At our trip’s end, further along in the low-level flight path, I was scouting for river crossings. At what is now known as Belanger Rapids, on the upper Burnside, their fragile canoe upset. Belanger was left stranded in the middle of the river. Franklin (with a second canoe swamping) reached the far shore, but Pierre St. Germain was swept downstream. It was mid-September. Snow was on the ground. Eventually a rope was secured across the two riverbanks and all got across. Imagine the scene: at Obstruction Rapids on the Coppermine, by October 4, 1821, the travellers were now without a canoe. Here St. Germain, with a piece of canvas and river willows, fashioned a “little cockleshell canoe.” Others were hunting or preserving energy. This river crossing was a spirit breaker. Following this nine-day delay with many failed crossing attempts, the large group is forced to separate into stronger and weaker parties for a last push to Fort Enterprise.
But one must pause every once in a while when reading history like this; Pierre St. Germain did what? The pause is needed so as not to gloss over the facts and to afford time to imagine the scene and the effort. What about St. Germain’s building of a cockleshell to cross the rapids? While this skilled hunter and interpreter had his request to abandon the expedition denied at the mouth of the Coppermine, he soon became its most indispensable member. One would be right to marvel at Pierre St. Germain’s determination on the return overland walk with two major river crossings. First at the Burnside River crossing, St. Germain was prominent in ferrying the party across at great hardship to himself. But the big story was at Obstruction Rapids on the Coppermine. Here, without any watercraft to cross, St. Germain spent four days searching unsuccessfully for wood to make a raft. He did scrounge enough river willow to fashion a cockleshell out of the fragments of canvas available. All relied completely on the ingenuity and stamina of the starving St. Germain. This crossing was the critical moment of failure or success for the already wretched return to Fort Enterprise. St. Germain had found the way.
But how did he do it? How can one man build a craft to cross a wide river with a strong current with such meagre resources? And what exactly is a cockleshell canoe anyway? Enter my friend André-François Bourbeau. He too was caught by this moment. He too was forced to pause in his reading to ponder. Then, unlike me, he set about duplicating the life-saving canoe building endeavour.[15] (See Chapter 12.)
Reading all four officers’ accounts — Franklin’s, Richardson’s, Back’s, and Hood’s — I was impressed less with the role of these men and more with the role of interpreters, voyageurs, and Yellowknife hunters (Akaicho’s Indians, as they were sometimes called). In particular, Pierre St. Germain stands out. While St. Germain was at times a “ringleader of discontent” (looking back, who could blame him for that — I’m reminded of Yossarian’s plea in the novel Catch-22, “the enemy is anyone who is going to get me killed”). How could St. Germain not voice concern about Franklin’s obsession with pressing on beyond the reaches of food and Native hunter support while travelling in ever more leaky birchbark canoes further along the stormy September Arctic Coast? Taking in personal views of the Arctic Coast from the mouths of the Burnside and Horton rivers provides a bit of perspective on what the coast might have been like to paddle in a stormy September season. I, for one, will stick to the rivers, particularly as the early autumn season kicks in. Pierre St. Germain remains my go-to guy when I contemplate that land expedition.
Back in the Twin Otter float plane, I followed water and land from the air with a keenness to see the Burnside River crossing and then the Coppermine. The picture I imagined of these men dealing with the river crossings sent a chill down my spine. And while I can’t claim to have crossed paths with either rapid, the big rivers and lakes evident from the air showcased the extreme challenges faced by starving men between September and November 1821.
Then, as we flew south, we passed the site where a near mutiny took place. On August 13, 1819, at Reindeer Lake (now called Descension Lake) at the Yellowknife River headwater after days of gruelling upriver travel and frequent portaging, a mutinous spirit broke out. The disgruntled voyageurs requested more rations. The trip leader, Franklin, wrote of this incident:
… whilst this meal was preparing, our Canadian Voyageurs, who had been for some days past murmuring at their meagre diet, and striving to get the whole of our little provisions to consume at once, broke out into open discontent, and several of them threatened they would not proceed forward unless more food was given to them. This conduct was the more unpardonable, as they saw we were rapidly approaching the fires of the hunters, and that provision might soon be expected. I therefore felt the duty incumbent on me, to address them in the strongest manner on the danger of insubordination, and to assure them of my determination to inflect the heaviest punishment on any that should persist in their refusal to go on, or in any other way attempt to retard the Expedition.[16]
The officer George Back wrote on the same day:
… about 10 a.m. a mutinous spirit displayed itself amongst the men — they refused to carry the goods any farther alleging a scarcity of provisions as a reason for their conduct — Mr. Franklin told them we were too far removed from justice to treat them as they merited — but if such a thing occurred again — he would not hesitate to make an example of the first person who should come forward — by “blowing out his brains” — this Salutary speech had a weighty effect on the weather cock minds of the Canadians — who without further animadeversion returned quietly their duty.[17]
I have always taken great delight in these two passages. Franklin is proper in tone. Back, I cannot help think, is more truthful. I shared this story on our trip and discussed how travel literature must always be interpreted and how having more than one account adds fuel to the imaginative fire.
Hours into our return flight to Yellowknife and we were still flying at an unusually low altitude. Somewhere below me in a mess of lakes and undistinguished terrain was their Reindeer Lake. When we hit the treeline, the patches of trees reminded me of Warburton Pike’s 1892 barren ground travels to the east of us.[18] Such patches of trees provided great relief. Here, a fire could finally be had again. Often food and even a canoe would be cached in such locations to aid the return trip off the barrens back to Great Slave Lake. Franklin and his men were too far gone to enjoy any celebratory spirit in returning to the trees, and caches of food were not to be found. The Yellowknife families who had supported the expedition down the Coppermine River before returning home simply assumed the obsessed/confused travellers would perish. The stories of Hearne, Pike, and mostly Franklin lay below me as our flight advanced into the trees.
And what of the scenery I so enjoyed while on the river and on walks from campsites? As one might expect, there was for Franklin’s men, who wrote published journals, a range from desolate to grand. Richardson, while on an advance exploration party, wrote in a letter on June 9, 1821, to send back to Fort Enterprise: “Amongst these hills you may observe some curious basins, but nowhere did I see anything worthy of your pencil. So much for the country; it is a barren subject, and deserves to be thus briefly dismissed.”[19]
To the contrary, George Back wrote in his journal, later that same month:
… the scene was interesting and novel — a lake bounded on each side with high and almost perpendicular rocks, whose green summits were capped with large stones — and whose valleys displayed at certain distances a few solitary clumps of pines — claimed the first attention — whilst