They travelled up the Hamilton River in the fall, following the route taken by Low in 1894, with local people accompanying them for a year as they hunted and trapped. Merrick's account paints a rare and vivid picture of life in the Labrador bush in the early 1930s — a life that today has largely disappeared. They describe a land still wild, with a tapestry of characters — people of Scottish, Inuit and Innu (Montagnais and Naskapi descent), who are tough, resilient, enduring and, above all, filled with humour and joy.
In more recent times, many adventurous travellers have followed in Low's footsteps. Stewart Coffin is one of these modern explorers who was lured by the “shaggy spires of black spruce silhouetted against the sky, stretching uninterrupted across the entire horizon.”21 Stewart was one of the last paddlers to view Grand Falls (with Dick Irwin) on the Churchill River (by then its name had changed from Hamilton River) before it was diverted through tunnels and turbines. In 1980, Stewart, with a party of six intrepid paddlers, followed Low's 1894 route from the watershed of the Churchill River over the height of land into the upper Romaine River. However, Low, on advice from his Aboriginal guides, portaged from the Upper Romaine watershed into the St. John River to descend to the St. Lawrence. Low writes:
Nothing is known of the river for over fifty miles below this point [where the portage route to the St. John River leaves the Romaine], except that it is quite impassable for canoes, probably on account of long rapids with perpendicular rocky walls, where portages are impossible. Nothing but the absolute impossibility of passing up and down this part of the river would induce the Indians to make use of the present portage route, which is the longest and worst of those known to the writer anywhere in northeastern Canada. Careful inquiries from a score of Indians met coming inland offered no information concerning this part of the river, which has never been descended by anyone so far as known.22
With a testimonial like that, who could resist? Coffin and his party started their descent of the Romaine River which, as far as they knew, had never been paddled for its entire length. But they found traces of previous travellers at the most impassable of many impassable gorges. Here, a trail marked by axe blazes on trees led over a steep hill and down a steep gully back to the river. It was the only practical route past the gorge. Who made the trail remains a mystery.
Duke Watson, the peripatetic northern traveller already mentioned, took three consecutive trips on the Rupert and the Eastmain, then down the Caniapiscau to Fort Chimo (Kuujjuak) in 1974, just before the James Bay Hydro power project robbed the Caniapiscau River of its headwaters and turned them backwards to flow into the La Grande River. In a letter to Che-Mun magazine in 2003, Duke reminisced that these trips “were among the most challenging and rewarding of my numerous experiences in the north.”23 Herb Pohl, an Austrian who now lives in Burlington, Ontario, has, like Duke Watson, paddled far and wide on trips across the northern reaches of this continent on trails so rugged that few will follow him. He too has taken several trips up the rivers from Richmond Gulf, also following in the footsteps of Low. After his initial trip, the first words he heard upon arriving in the community of Kuujjuarapik at the mouth of the Great Whale River were, “You look beat.24
Some of the most intrepid trips following Low's routes have been done by teenagers. Camp Keewaydin, headquartered in the Temagami area of Ontario, began organizing ambitious trips on rivers in the James Bay area, in 1934. The first trips, descending the Rupert River from Lake Mistassini, depended on the sketchy maps made by Low in 1885. Dan Carpenter Sr. was the leader of many of these early excursions. He began a legacy of trip leaders emanating from his descendents that now collectively add up to almost a century and a half of guiding and paddling on James Bay rivers. G. Heberton Evans III may be an unlikely name for a paddler, but Heb Evans, of New England, (nicknamed by his camp colleagues as “Master of the Bay”) was the personification of the wilderness way of Camp Keewaydin, leading 15 river trips to James Bay between 1962 and 1976, including the Eastmain River and Rupert River routes. He met Maud Watt during his first visit to Rupert House in 1964. At that time, she was still active and operating a bakery. With Dan Carpenter Sr. as a mentor, along with Métis guide Nishe Bélanger of Mattawa, Ontario, whom he credits with teaching him the most about running wild rivers, Evans took traditional wilderness trips for teenagers to a new level of challenge and difficulty.25
Also following the tradition set by Heb Evans for Camp Keewaydin is Bill Seeley, whose notes26 Jim and I consulted frequently. Bill has led seven expeditions over six weeks in length to James Bay. His river routes include the Upper Rupert, Eastmain and the Tichegami (a major tributary of the Eastmain). With three companions he followed the same rough river route in 2002 as Low did in 1888, from the La Grande to the Great Whale River by way of the St. Denys River. Like us, they took with them photocopies of Low's field notes and hand-drawn maps. Like us, they tried to follow Low's exact route. Like us, they were humbled by the accuracy of Low's maps and the pace of his travel. Bill Seeley writes, “…in the face of the barrenness of the burned landscape and the odd lack of any trace of the Cree at all, Low's notes were a welcome companion.”27 We would come to know exactly what Bill meant. There are many other modern travellers of Low's routes whose exploits cause us to shake our heads in wonder and respect — Pat Lewtas, Dick Irwin, George Luste, Bob Davis, Hugh Stewart, Garrett and Alexandra Conover….28 What they all hold in common is their awe and admiration of A.P. Low's trips.
Neil MacDonald of Petawawa, Ontario, was passing through the lobby of the Labrador Inn in Goose Bay when a framed photograph caught his eye — a black and white shot showing a group of men dressed in anoraks, wool pants and mukluks, with a canoe and a sled and a partially frozen river in the background. Clearly this was not your average canoe trip. The photo struck Neil as “a scene of pure exploration as compelling as any modern shot of an astronaut on the moon.”29 The photograph was taken by A.P. Low in March 1894, when he and his party were trying to get an early start travelling up the Hamilton River. Inspired by this unique photograph, Neil set out in 1999 to retrace much of this route travelling by canoe and, in the winter, by snowshoe and sled. Neil writes:
while…we both carried our canoes on sleds…made multiple trips over the same ground, and relied on similar equipment, our experience serves mainly to highlight the difficulties of Low's. Our loads were …not nearly as heavy [Low's party hauled 300–400 pounds], our mileages were nowhere near as far…the sheer size of the territory covered by Low on this expedition would defy credulity if it were not described with such detail and authority. The standard of what was normal in his world of exploration eclipses any current standard of wilderness tripping…His example as a wilderness traveller, as a leader, and as a scientist all inspire respect; his accomplishments simply inspire humility and awe.”30
We think Neil says best what we, and others who have travelled in the footsteps of Low, feel.
All these people have followed the challenge of Low for adventure. Low, of course, travelled as part of his job. There are a few others who have gone to great lengths — thousands of miles — travelling in his footsteps as part of their jobs. Of these, two men stand out in particular: Murray Watts and Jacques Rousseau.
Murray Watts,31 a geologist and mining engineer, is best known for his adventurous prospecting trips in the far north of Quebec, across the largely treeless area of Ungava. He made seven trips there between 1931 and 1951, where, he said, “the only previous visitors were A.P. Low…and Robert Flaherty, who filmed ‘Nanook of the North.’”32 At the age of 22, he made a 1,200 mile (1,931 km) canoe journey from Moose Factory, at the southern end of James Bay. He travelled north up the coast of James Bay and Hudson Bay where Low had sailed and paddled a half-century before him. Even at that time, Watts