Part 14 (1/2)

In both places, the Company's expansion was essential to its own-and Canada's-future. During its western and northern hegemonies the 11BC exploited a territory that was commercially untouched. Just as its slow but persistent move across the continent laid down the matrix of subsequent prairie settlement, its invasion of the land ma.s.s North of Sixty carved into that bleak landscape the lines of human traffic that would become its permanent pattern of habitation. Of the fifty main population centres in the modern Northwest Territories, three-quarters had been former fur-trading stations. As in the West, the Company served to protect Canada's sovereignty from outside, mainlv American, pressures, not by heroic gestures or patriotic deeds, but simply by being there.*

”For at least 150 years,” William Watson, a professor of economics at McGill University, noted, ”the Hudson's Bay Company dominated the northern economy, both as a monopsonist [the only buyer] in the market for furs and a monopolist [the only seller] in the market for finished goods. There can be little doubt that it was The Bay-and not northerners, whether white or non-white-that was best served by this system.” A

*Canada's claim to owners.h.i.+p of the mainland portion of the Northwest Territories was based on its inclusion in the 1870 transfer of the HBCs charter lands to the recently formed Dominion. The islands of the Arctic archipelago were ceded to Canada through the British Colonial Office in 1880 ”to prevent the United States from claiming them, and not from the likelillood oftlicir proving ofany value to Canada.”

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simpler rationale for the Company's domination of the North was offered by Bob Chess.h.i.+re, a veteran Bay man in charge of its fur-trade department in the 1940s. ”At one time,” he said, ”we dispensed all the welfare in the Arctic, and the Government took the position that since we had a monopoly, we could b.l.o.o.d.y well provide the relief I told them that was all right but that we only had a monopoly because no one else could operate in the d.a.m.n country.”

Except for explorers trying to find the North West Pa.s.sage, or each other, Canada's far northern reaches had remained almost entirelv outside the white man's purview until the nineteenth century, with only the whalers or the occasional missionary, looking for new positions, daring to break its silence. First to appear were the Moravians, who in 1771 established a mission at Nain, on the Labrador coast. Members of the world's oldest Protestant church, founded on the teachings of Jan Hus, the Bohemian martyr burned at the stake by Catholic persecutors in 1415, these dedicated men of G.o.d provided solace and support where little was available.*

By the 1890s, Canada's North had become an area of intense theological compet.i.tion, with various denominations attempting to carve out spiritual monopolies.

*Early missionaries had some unexpected problems with their gospel, which claimed that those who obeyed the Ten Commandments would go to heaven, Ahere it was very beautiful, while those who sinned would go to h.e.l.l, where it was very hot. To the preachers' s.h.i.+vering listeners, h.e.l.l didn't sound so bad.

When Father Pierre Flenri, the Catholic missionary at Pelly Bay in 193 5, told his flock about how Jesus Christ had once walked on water, he was surprised to find they were singularly unimpressed. When the good Father asked why, a member of his congregation replied, ”What's so difficult about that? We walk on water all winter.”

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There is a doc.u.mented story of Father Henri Grollier, OMI, racing Archdeacon James Hunter down the Mackenzie River in the winter of 1858-59 to evangelize new districts around Aklavik. (The Catholic beat the Anglican.) With Roald Amundsen's epic 1903-6 east-to-west journey across the roof of North America, the 400-year quest for the fabled Pa.s.sage came to an end.

The Arctic became, if not more accessible, at least less mysterious and more frequently visited. As more southerners ventured beyond the tree -line, they encountered the Inuit.* Because the white man entered a climate that defied his own survival, he had to manufacture a set of myths to account for the ability-and willingness-of the Inuit to endure. Such mythologies were expressed in many dubious ways, but the underlying message from those early contacts was that the people of the North were happy campers, frolicking in the snow-”Nanooks of

*”Eskimo” is the Indian (most likely Alontagnais or Naskapi) name for the northern aboriginals. It was the designation originally used by whites because a Jesuit in 1611 had heard Indians refer to the northerriers as Eskintantsiks, a derogatory term meaning ”eaters ofraw flesh.” It is used in this chapter onlywhen authors or resident HBC Factors refer to the aboriginal population by that word. In uit, the more contemporary term, simply means ”people.” (Inuk is the singular of Inuit.) Canada's 2 5,000 Inuit are divided into eight tribal groups: Labrador, Ungava, Baffin, Iglulik, Caribou, Netsilik, Copper and Western Arctic. They speak a common language, Inukt.i.tut, which has six dialects. Dwellers in the Western Arctic have in recent years coined a new word, ”biuvialuit,” to distinguish themselves from other Inuit. Those who live in Northern Quebec (Ungava) are ”Taqramiut” (people of the shadow); they call the aboriginal citizens of Labrador ”Si(linirmiut,” people of the sun, which rises in their land first.

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the North” done up in polar-bear pants, their children playing with litters of photogenic puppies in cute igloos. ”The Eskimo makes his or her appearance with a smile,” wrote the northern expert Hugh Brody in a dev- astating parody of this silly stereotype. ”[He] is an eternally happy, optimistic little figure; a round, furry and cuddly human with a pet name; a man or woman who amazes and delights our European representatives with innocent simplicity. Gorge themselves as they might on raw meat and blubber, a stereotypical Eskimo of the impossible north wages his battle against environment in astonis.h.i.+ng good humour.” Brody also pointed out the difference between Inuit and Indians: ”The 'Eskimo' smiles from the sidelines; the Indian is cunning, warlike and stands in our way. This distinction between the two peoples is a geographical and anthropological myth, but the double stereotype has nonetheless persisted. . . . The one at war with nature, the other with settlers.”

Other observers have noted differences in their philosophical approaches to life, with the Indians tending to be more introverted and generally less mischievous. One example: for a time during the 1950s many Indians and Inuit suffering from tuberculosis were lodged at a hospital near Moose Factory in northern Ontario. ”The Eskimos were very smart,”

recalled Jj. ”Woody” Wood, a local HBC Factor. ”They never complained but could get their point of view across. When there was an economy drive, the cook kept serving spaghetti. n.o.body said anything, but I remember one supper hour when the hospital was unusually quiet. As the nurses started making their rounds again, they found everything-the light fixtures, toilet bowls, door k.n.o.bs-decorated with spaghetti. That was a creative protest and very unlike anything the Indians might have 236 QUEST FOR A NEW EMPIRE.

done.” Stuart Hodgson, the first resident Commissioner of the Northwest Territories,* notes that one of the main differences between the Indians (Dene) and the Inuit is that Dene settlements or camps are usually along a lake or river, whereas the Inuit are seldom far from salt water.

Inuit survival had a lot less to do with mischief or good humour than with an environment that daily stretched the limits of human endurance.

Generations of men and women grappled with the exigencies of a frozen world that held out no advantage, except that it was home. The many historical instances of starvation, cannibalism and infanticide were eloquent evidence of how agonizing it all had been-the numbing cold, the constant quest for sustenance, and the unremitting search for shelter and for driftwood for cooking fires.

To cheat nature they had to be tough. EJ. ”Scotty” Gall, a veteran HBC Arctic trader, recalled that while building a boat at Tuktoyaktuk, he once saw his Inuk a.s.sistant pull nails out of the hardwood planking with his teeth. That story may or may not be true, but Father Frans Van der Velde, the veteran Arctic missionary,

*A Grade 8 dropout and successful union organizer, Hodgson was an improbable appointee to head what was, before his arrival, a colonial old boys' club, the Northwest Territories Council. (During his union days he headed an organizing drive for the International Woodworkers of America in Newfoundland, where union -busting goons nearly killed him. He was terrified by his narrow escape. The next morning, when he looked into a mirror, he found his hair had turned white. Only later did he realize that in his nervousness he had put toothpaste instead of Brylcreern on his head.) During his dozen years as Commissioner (1967-79), when he actually lived in the NAVF, f lodgson shook up the council and left a permanent and enlightened imprint on the North. ”The Arctic does funn), things to you,”

he once observed. ”It's a jealous ]over and it doe3w't forgive.”

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reported that an Inuk used his teeth like a third hand. The Inuit developed quite extraordinary ways to deal with their surroundings. While the wind that howls across the flat tundra prevented them from using such primitive communication methods as yodelling or Tibetan ”far-away singing,” they learned to ftel movement a horizon away, so that they could communicate with arm-signals at great distances.

Until a version of Cree svllabics was introduced by the Reverend EJ. Peck in 104, the Inuit had no written language, transmitting their myths and history through songs, stone carving and elders' recited memories. The half-dozen dialects of their spoken language catch the underlying sophistication of their culture. They use different words when addressing dogs or people, and some verbs possess a dozen tenses, so that instead of merely a past, present and future there are a near and a distant future, an imperative, a negative past and present, an interrogative, a subjunctive and so on. Many words describe snow because its exact condition is so important for hunting or trek-king.*

In the early days, Inuit lived entirely off the land and sea, lighting fires by rubbing driftwood or striking bits of pyrite together, fas.h.i.+oning cooking pots out of soapstone, and making garments from sealskin with needles of goose or gull wing bones. Driftwood and whalebone were carved into harpoons; fish strips were frozen into thick, smooth packets to build sled-runners-providing basic rations in emergencies. No part of an animal was wasted. Seal windpipes were used as snow-house windows, ptarmigan bladders made children's balloons, fish

*Some of the more common are igluksaq, which is snow suitable for shelter-building on long journeys; pukak, a powder snow; ganik, falling snow; piqtuq, snow being blown about by a blizzard; mauya, soft, deep snow.

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eyes were snacks-a munchy Arctic version of Smarties. Inuit in the Western Arctic lined the hoods of their sea] jackets with wolverine fur because frost won't stick to it. But the main source of nourishment, clothing and equipment was the caribou. Like the buffalo of the plains and the deer of the forests, the animal was a walking emporium, its skin used for tents, clothing, sleeping bags, ceremomal drums, hunting bags, gloves and buckets; its antlers turned into bows and arrows, thimbles, sled handles and anchors. Its migration cycles fitted in with native life (or vice versa). Herds of caribou moved like great quadruped tides from the margin of the boreal forest to the edge of the Arctic Ocean, migrating between their rutting and calving grounds, involuntarily feeding man and wolf along the way. While he was stationed at Baker Lake in the 1920s, Archie Hunter, who spent thirty-five years with the HBC, watched the caribou go by: ”One could look across Baker Lake by telescope to the rolling land around the mouth of the Kazan River and, at first, see nothing,” he recalled. ”Then, as the gla.s.s was focussed, what appeared to be a sea of antlers came into view and then the caribou themselves. The hillsides seemed to be moving. In whichever arc the gla.s.s was turned there were the animals, thousands upon thousands of them. One old native told me of watching a caribou herd during the fall migration which took three days to pa.s.s where he was camped.”

The herds are supposed to have originally numbered a hundred million, and as late as 1907, the naturalist Ernest Thompson Seton estimated Canada's caribou population at thirty million, though both figures were probably exaggerations. According to calculations compiled for the Fourth International Reindeer Caribou Symposium, held at Whitehorse, Yukon, in 1985, the North American caribou count had by then declined to between 2.3 million and 2.8 million animals, of which ON THE TRAIL OF THE ARCTIC FOX 239.

Inuit using a traditional muskox- or caribou-rib bow drill

only half the herds were increasing in number. The grad ual decimation of the life-sustaining critters was bad news for all but the Company. ”The sooner the caribou are gone the better ... for then more food-stuffs can be imported and the natives will be forced to trap and become fur producers or starve,” a trader told Philip G.o.dsell in 1934. G.o.dsell, who himself spent two decades in the Companys northern service, abhorred that 240 QUEST FOR A NEW EMPIRE.

att.i.tude, commenting in his memoir, Arctic Trader, that it was ”a case of the Indian and buffalo over again. As long as the caribou are plentiful the Eskimo is independent of the white man but once the caribou are gone he becomes nothing but flie white man's slave.”

The Company att.i.tude of encouraging the Inuit to become dependent on its goods was reminiscent of Sir George Simpson's edict, outlined in an 1822 letter to the HBC's London Committee: ”I have made it my study to examine the nature and character of Indians and however repugnant it may be to our feelings, I am convinced they must be ruled with a rod of iron to bring and keep them in a proper state of subordination, and the most certain way to effect this is by letting them feel their dependence upon us. ” J.W Anderson, who spent his life with the HBC In the Canadian North, had a more thoughtful approach. ”There is an optimum period in the dealings of any primitive people with the white man,” he concluded. ”This might be described as the period of time when the aborigines have sufficient of the white man's material civilization to ease the burden of life, but yet not enough to disrupt their way of life-muzzleloading g-uns instead of bows and arrows; twines and lines for fish nets and snares, instead of tree and willow roots ... steel traps instead of deadfalls. And one must not overlook those undoubted and perhaps harmless comforts, tea and tobacco, two of the greatest amenities we have given to the original inhabitants of Canada.” The Inuit reached that turning point in the middle of the twentieth century; their treatment ever since has been a patronizing mixture of neglect and manipulation. But in the lexicon of villains that most Inuit feel have threatened their way of life, government ranks first, the missionaries second-and the Hudson's Bay Company a distant third. This is not because the HBC was particularly benign but because it ON THE TRAIL OF THE ARCTIC FOX 241.