on the east side of the great circular feature of the east coast of Hudson Bay, through Clearwater Lake and Seal Lake to the headwaters of the Larch River, which he then followed to Ungava Bay. There he established Fort Chimo (now called Kuujjuak).
One of the spectacular hills of Richmond Gulf, as photographed by A.P. Low in 1896. Courtesy of LAC photo collection, PA-037569, A.P. Low.
Low noted in his 1895 Report6 that Hendry's expedition inspired a popular story for boys. Ungava; or; A Tale of Esquimau Land, by R.M. Ballantyne,7 is a colourful tale of a daring and bravado, exaggeration, hyperbole and tall tales mixed with the reality of the fur trade and northern travel. It is replete with phrases like “bloody savages,” and “oily varmints,” peopled with powerfully built heroes with blond hair and English accents, with a supporting cast of French-Canadian voyageurs, Cree guides and Inuit innocents. Low followed this route himself in 1896, but all of Ballantyne's characters seemed to have disappeared.
In 1837, John McLean, a Scot in the employ of the Hudson's Bay Company, was given the task of opening a fur trade post in the interior of the Quebec-Labrador peninsula. He and a co-worker, Erland Erlandson8 trekked overland in winter from Fort Chimo (Kuujjuak) to the North West (now Northwest) River Post on Lake Melville, just inland from Hamilton Inlet on the Atlantic coast of Labrador and near the present-day community of Goose Bay. (The community of North West River, the oldest community in central Labrador, was founded in 1743 as a fur trading post. In 1836, the Hudson's Bay Company set up a trading post here, which they called North West River.) Erlandson returned to the central part of this area and built Fort Nascopie along Lake Petitskapau the next summer. By the time Low paddled here in 1894, the post had been deserted for several decades. Low writes:
the ruins of Fort Naascaupee [sic] stand in a small clearing, close to the shore of the lake…the houses were built of small squared logs, with board roofs…the dwelling-house was in a fair state of repair, with the window sashes and some of the glass still in place… This building is about twelve by eighteen feet…about fifty yards behind, the powder-house covered with earth was seen… Adjoining this is a small burying place with a large wooden cross in its center…close to the house were several patches of rhubarb eighteen inches high…9
The route between Fort Nascopie and Goose Bay led McLean and Erlandson down the Hamilton River. They were stopped by Grand Falls (now Churchill Falls), which McLean described as one of the greatest spectacles in the world.”10 Finding no way around the falls, the party returned the way they had come, back to Fort Chimo. These two men were the first Europeans to see these falls.11 When Low came this way in 1894, travelling upstream from the Atlantic, he found an Aboriginal portage route around the falls. No wonder McLean missed it — the route involved 11 portages, covering over seven miles, and more than a dozen lakes, before rejoining the river below the falls via a precipitous two-mile portage.
In the 1860s and 1870s, not long before Low's explorations, Père Babel, OMI (Oblates of Mary Immaculate)12 travelled north from Mingan on the Gulf of St. Lawrence with the Montagnais. Low writes, “…the map made during his wanderings, is kept at the mission station of Betsiamites, and when consideration is taken of his imperfect instruments and other disadvantages, its accuracy is wonderful.”13 Low followed some of the peregrinations of the good Father in his own wanderings from the head-waters of the Hamilton River to the north shore of the Gulf of St. Lawrence.
Low ventured into this vast territory as a scientist. He brought to light the geography and geology of the Quebec-Labrador peninsula, along with detailed observations on its people, wildlife, vegetation and climate, thus filling in many of the blanks on the map of this region. After him, a new type of paddler would follow his trail and paddle strokes — not because it was part of their job, but rather to seek adventure