RIVER ROUGH,
RIVER SMOOTH
RIVER ROUGH,
RIVER SMOOTH
Adventures on Manitoba’s Historic Hayes River
Anthony Dalton
NATURAL HERITAGE BOOKS
A MEMBER OF THE DUNDURN GROUP
TORONTO
Copyright © Anthony Dalton, 2010.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanic, photocopying or otherwise (except for brief passages for purposes of review) without the prior permission of Dundurn Press. Permission to photocopy should be requested from Access Copyright.
Published by Natural Heritage
Books A Member of The Dundurn Group
Edited by Shannon Whibbs
Design by Jennifer Scott
Printed and bound in Canada by Transcontinental.
Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication
Dalton, Anthony, 1940-
River rough, river smooth : adventures on Manitoba’s historic Hayes River / by Anthony Dalton.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-1-55488-712-5
1. Dalton, Anthony, 1940- --Travel--Manitoba--Hayes River. 2. Hayes River (Man.)--Description and travel.
3. Hayes River (Man.)--History. I. Title.
FC3395.H38D35 2009 917.127’104 C2009-906936-9
1 2 3 4 5 14 13 12 11 10
We acknowledge the support of the Canada Council for the Arts and the Ontario Arts Council for our publishing program. We also acknowledge the financial support of the Government of Canada through the Book Publishing Industry Development Program and The Association for the Export of Canadian Books, and the Government of Ontario through the Ontario Book Publishers Tax Credit program, and the Ontario Media Development Corporation.
Care has been taken to trace the ownership of copyright material used in this book. The author and the publisher welcome any information enabling them to rectify any references or credits in subsequent editions.
J. Kirk Howard, President
Colour photos © Anthony Dalton Collection
Front cover photographs courtesy of the author.
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For Steve Crowhurst and Graeme Halley
“All my life,” he said, “I have searched for the treasure. I have sought it in the high places, and in the narrow. I have sought it in deep jungles, and at the ends of rivers, and in dark caverns — and yet have not found it.
“Instead, at the end of every trail, I have found you awaiting me. And now you have become familiar to me, though I cannot say I know you well.
Who are you?”
And the stranger answered:
“Thyself.”
— From an old tale1
CONTENTS
Chapter 1 Rowing Down the River
Chapter 6 The Meandering Echimamish
Chapter 7 A Score of Beaver Dams
Chapter 8 Painted Stone and Beyond
Chapter 9 The Longest Portage
Chapter 10 Logan Lake and Whitewater
Chapter 11 Near Disaster at Hell Gates
Chapter 12 Sailing on Windy Lake
Chapter 13 The Wreck at Wipanipanis Falls
Chapter 14 An End, and a New Beginning
Chapter 15 Three Canoes on the Hayes
Chapter 16 Rapid Descent
Chapter 17 Final Days on the Mighty River
Chapter 18 York Factory
Notes
Bibliography
Index
About the Author
SINCE I WAS A BOY, roaming alone across a deserted Second-World-War aerodrome1 in southern England on foot or on my bicycle in search of wild creatures, or building a makeshift raft out of oil drums and old rope and paddling across a flooded gravel quarry, I have felt at home in the outdoors. In those long-gone years, when not at school, my days varied between solitary adventures and reading about the travels of larger-than-life figures from history and from fiction. Books by H. Rider Haggard, G.A. Henty, and R. M. Ballantyne adorned my bookshelves. Later, as I grew older and my literary education improved, I found much satisfaction in the heroic deeds as told by the masters of Greek mythology. Homer in particular thrilled me with his dramatic opus The Iliad and his glorious tale of the epic journey undertaken by Ulysses in The Odyssey. Equally, I was inspired by the magnificent prose poems crafted by Samuel Taylor Coleridge, John Keats, Henry Wordsworth Longfellow, Sir Walter Scott, and Alfred Lord Tennyson, plus the controversial but brilliant Charles Beaudelaire.
Those feelings of youthful comfort in the outdoors, combined with the books I devoured, eventually translated into a nomadic adult life of adventure that has taken me across great deserts, into the high mountains, through steamy jungles, down mighty rivers, and over the world’s seas. By the early 1990s I had travelled just about everywhere I wanted to go, and I had a memory bank full of extremely personal treasures. For these reasons I included