Or had they? Later that night, after Leanne, Zev, and the dog were asleep, a wolf visited our camp. I was on a nearby knoll at the time, savouring a toddler-free moment of late-evening sunshine, when a whisper of movement caught my eye. It was a white wolf and it had already seen me, but nonetheless continued toward the tent with a relaxed stride. I prayed for everyone inside to stay asleep as it padded to within five metres of the thin nylon shelter. In a testament to the wolf’s stealth, no one stirred, not even the dog. Without pausing, it continued up a nearby slope and, as fast as it had appeared, slipped into the shadows and was gone.
I wrote about the incident in my next letter to Farley, describing the wolf’s creamy colour, regal size, and commanding demeanour as best I could. He replied with delight that it was likely one of the progeny of the alpha male and female he had spent so much time watching while researching Never Cry Wolf sixty years before.
That exchange of letters took more than a month. I couldn’t send my handwritten message until we had canoed another 300 kilometres to the Inuit community of Arviat on Hudson Bay, and Farley’s response didn’t reach us until we had covered another 2,000 kilometres by train, ship, and sailboat and walked into the post office at the next major stopover in his life story, Burgeo, Newfoundland.
But standing there on the tundra, the thought of the time lag in our correspondence didn’t matter. By then, I had a pretty fair sense of what Farley’s letter would suggest: that attached to every landscape is an undercurrent of wildness, a story of geographic potential and biological belonging—the very kinds of stories he’d spent so much of his life articulating. Our gift back to him was a first-hand report that told him those stories were still out there among the owl-filled cottonwood groves of the South Saskatchewan River, with the wolves on southern Nunavut’s tundra and, as we were soon to find out, among the great fin whales of Newfoundland’s rugged southwest coast.
IT’S BEEN SAID that to gain the respect of its friendly people, the best way to arrive on the Island of Newfoundland is by small boat. Even better, we found out, is to arrive from Quebec in a gale-force wind and four-metre seas with freshly ripped sails. Throw in a blond-haired two-year-old stepping nonchalantly ashore while a wharf full of stormbound fishermen looks on, and you’re certain to attract the attention and sympathy of the entire town. Or so it seemed. Within hours of blowing into the town of Burgeo, Leanne, Zev, our skipper Tam Flemming—an adventurous friend of a friend who took a month off work to sail us from Quebec’s Magdalen Islands for the chance to meet Mowat—and I had enough offers of meals, beds, showers, and loaned vehicles to last us weeks, if not months.
This was the very sort of hospitality that had greeted Mowat and his new wife, Claire, forty-five years earlier. They, too, had put into Burgeo’s sheltered harbour, in a thirty-foot wooden schooner, the Happy Adventure (the inspiration for Farley’s hilarious book, The Boat Who Wouldn’t Float). Their original plan was to stop only as long as it took to repair their engine, but they were so taken by the area’s rugged beauty and the generosity of her people that they stayed for six years.
Part of the attraction, wrote Mowat, was the isolation. The small outport fishing community was a place where he could “escape from the increasingly mechanistic mainland world with its . . . witless production for mindless consumption; its disruptive infatuation with change for its own sake. . . ”
But even isolated Burgeo succumbed to the “bitch goddess, Progress.” In the four decades that separated Mowat’s arrival and ours, a paved highway had linked Burgeo to the larger towns and cities of Newfoundland, and its mainstay fishing industry had collapsed, forcing many of its workers to commute to Alberta’s oil patch for months at a time. Indeed, during the week we visited, more than thirty percent of the men in the community of 1,600 were gone.
Yet vestiges of the old ways remained. Each morning and afternoon the harbour around Tam’s sailboat came alive with the comings and goings of small, open boats which, aside from the outboard engines and occasional depth sounder, differed little from the cod-fishing dories of 100 years before. These were the inshore fishermen who, unlike the purse seiners, bottom trawlers, and other modern monstrosities that Farley condemned in Sea of Slaughter, ply the narrow fjords and hidden backwaters of Newfoundland’s convoluted coast with simple hook-and-line tackle that yield no bycatch and don’t harm the sensitive ocean floor.
It was one of these fishermen, Max Strickland, who came alongside our moored sailboat one evening and shyly offered to take us to the site of the sad event that led to the Mowats finally leaving Burgeo.
“I knows you’re ’ere because of ’im ’an what happened,” he said in his thick Newfoundland accent. “I wunnit be sure you sees de place for yourselves.”
The place was Aldridges Pond, a lagoon tucked into the rocky coastline just five kilometres from the small town, and the event was an eighty-tonne fin whale that had become trapped within its confines after chasing a school of herring over the shallow entrance on a high tide. For the next two weeks Mowat and a few friends had struggled to save the starving whale while other citizens of Burgeo had riddled it with bullets. The tragic story, told in A Whale for the Killing, is one of Mowat’s most powerful and moving books.
The storm that had mired our earlier passage from Quebec had dissipated over the last few days and Strickland’s motorboat skimmed across the calm ocean without so much as a bump. Tidal currents and hidden reefs riddled our route but he seemed oblivious to the dangers, steering with one arm while he held Zev, smiling, on his knee with the other. For a two-year-old accustomed to paddles and sails, the wide open throttle was pure bliss.
By the time we arrived at the pond’s narrow entrance, Strickland had started to talk more freely, pointing out the cliff-lined coves where he fishes for lobster, cod, and halibut; the slopes where he and his wife go berry picking; the spots under the eagle’s nests where he likes to drift in his boat and eat lunch as he guts his catch. His voice was reverent as he spoke, maybe even apologetic. Then, as he turned the boat around, lifted up the prop, and began backing up the shallow passage where the whale had chased the herring, I realized he was apologizing. He was trying to say that not all the people of Burgeo were whale killers.
Leanne, Zev, and I returned to the pond in the sailboat’s dinghy the next evening, taking an hour to row a distance that the motorboat had covered in ten minutes for the privilege of being there alone. The lagoon isn’t big—the size of just two Olympic swimming pools—and as we oared around its breadth we tried to imagine the chaotic roar, splash, and booms of motorboats running a great sea mammal aground in such a confined space while rifle fire ricocheted off the granite cliffs. After a few minutes Leanne asked to go ashore so she could film Zev and me floating around the liquid grave. I dropped her off on a ledge of wildflowers then slid back out onto the water and read from Farley’s book:
. . . As she moved slowly away from us she left ribbons of dark discoloration in the water. These were coming from the great swellings which had formed beneath her skin. I could see one of them pulsing out a dark flow of blood; and I realized that those swellings were vast reservoirs of pus and infection, some of which were breaking open to discharge their foul contents into the cold sea water.
As I watched, stunned and sickened, the whale continued to move across the Pond. She did not submerge. I doubt if she had sufficient strength to do so. Almost drifting, she reached the opposite shore and there she rested her mighty head upon the rocks.
. . . and then I heard the voice of the Fin Whale for the fourth time . . . and the last. It was the same muffled, disembodied and unearthly sound, seeming to come from an immense distance: out of the sea, out of the rocks around us, out of the air itself. It was a deep vibration, low pitched and throbbing, moaning beneath the wail of the wind in the cliffs . . .
It was the most desolate cry that I have ever heard.
We sailed out of Burgeo the next morning, happy to be moving again but still saddened by the ghos
t of the whale. And the killing hadn’t stopped. That morning, while listening to the CBC Radio news as we rigged the sails, we heard about the Japanese whaling expedition headed for the Antarctic Ocean. In addition to 850 minke and fifty fin whales, they planned to harpoon up to fifty humpback whales for the first time since hunting the endangered species was banned fortyfour years ago. A quote of Mowat’s from an interview I had once read popped into my head as the last of Burgeo’s barrier islands slipped behind us: “God, I think I’ll resign from the human race.”
But there was hope, literally tons of it, and it came in the form of a pod of finners a few hours later. I pointed over the starboard rail to the great plumes of mist blowing out of the waves and Flemming shouted for me to push over the tiller as he pulled in the mainsheet. Armed only with binoculars, we too were off to hunt whales.
As we drew among the feeding pod, three of the great cetaceans pulled alongside the boat, their sleek, black backs arcing out of the water with each surfacing breath. There could be no doubt they were fin whales—the second largest animals ever to inhabit the planet—and as the great beasts sounded beside us I wondered aloud how one of their kind could have fit, let alone survived for more than two weeks, in that tiny lagoon.
“One of their kind or a relative of the one that was actually killed?” winked Leanne.
Another wild undercurrent. Another crossover moment. I made a mental note to tell Mowat, but this time I would do so in person. If everything went according to plan, we would cross Cabot Strait and sail right to the shore of his Cape Breton farm in seven days.
IT BEGAN like every day had in the previous five months. Shortly after breakfast, Zev’s two-year-old mind demanded the outlines of a plan.
“Where are we going?” he began as we sailed out of Cape Breton Island’s St. Peters Canal.
“To visit Farley Mowat,” I answered, just as I had 150 times before. But from there on the conversation took a different tack. No more abstract explanations of time and distance. No more maps of provinces, river systems, and oceans hastily drawn on a piece of paper or scratched in the sand. I waited as his tiny lips wrapped themselves around the next question. “Today?” he asked. And then I pounced.
“Yes!” I cried as we rounded a forested headland. “There!” I pointed at an old two-storey farmhouse overlooking the water. “That’s where Farley, Claire, and Chester the dog live!”
Zev was stunned. After 5,000 kilometres of paddling, lining, portaging, train riding, and sailing, we were now just a few hundred metres from Mowat’s door. Zev studied the simple white clapboard home as we pulled into the shallow bay and dropped anchor.
“Oh, oh, I see them,” he suddenly cried. “Persons and a dog!”
Indeed, two people had started down toward the beach where a small crew from the National Film Board had gathered. I looked through the binoculars and confirmed to Flemming that all his ocean navigation had been successful: one of them had a beard.
Flemming elected to stay on board and keep tabs on the sailboat as Leanne, Zev, and I clambered over the rail into the dinghy. It was a beautiful fall day, and a gentle ocean breeze pushed us toward shore. Yet for all its coolness, the moment had me sweating more than any midsummer portage. I took a few pulls on the oars then snuck a glance over my shoulder. It was Farley Mowat, for God’s sake, standing on the shore to greet us! What the hell was I going to say?
As the oarlocks thumped-thumped against the gunwales I recalled the questions I’d left with five months before—about the power and persistence of stories in the landscape, and how they affected people’s perception of the land. Like any good pilgrim nearing The End, I now realized the journey and Mowat’s books had already provided most, if not all, the answers. The role of the wise elder was only to be a good friend.
The bow of the dinghy hit the gravel and I leapt into the gentle surf as Mowat walked toward us. I offered my hand but he scoffed at the formality and, instead, pulled me in for a hug.
Wayne Sawchuk
TOUGH LIVING, OH BOY
WHEN MY Uncle Norman offered to sell me the Gataga trapline, I didn’t hesitate. Located in the far north of British Columbia, the Gataga River is true wilderness, where the tracks of another person rarely mark the winter snow. I craved the wilderness life, and it took only a few days before I was out of the logging business and into trapping. I was a happy man, but my decision certainly involved risk, and it sometimes kept me up at night. When the cheque came back from my first fur auction, I learned that fur prices in the 1980s were near all-time lows.
Money worries were the last thing on my mind as I gripped the handlebars and powered my snow machine around another corner on my first trip down to the thirtymile cabin. The trail along the creek known as Swamp River parallels the much larger Gataga River for twenty miles or more. I was ready for a break when I glanced up and spotted a tall pine stump standing on a small flat above the creek. Curiosity piqued, I turned off the snowmobile and waded up through the waist-deep drifts to the flat above. There I found a few blazes on the lodgepole pines, a hump in the snow that looked to be an axe-cut log, and, beside that, a depression that seemed to indicate an old fire pit. The tall pine-tree stump I had noticed from below had been squared off on four sides. On the blazes I could make out the name, “Egnell,” and the date—1943. I knew my uncle had purchased the trapline from Frank Egnell Junior. Judging by the date, Frank Egnell Senior had passed through here on his trapline rounds, likely many times, including his last.
Looking closer at the tall stump, I could just make out three more words—“Swamp River Post.” I smiled at the pun.
It was hard work finding trail, cutting windfall, and snowshoeing ahead in the rougher sections to pack a path for the snowmobile. The trail along the Swamp River followed curve after curve of the slow-moving tributary. The water in the creek was shallow and the ice thick. As I saw the Swamp River veering to the right and around the cutbank to join up with the main Gataga River, my heart sank. The plan had been to travel along the bank of the big river, but thick stands of spruce, alder, and pine trees choked the shore. I knew that beneath the deep, insulating blanket of snow that concealed the surface of the Gataga, strong currents were eating at the ice, and unseen holes could open anywhere. I paused for a long moment, then gunned the engine and sped out onto the river as fast as the machine could go.
The Egnell family, too, would have had to cross the river here when they came trapping. I could imagine the parents holding the hands of the kids, pausing now and again to tighten a snowshoe thong or adjust a dog pack. It would have been more dangerous for them, as they slowly made their way across the treacherous ice on foot, than it was for me on my machine.
Still, after several heart-stopping crossings, it was a huge relief to be able to steer the machine onto the riverbank and up through the trees. Before long I caught sight of the tiny cabin, almost lost beneath a heavy capping of snow, nestled among thickets of young, vigorous spruce trees jostling for space in what used to be a clearing.
Using a snowshoe as a shovel I cleared away the drifts from the door. At first it wouldn’t open, bound by the great weight of snow pressing down on the roof. I bashed against the door with my shoulder until it broke free. Once my eyes had adjusted to the gloom, I made out a single small room with a pole floor and a roof of axe-split boards. A small rusty wood stove squatted near the centre of the room and a rough pole bed occupied one corner. A low wooden table nailed to the wall under the single window completed the sparse furnishings. Empty corn syrup and baking powder cans sat on a narrow shelf in one corner, and in a blue Player’s tobacco can I found a box of .22 shells and a packet of Gillette razor blades. A few wooden stretchers used for drying hides leaned in one corner, and hanging on a nail from one of the low roof logs was a large metal kettle, possibly used for cooking meat for the pack dogs. The room was spartan, but ready for use.
I lit a fire in the stove, and when I had unpacked my sleeping bag and food and put on a pan of snow for tea
, I took a closer look at the walls of the cabin. The scribblings of small children marked the lower logs, and there were many messages as well—“March 16, gone to Rabbit Lake, Frank.” “Gone to Rat Lake to hunt beaver, back on the 5th.” And, prominently, “Built 1938.”
I spotted another note high on one of the logs. Peering to make out the words, I read, “Snow come, get deep. Tough living, oh boy.”
I felt a jolt of recognition. Martha Egnell, Frank Jr.’s wife, had told me the terrible story of the thirty-mile cabin. Did this note refer to those events?
AS THE STORY WENT, in the spring of the year, in the late ’40s or early ’50s, Frank Sr. and his wife, along with some of their children, travelled down to the thirty-mile cabin to trap beaver. Martha didn’t say exactly how many children had come along, but she did say one of them was Frank Jr.’s older brother. All must have been old enough to snowshoe on their own. Frank Jr., who was born in 1926 and would have been in his early twenties at the time, stayed behind at Fort Ware, perhaps because he and Martha were newlyweds.
Martha told me that spring came late that year, and the ice was thick. It snowed day after day, making trapping and hunting impossible. In desperation, Frank Jr.’s older brother waded across the river trying to find and kill a moose, but, chilled by the frigid water, had to turn back. Soon after, he caught pneumonia. With no first aid or medicines, his racking cough could not be treated, and he died in the cabin. It would have been a terrible death, similar to drowning, as his lungs filled with fluid, choking off his breath. The ground was frozen hard as steel and so the family buried him under the floor of a small cabin just upriver from the main building. It was the only place where they could dig.
Rock, Paper, Fire Page 8
