More Trails, More Tales. Bob Henderson

Patterson for a friendly house that lay beyond the seas. He described an area well supplied with game and fine trees for building. The cabin was fourteen feet by thirteen feet, a bit small for two chaps. In his Nahanni Journals, Patterson writes passages such as, “Levelled off the shack floor, set up the stove and cut out the pipe hole … I put in the windows, lit the stove to air and dry the shack, made the door and did various odd jobs. The shack is going to be very warm and light — an excellent refuge.” I can only wonder at the satisfaction experienced in such tasks when one is so removed from the next external heat source. We visited the site with expectations of connecting further with Patterson’s story. Cabin foundation outlines provided difficult to discern, but to our glee we did discover an old wood stove, surely one that warmed the souls of these two northern travellers and dreamers. Such tangible discoveries added a crescendo to our river song. As I remember it, Diane found the stove half buried in the forest floor. The stove was surprisingly set back from the creek and river, I remember thinking, but this was a winter cabin. Shelter was the goal. Diane had been paddled down the Nahanni more than twenty times working as a river guide. It was fitting that she or Sean would find the stove. Later we frantically fought the current above the Splits to visit one of Albert Faille’s cabins. I most enjoyed the bench near the edge of the river, perfectly located for viewing the sunset. While Albert never did find gold over decades of travels on the Liard and Nahanni rivers up from Fort Simpson, few would argue that his experience hadn’t been golden. The riverside bench helped me secure this view. No lost dog stories here. Faille had largely been a teacher to Patterson. But Faille didn’t have the writer’s craft.

      Diane Gribbin examining what just might be R.M. Patterson’s stove at Wheatsheaf Creek.

      Patterson wrote: “Never in my wildest dreams had I hoped to see anything like this.”[13] First Canyon, he noted, was two days’ travel upstream, days he must have experienced as overwhelming for work and for visual pleasure, not to mention relief from the mosquitoes in the lower river flats. We floated First Canyon, stalling our progress to delight in our passing as much as possible. I imagined Patterson, Faille, and others tracking on the beaches, jumping from one side of the river to the other and then to the next beach. Hmm, what would they do here? No beach, sheer walls, fast current. Imagine the delight of their downriver run at season’s end.

      Patterson wrote of his first meeting with the awe-inspiring First Canyon:

      That passage through the Lower Canyon was the sort of thing that comes to a man perhaps once in a lifetime if he’s lucky. The scenery is the finest of the Nahanni and the weather was perfect — clear, with cold nights and blazing hot days. And it was all strange and new: rounding a bend was like turning a page in a book of pictures; what would one see, this time and would this next reach hold, perhaps, some insuperable obstacles? But it never did, and always one found some way around by means of some new trick with the line or the pole. We were lucky too, with weather and good company and no obstacles.[14]

      I would have changed places with Patterson to spend more time in this canyon and to sing his song of exploration; I think I understand his joy. Critical for this joy is lots of time to move upstream at a pace the river dictates.

      So the Nahanni song, and certainly my song here, are both well connected to Patterson’s The Dangerous River. The book provides a lasting testimony to earlier times when Nahanni travels were an up and down full-season affair. Indeed, my favourite part of The Dangerous River is the winter travel section not addressed here.

      In reviewing the overall river song now, months later, I am reminded of a lyric by Ian Tamblyn concerning the Yukon River. It fits well. “Gold is gone, gold remains.”[15] Patterson and Matthews, Faille, and perhaps even the lost Angus Hall in the hills above the river, all found little to no gold, but gold remains. Patterson wrote of this gold in flowing pages and Faille’s river-edge bench at his cabin before The Splits sang the gold of countless sunsets and a dream for a good quest and zest for life. We all should be so lucky.

      The Horton and the Nahanni were adventureless “monotonous” trips, one might say to link to Stefansson’s thesis. But he and I were looking for different experiences in the remote north. He wanted study and recognition, discovery and enough fame to satisfy sponsors for future trips. I wanted to enjoy the grandeur of the Arctic river, to thrive in the techniques and joys of canoe camping with good friends, and to find enough historical stories to link my “now” with an intriguing “then.” We both had our adventure fulfilled, call it monotonous or not. I think I can understand this guy, and that is a good feeling. As for Patterson and Faille, no problem understanding these guys. The excitement for exploration and for discovery, in the form of new canyons or gold, feels as universal as Stefansson’s excitement for knowledge. It feels comforting to think, “I can know these guys” … sort of. Cabins and stoves and benches by the river edge that remain on the land really help this understanding feel tangible.

      The Northcote property near Lakefield, Ontario, on the Trent-Severn waterway may appear incongruous beside the Horton and Nahanni river finds, but not so. It was with the same spirit of inquiry and intrigue that I drove (not paddled) up the grass-rutted lane to the Douglas homestead. Whereas I had expected more at Stefansson’s Coal Creek and Patterson’s Wheatsheaf Creek, this place was in better shape than I had imaged. The large riverbank white house with green roof stood tall and majestic, as did the barn — once full of canoes, now full of winter sleighs. The wraparound veranda of the main house gave a well lived in impression, as did the overall grounds where winter play on the open slopes and lake paddling and sailing used to abound. The two square, timber-log summer cabins are settling into the ground surrounded by brambles and foot-catching dog-strangling vine. They are very rustic and charming in that simple living, sparse needs, and few possessions way. I instantly fell in love with the place. The insides proved that all buildings need work. Indeed, that’s why I was there. Here is history alive and well. The Douglas brothers’ story of Arctic travel told in the 1914 classic Lands Forlorn[16] is a must read, and the characters who visited Northcote read like an early 1900s who’s who of the north: John Hornby, Guy Blanchet, and P.G. Downes are highlights among them. Northcote was a conduit of northern affairs. But it was also a recreational playground for the related Greer and Mackenzie families.

      George Douglas’s homestead in Northcote.

      Finding cabins, or what’s left of them, doesn’t have to be just an Arctic pursuit. Here, to my mind, is a house/cabin/barn all linked to arctic travel. Those same imaginative feelings grabbed hold as I wondered about George Douglas and all those who loved this grand property. My northern interest led to an invite by Bill Gastle and Kathy Hooke (George is her uncle by marriage). Bill and I, along with Richard Johnson from Lakefield College and Bert Ireland, all sized up the work needed to restore the main house into a liveable space again. The stone foundation needed to be reinforced and the house levelled on the foundation. The insides needed more than a Molly Maid cleaning. The veranda needed to come off to access the foundations, then get rebuilt. The roof must be covered anew. It is doable but expensive. The school envisioned summer programming. I envisioned northern literature and canoeing symposia. It all felt like a dream to me, but not to Bill and Bert, who started talking specifics of refurbishing and actual dollars.

      Later that day (my second trip to Northcote), Kathy Hooke, the main Northcote/Douglas researcher, treated Bill and me to a fine lunch and kitchen sit about with her many photo albums of life at Northcote. Kathy and Bill swapped stories of Mrs. Douglas (twenty-three years George’s junior) and George. George must have had fifty canoes. Seems he’d paddle down into Lakefield with one and paddle back with two. Kathy said George was on the water every day somewhere or nowhere in particular. Winter was a special time for family visits. Photo albums reinforce this, as ski and snowshoe outings (along with picnics and family portraits on the veranda) dominate the images of daily life.

      I returned home from the Northcote day and went straight to my 1914 copy of Lands Forlorn and read with new vigour. The man behind the study had come to life. It is the same feeling one can get when finding an old stove and logs remaining at a cabin site