The first of this new breed of paddler was William Brooks Cabot. He was an American from New England who came north in 1899, making the long trek from Lake St. John (now Lac Saint-Jean), about 200 miles (about 320 km) north of Quebec City, to Lake Mistassini, the same route Low followed in the spring of 1892 by canoe. Cabot was guided by two Montagnais men, one of whom, John Bastian, had accompanied Low on several of his explorations.14 Bastian regaled Cabot with tales of the interior of Labrador with its immense lakes and vast herds of caribou, and where many Aboriginals still lived beyond the touch of European civilization. In 1903 Cabot travelled north, with the intention of journeying with Naskapi people. By coincidence, he met Leonidas Hubbard Jr. who was also drawn by the promise of a Labrador wilderness. Sadly, Hubbard would be lured to his death. Cabot had much more luck. He spent five summers travelling with the Naskapi families who traded at North West River, the HBC post at the head of Hamilton Inlet which at the time included what is now Lake Melville in Labrador, and made many winter trips into the Lake Mistassini area.
While Cabot was a self-described “minor wanderer,” Hubbard, a journalist, was out for glory. On July 15,1903, Hubbard, along with his friend Dillon Wallace, (a New York lawyer) and George Elson, (the son of a white Hudson's Bay Company employee and a Cree woman named Abigail Ottereyes from Rupert House on James Bay, set out from the HBC post at North West River. The plan was to head up the Naskapi River to Lake Michikamau (now part of the Smallwood Reservoir), and then descend the George River to Ungava Bay. Hubbard thought that a trip across some of the toughest and least known parts of North America would make excellent fodder for articles for the magazine Outing, which employed him as a writer and also funded the expedition.
Hubbard deliberately chose a less-known route where “no footsteps would be found to guide him.”15 Taking the wrong river at the start of their trip, for weeks the small party dragged, pushed and carried their canoe and gear up a narrow, tumbling river, now called Susan Brook. On September 21, they gave up. Exhausted and starving, they retraced their steps back to North West River. Hubbard didn't make it. He collapsed and was left in their tent, while the two others struggled on in search of help. A few days later, on October 18, in the midst of the winter's first blizzard, Wallace collapsed. Elson continued on alone. Upon reaching Grand Lake, Elson built a raft of driftwood and eventually reached a trapper's cabin. A rescue party was organized. Wallace was found, barely alive. Hubbard had died of starvation, and was found wrapped in blankets in the tent where they had left him.
Wallace blamed Low's map of Labrador for their tragedy. “Its representation as to the Northwest River [Grand Lake is shown as a widening of the river]…proved to be wholly incorrect, and the mistake it led us into cost us dear.”16 The map Low had prepared in 1896 was indeed inaccurate, and showed too few rivers entering the head of Grand Lake. But a close look at Low's map shows that the details of Grand Lake and the rivers flowing into it are sketched with dotted lines, which Low always used when the information was based on hearsay, or represented his best guess. This map was clearly a speculative rendering of the geography of the area, and it was never intended to be used as an authoritative guide.
That misinterpretation was their first mistake. They also didn't listen to Low's advice about travelling in Quebec-Labrador. Hubbard had written to Low asking about travel in the region. While we were unable to find Low's reply to Hubbard, Low's travel advice to others was always consistent — take all food needed for the entire trip, take big canoes (19 feet, built for three people plus gear) and take a local guide. Wallace and Hubbard took only minimal provisions and counted on living off the land as they travelled. Seemingly they could not find a local guide, and, for some reason, only had one pair of moccasins each.17
The story does not end here. In 1905, Dillon Wallace returned to Labrador to finish the expedition he and Hubbard had started. At the same time, Hubbard's widow, Mina, secretly organized her own expedition. She blamed Wallace, not only for her husband's death, but also for discrediting him in the account of the tragedy, The Lure of the Labrador Wild, published in 1905. She felt that Dillon made him appear weak, both mentally and physically. In our opinion, Wallace told it “like it was.” Hubbard, as the expedition leader, must have been riddled with self-doubt when he ultimately realized that his mistakes were likely to be fatal.
George Elson, out of loyalty to Leonidas Hubbard, agreed to guide Mina Hubbard's expedition. This time, both expeditions took sufficient food and hired local guides. And both expeditions made it to Ungava Bay successfully, although Mina's got there first, making her the “winner.” Mina Benson Hubbard became somewhat of a celebrity, being the first white woman to travel through Quebec-Labrador. Perhaps the clincher in this wilderness melodrama is George Elsor's hinted-at unrequited love for Mina Hubbard according to the well-written book, Great Heart: The History of a Labrador Adventure, published in 1988.18
The story continues to this day. One hundred years after the Hubbard tragedy, a party of four young people from New England (Troy Gipps, Jim Niedbalski, Brad Bassi and Caroline Scully) retraced the 1903 route of Leonidas Hubbard, Wallace and Elson, pushing up Susan Brook, portaging to the Smallwood Reservoir, then paddling down the George to Kangiqsualujjuaq (formerly George River Post), Quebec, at the mouth of the George River. Troy Gipps has also followed Low's routes on the Clearwater River and Nastapoka River on the east side of Hudson Bay.
Mina Hubbard was not the only woman to undertake a long overland journey in the Quebec-Labrador peninsula. Maud Watt, the strong-willed wife of Hudson's Bay Factor Jim Watt, was no ordinary woman. In 1917, the Watts were running the HBC post at Fort Chimo, on Ungava Bay. In 1917, the supply ship, Naskopi, did not arrive. This was not unexpected, as the First World War was causing upheavals in the world that even reached such far-flung outposts as Fort Chimo. The Watts were in a difficult position, as they had no way of knowing when the Naskopie or another ship would arrive. They decided to take a desperate measure — to travel overland in winter from Fort Chimo to the St. Lawrence River, where supplies could be obtained and the plight of the Aboriginals at Fort Chimo communicated to the Hudson's Bay Company.
On April 18, 1918, they hitched up the dogs to a “tatilabinask” (a sled designed to carry a canoe) and headed south on snowshoes. At Fort Mackenzie, a post the Watts had set up two years earlier at the junction of the Caniapiscau and the Swampy Bay rivers, they were welcomed by several Aboriginal families who agreed to guide them. It took one month for the party, which now included several Aboriginal children, to reach the site of Fort Nascopie, the abandoned HBC post that Low had visited in 1894. They continued south, crossing over into the St. Lawrence River watershed and heading for the Moisie River. Low took a different route to the St. Lawrence in 1984, descending the Romaine and St. John (now Rivière St. Jean), which he considered the most difficult route in all his extensive travels.
The routes the Watts were guided to may have been easier, but before they reached the Moisie River warm spring weather had made the ice treacherous, and Jim fell through several times. Once the ice cleared, they abandoned sleds and continued in their canoes, reaching the St. Lawrence 55 days after leaving Fort Chimo, 800 miles (1287 km) to the north.
After this remarkable journey, Jim and Maud Watt moved to Rupert House, where Jim was appointed factor. They arrived when the beaver population was in steep decline. Beavers had been nearly obliterated in the country between the Rupert and Eastmain rivers by over-trapping. The Cree, without beaver to trade for guns, ammunition, flour and other now-essential goods, were starving. The Watts decided that the solution was to set up a beaver sanctuary. In the winter of 1930, Maud trekked across James Bay on snowshoes, with her two children aged three and six, to Moose Factory where she continued south to the railway, and then to Quebec City to plead her case to the government. She was successful, and soon a 7,000 square-mile reserve was established, and the beaver population rebounded. This was the first of many large wildlife reserves set up by the Quebec government.
Although her husband died in 1944, Maud, known as the “Angel of Hudson Bay” remained at Rupert House the rest of her life.19
There are many others who have, in their way, travelled in the footsteps of Low. The year