Humphrey Marten, like Samuel Hearne, was a brutish factor with little patience for a green apprentice like Thompson. But Marten, at least, had reestablished good trading levels after the war. Still, the company’s trade was down. More than once, David heard Marten curse his competitors from Montreal as the gout-ridden factor hobbled about the post shouting orders. The “damned, cursed, bloody, peddlers!” had taken advantage of HBC setbacks from the war and established lucrative trading posts inland. The “loathsome bastards” had begun intercepting Cree and Chipewyan with furs bound for Churchill and York while these factories were still being rebuilt from their ashes.
The HBC had two posts inland: Cumberland House, built by Hearne in 1774 when he still had passion for the business, was over sixteen hundred kilometres’ travel from Churchill. Construction of Hudson House, some five hundred kilometres farther upstream on the Saskatchewan River, soon followed. But these posts were the company’s first reluctant attempts at building new trading depots. For over a century the HBC had relied on well-established trade routes to bring a steady flow of furs to the shores of Hudson Bay. The new posts were not enough, and Humphrey Marten was damned if he would send ships to London with their holds only half filled. He had no choice but to respond aggressively to the challenge from Montreal. In 1786, Marten ordered his trading brigade to build more inland posts and look for locations to recapture trade from the “peddlers.”
David was part of a three-man crew assigned to one of the canoes in the brigade. In all, twelve large canoes were assembled for the expedition. Each was loaded with six forty-kilogram bundles of trade goods. Loading was supervised by William Tomison, the brigade leader. He was making sure each bundle was stowed and lashed so the canoes lay safely in the water.
“Davie, get ye t’ the stores,” Tomison shouted in a rough Scottish brogue as he tugged a lashing line tight. “Get a good leather coat, a hat, stout mittens, and ye’ll need snowshoes too. These won’t cost ye laddie, but anything else ye might decide ye need comes out of your apprentice allowance.” Tomison then turned to Mitchel Oman. “Take young Thompson in your canoe Mitchel. He’ll be your trading clerk for this trip.”
Oman nodded dutifully, despite his concerns that he had a city lad from London and not one of his own countrymen to train. The middle-aged Oman had trained many recruits. He was a reliable veteran and, like Tomison and most others with the London-based company, he was not English but Scottish and from the Orkneys.
The Orkneys, a cluster of barren Islands off the north coast of Scotland, supplied three out of every four men working the fur trade for the HBC. They were recruited at Stromness, the Orkney port where David, on the Prince Rupert, had stopped. Tucked out of the stormy North Atlantic weather, Stromness was the last provisioning port for HBC and other ships destined for the New World. From Stromness, ships could follow winds due west along the sixty degrees north latitude to Greenland. From there, they went through Davis Strait and into Hudson Bay.
Captains and commanders had long used Stromness to load supplies and the much-valued water from Login’s famous well. Henry Hudson had taken on the well’s sweet water more than a century before David Thompson, when the renowned navigator first discovered the great bay named after him. Captain James Cook filled his ship’s barrels from the well. Sir John Franklin used the Logins’ well water, almost a century after Thompson, when Franklin’s ill-fated expedition went in search of the Northwest Passage through the Arctic ice.
But the most valuable cargo taken on at Stromness was not provisions or even Login’s water but the small, tough island men. These hardy souls, accustomed to eking out a threadbare life on a rugged and unforgiving landscape, made ideal recruits for the harsh demands of the New World.
David helped load the last of the provisions, thirty kilograms of oatmeal, ten kilograms of flour, and fourteen kilograms of bacon, into his canoe. He scrambled aboard and settled into a middle seat between Oman and the bow as they shoved off. The flotilla of canoes, with Union Jacks and HBC flags fluttering off their stern posts, caught the wind and the rising tide, which carried them on an easy paddle six kilometres up the Hayes River delta. This was the last of the easy paddling. The river became shallow, and David had to take his turn hauling the heavy canoes up the rapids by tracking lines. Oman ordered him into the knee-deep water. David slung the thick sisal rope over his shoulder and leaned into it, hauling the 450-kilogram pay-load by its bow. They pressed slowly upstream. Oman, gripping the gunnels, waded behind and pushed steadily. A second line was strung to a crewman ashore. He was the safety, who helped guide their fragile craft through the rocks.
The river was low and the shoreline trail normally used for tracking was far from the water. The men were forced to wade over algae-slickened rocks. From watching Chipewyan guides, David learned to step between the submerged rocks, thereby avoiding the painful stumbles that came from trying to balance on the rocks’ slimy surface. Still, he fell often, and the tracking line slipped loose. When this happened, the second line took up the slack, without which the bark-hulled craft would be quickly swept downstream and smashed. Losing their canoe would mean the three-man crew would have to walk back to York Factory empty handed.
Tracking was backbreaking work in midsummer heat. Swarming mosquitoes attacked their exposed, sweating skin. They rotated duties, alternately tracking, pushing, and lining upstream. David was thankful the river’s cold water numbed his aching and rock-bruised feet. The slow ascent went uninterrupted for the next seven days until they finally reached a haulout. The cargo was unloaded and, bale by heavy bale, portaged over a root-strewn trail to the shore of a small lake.
David hoisted a forty-kilogram bale on his back. He slung a trump line over his forehead to help support the load and staggered up to the trail. Then he staggered back for another bale and finally helped shoulder the canoe for the last trip. The heavy tracking was over, but ahead lay nearly two hundred kilometres of lakes, portages, and slow-moving streams, until the divide. Then they would at last travel downstream and westward to Lake Winnipeg.
From David’s stumbling gait, Oman knew the lad was in need of several days’ rest. He had earned it, but there were no days for rest. David would have to endure the punishing workload until his body hardened into the lean toughness required for the trade. He might not be an Orkneyman, but Oman had to admire the boys dogged determination.
The 160-kilometre paddle along the shores of Lake Winnipeg offered no release from hardship for the young recruit. He exchanged an aching back for painful arms and blistered hands. David almost looked forward to the next portage, but his anticipation of relief soon faded. The steep three-kilometre portage took three days of hard labour before the brigade reached Cedar Lake, the last large body of water they would cross before entering the Saskatchewan River. The Saskatchewan was their highway across the western plains, and just a week upstream the river brought them to Cumberland House. They had travelled over eleven hundred kilometres from York Factory. They stopped just long enough to take on a few dried provisions. Tomison wanted to press westward. It was already late August.
Even though only a month had passed, to David, York Factory and his clerical life seemed a world away. The dark conifers and the bug-ridden shield had gradually opened into an expanse of shimmering aspens and sweet-smelling poplar. On the river’s bank, ash saplings pushed through tall grasses to reach toward an expansive blue sky. They were averaging forty kilometres a day, and in the evenings, David now had enough energy to rustle up boughs for a soft bed. On these gentle summer nights he heard the haunting bugle of elk and the lulling flow of the river. He wrapped the sounds of the wilderness around him and drifted into deep sleep. This new wild place was giving him strength and confidence and each passing night seduced him further. He never wanted to go back.
The brigade split up at the south branch of the Saskatchewan. Tomison and most of the canoes continued up the main branch to their wintering place at Hudson House. David and the remaining men followed Oman. They took four canoes and tracked up the south branch. On the third day they discovered