During the morning of our departure from Cartwright, the man in charge of our group summoned me to his cabin and told me that I was to become the apprentice at a post called Fort Chimo, a small but long-established settlement situated at the head of Ungava Bay. He advised me to seek the advice of a passenger who had just joined us to travel along the coast and who had spent several years at Chimo. Ian Smith was to go to a nearby post, so he joined me in seeking out this man, Bill Ford by name.
We found Bill asleep in his cabin and at first he did not seem to be too pleased at having his rest interrupted, but he mellowed when he discovered we had brought a couple of bottles of beer with us. He sat drinking the beer and dangling his legs over the bunk.
‘Years ago,’ he said, ‘Chimo was almost a small township. The post staff was much larger than it is nowadays. They had people to make barrels, carpenters, interpreters. There were opposition trading companies, a school, a hospital and government officials.’
‘How did the company people get on with the opposition?’ asked Ian.
‘They didn’t have very much to do with each other,’ replied Bill, ‘they didn’t fraternize. If anything went wrong for one of them, the other was always very bucked about it. I remember once that during a gale a boat belonging to the French company Revillon Frères broke away from her moorings. It was a big boat too, about five tons, and the company chaps gathered along the river bank to cheer as she drifted past. The thing went right out to sea and it was several days before they got her back again, with a hole stove in her bow just above the waterline where she had hit a rock.
‘There aren’t many opposition posts left now though. There hasn’t been enough trade for more than one company for the past few years at Chimo and rumour has it that Revillon Frères will be pulling out before long.’
I asked him about the natives in Ungava Bay.
‘The Eskimos live around the shores,’ Bill replied, ‘and the Indians have their camps inland. They’re quite friendly and don’t really come into contact with each other very much. There’s never been any trouble as far as I know. Round the bay, where the Eskimos live, the land is very flat – sometimes I used to wish that the hills were a little higher. The wind comes down from the interior and whistles round the houses during the winter. We had some fair old blizzards. In a real blizzard, you have no idea where you are, the wind can keep changing and you can’t see a thing. One of the Chimo missionaries got caught once coming back from a visit to his flock. He and his Eskimo driver dug themselves into the snow, after struggling as far as they could. They were miserable in what was little better than a hole in the ground for two days. On the third day they were amazed to hear the sound of church bells coming from near by and they struggled out of their holes to find that they had camped almost alongside the missionary’s own house. The bells they had heard was his assistant ringing for the morning service.’
We soon found that Bill Ford, who had spent most of the previous winter alone, inland from Cartwright, needed little persuasion to launch off into his stories of the Labrador coast and Ungava Bay. Sometimes it was quite difficult to stop him, but both Ian and I felt that he never did try to make fools of us, a pastime to which many old-time northerners were willing to devote a considerable amount of time.
We made several stops during our voyage along the Labrador coast. At Makkovik, my star did not at first seem to be in the ascendant. Wearing a new beret, purchased under the French influence of the Montreal shops, I felt quite jaunty as I reached the bottom of the gangway and prepared to climb into the first boat ashore. Unfortunately, at that precise moment the fastening, or whatever it was that held the bottom step in place, broke. The step tilted up into a vertical position, allowing me to slide, quite gracefully they told me, into the water. My efforts to grasp something as I went down simply resulted in me pulling the step back down into position over my head. I was able to tell my friends later that although the water looked calm and inviting enough for a swim, it was really too cold to be enjoyable.
Later on during the afternoon, I rejoined the working party on shore and they kept up their ribaldry at my expense for the rest of the day. We finished the work before teatime and a pleasant surprise awaited us, for the post manager told us that his wife wanted us to go and have a meal with them instead of going back to the ship. His wife, a jolly, cheerful person, did not seem to mind how many of us came. She had cooked a huge dishful of cod steaks in batter and on the table was what looked like an old-time washbasin full of crisp chips. She just stood back and let us help ourselves, laughing with delight at our obvious appreciation. When the fish had all gone, the lady produced an outsize apple pie, then cake and bread and jam for any unfilled corner. She seemed much concerned about my plunge into the sea. Had I dried myself properly? What about my clothes? What was the Hudson’s Bay Company thinking of, bringing children up into the Arctic? I rejected the suggestion that I was a child at sixteen, but she shook her head and said that it was a hard life and a very lonely one.
After we had cleared up the mess and done the washing up, we gathered round an old piano that had been retrieved from a wreck along the coast. The manager played familiar tunes and we sang and laughed and played silly games until it was time to go back to the ship. When we tried to thank them for everything, they said that they hadn’t had such a happy evening for a long time and hoped that one day we might all come back.
Early the next morning we sailed from Makkovik to steam along the central part of the coastline. The scenery improved greatly. There were dozens of islands large and small, where the sea wound in and out in twisting passageways, curious-shaped cliffs and rocks, worn down by time and sea and weather. Birds of all coastal types abounded, from the hungry, cawing gull to the lively little arctic tern.
By the time we reached Hebron, a few days further down the coast, the land was even more impressive, as it rose high and rugged toward the desolate mountains. The weather was fine and sunny and a morning spent on deck was as good as anything an expensive cruise ship could offer.
I found Bill in a cozy spot one morning, behind some boxes, quite sheltered from the slight breeze. He smiled when he saw me.
‘So you tracked me down, eh?’ he said, but showed no reluctance to talk.
‘You wouldn’t think that a fine new ship was lying just beneath the water over there, would you? Not that she would be new now of course.’ He pointed over to the coast and continued.
‘The Bay Rupert. I don’t suppose you ever heard of her. The company had her built after the war. She was a fine ship, much larger than the Nascopie and everything brand spanking new. They put in special accommodation for bringing tourists up here. It was more like travelling on an Atlantic liner than coming up north.’
‘Did you ever sail in her?’ asked Ian.
‘I did indeed,’ said Bill. ‘I got off just before she went down. It seems that there’s a rock along the coast, somewhere hereabouts, which sticks up under the sea but doesn’t break water and there was no buoy there to mark the spot. We were coming along the inside passage in beautiful weather, just like today, with a pilot who was responsible for the navigation. The story was that one evening this man made out the course that they were to follow and the captain said that if he did as the pilot wanted, they would run smack into a rock about breakfast time next morning. Some people said that they had a great row about it, but that the course stayed as it was. The next morning, I was just getting out of my bunk when there was a terrific bump and, sure enough, the skipper was right. I’d never been shipwrecked before and