Chapter 18 ~ Henry’s First Consignment
Down on the sands, Max and the fishermen were unravelling char nets, unkinking new ropes and sorting out the anchors which were entwined like a Chinese puzzle in a Christmas cracker.
Each net required an anchor to hold it off shore when it was set, and as the tide was low and right for laying nets, Max wasted no time in starting work. With Willie, the bridegroom, he boarded his untippable Newfoundland dory and while Max rowed, Willie paid out the net over the stern.
There was a considerable amount of skepticism among the Ungava Bay Eskimos, who had listened to the impractical notions, the loud orders and spurious advice of dozens of White men, who had lived briefly among them, usually during the summer and then left for’ the Outside when the worst weather started. The idea of a co-operative, offered them by the government, stood as much chance of working as any other improbable scheme as far as they knew.
They listened to Max, politely, as Eskimos do, but when he left the shore with Willie, they picked up some of the ropes and started a skipping contest, faster and faster, like a crowd of schoolboys. Max, imperturbable, rowed on and Willie, with one eye on the men skipping and the other on the net he was unfolding, loosed the meshes over the stern. Suddenly, there was a shout from the shore.
“Ikaluk”
“Fish”
We all turned towards the water. The net had not been fully paid out, but between the shore and the dory stern, the water was threshing and spurting as fish fought to free themselves from the nylon mesh. The men stopped skipping. Willie the bridegroom paid out the last few yards of net with a more purposeful air. Max stopped rowing and with dexterous aplomb, plopped the anchor into Ikkudliayuk fjord, swung the dory round with a few deft oar strokes and nodded to Willie to haul the net up and gather the fish as he headed triumphantly towards the shore.
The cry echoed round the hills again, and when the dory grated on the beach, the bottom was covered with wriggling, gleaming fish. The women had already lighted their stoves and lamps, using the driftwood we had carried to Ikkudliauk, and soon the smell of cooking fish permeated every tent, puffed out of each little chimney and wafted on the still, evening air.
In our tent, Max demanded, and was given the right to be cook. He made a quick excursion to the longliner and returned with his Newfoundland salt pork, chopped it into small pieces with his hunting knife, fried it crisp and brown and served it poured over the steaks of pink Arctic char. There was seldom a better dinner, and Henry Anatok and Max must have tasted a little of the flavour of success that night.
Although everyone seemed assured of enough to eat at Ikkudliayuk, the Eskimos wasted no opportunity, and before the sun had set, Josephee, the pilot, had killed a seal in the fjord and there was singing in the tents before we went to sleep in The Place of Many Lamps.
Early Sunday morning, Max set back for Port Burwell in the longliner. Before leaving, he arranged with Henry for the delivery of char to the freezer. The longliner was to be returned and used for the delivery of the fish. To keep the char fresh, Henry was to line the hold with snow, which still lay thickly in the north facing corries. The fishing was to go on and Max promised to send the longliner back from Burwell as soon as possible with Noah as skipper while he, Max, supervised the cleaning and freezing end of the business. The whaleboat was not deemed seaworthy enough to run the McLelan Straits regularly. Everyone came to the headland to watch our departure. It was difficult to navigate out of the small cove, where she was anchored, but after some heaving and hauling, her head was brought round and with full speed ahead, and hard to port, we bucked into the tide.
The Eskimos ran along the rocks to wave until we were out of sight, and I could see Jimmy, my patient, waving the packet of plaster I had given him for the last dressings on his back.
I prayed they would have good fishing and calm seas and turned seawards. The sunlight shimmered so strongly in the sea spray that I could feel my eyes brimming.
When we reached Port Burwell, the sound of a refrigerating engine hummed on the air. Paul Dubois had put an end to the Arctic silence of Port Burwell for the rest of the summer. Bill Larmour was nursing a mangleworzle stew for us when we went into the hut, and to celebrate I hunted round for ingredients to make a pudding of some kind. At the back of a top shelf I found an old bannock studded with currants. No one knew how long it had been there, nor who had made it; close by was a veteran tin of English custard powder, just asking to be made into a trifle, so with a tin of fruit the Canadian Bannock of doubtful origin was converted into a splendid Olde English Trifle. Heartened by the fishery’s prospects, we toasted the venture after dinner – the Port Burwell people had quickly endeared themselves to us, we had seen the perilous waters they had to sail, and though Rosemary and I were only observers of the co-operative’s humble beginnings, we felt deeply involved with their struggle. We went to bed in a tornado of wind and a torrent of rain that night, and it boded ill for our immediate departure down Ungava Bay. Max was agreeable to send us down in the longliner with Paul Dubois, whose job was completed. Or so we thought.
We ate breakfast early the next morning, Monday, August 1st, in case we could get away to George River. There was a lull in the conversation and Paul leapt to his feet and dashed out of the hut.
The diesel engines had stopped.
In less than five minutes, Paul was completely black from head to foot and came back looking like a coal miner to tell us the exhaust lines had come off. In Max’s words, the engine had “suffocated on its own soup.”
Our journey down Ungava was postponed for at least twenty-four hours. Next day, a gale was blowing inside the harbour and Max went out to the longliner to put out a second anchor to hold her fast. Rosemary and I spent the afternoon on nearby Jackson Island, exploring the site of an old camp where there were ancient tent rings, old bones and shells. From the top of the island we could see magnificent icebergs, calved in Greenland, floating down the Labrador Current in the Atlantic. As we scrambled clown the hillside, Max saw us from the hut window and pulled over in his dory to collect us in time for stew dinner.
We were just about to eat when an Eskimo rushed in and called, “Henry.”
We piled out of the narrow doorway and there, chugging into the cove was the tipsy whaleboat, lying low in the water, an old sealskin kayak lashed on deck, its hold full of Arctic char.
It was Henry’s first consignment.
Dinner was forgotten, Eskimo girls came from their tents in the far cove, ready to clean the fish. Max and Bill carried out bowls for the operation, the tap spouted geysers of water and Willie the bridegroom and Noah staggered up the cliff with the first boxful of char. They had more than two hundred prime fish, weighing an average of five pounds each. By nine o’clock the fish had all been cleaned, flash frozen and stored in the refrigerator.
Paul Dubois, his eyes still ringed with soot, stood by and looked well pleased with his day’s labour. We were all in high spirits after dinner and sat round in the hut after dinner while Max settled behind a cloud of tobacco smoke and told us of the electioneering practices of some Northern politicians he had known.
In Fort Chimo, which lies in Northern Quebec, one of the Roman Catholic missionaries allied himself to the Union Nationale Party and issued free paper hats carrying quaint slogans on behalf of the favoured French Canadian candidate. He also gave promises of dubious worth to the Eskimos – a beer parlour, and even dances with white people if they voted for the right party. Max did not say if such blandishments succeeded.
Down on Labrador, bribery came from the other quarter. A number of years previously, the prospective member for Labrador went down the coast, soliciting help and votes and he called on Max and his plumbing friend, Captain Carter.
The politician said they should put in a good word for him, say what a good fellow he was and what a lot of fine things he would bring to the Labrador.
The incorrigible pair had told the politician they were going to be blunt. If he wanted the good word spread, they wanted a branch government store put up for the people at Nutak, and a lighthouse erected on Moore’s Harbour Point — an anchorage very difficult of access for fishermen.
I did not find out if the lighthouse was ever put up, but the Labrador and Hudson Bay Pilot, Canadian Edition, records on page 178 that Nutak has a population of sixty-six people, a radio station – and a government store.
On Thursday, August 4, I noted in my diary, “I let down my air mattress again. I think we are definitely getting away today.” It was hard to leave such excellent company, but we had no excuse to linger and Paul cost the co-operative fifty dollars a day whether he worked or not. The freezer had continued operating satisfactorily for twenty-four hours and more, so Paul was not obliged to stay and the weather was set fair at last.
The sick Eskimo woman, Emily, had become very ill, so she was helped on board, wearing her best white parka for the journey and bedded down in the hold among some caribou skins with a sick child. By half past seven in the morning, Bill Larmour, Paul, Rosemary and I with the two patients were bound for Port Chimo. The pilots were Josephee who knew the lower part of the bay, and Noah, Port Burwell’s aimant, who knew the northern reaches.
The passage through the Hudson Strait section was without incident, except for a two-hour squall, but around five o’clock in the afternoon I went in to the wheelhouse to announce dinner was served – stew, cooked on a camp stove in the hold – and Noah pointed ahead.
The sky was dark and brooding, “We will have rough weather. It comes this way,” he said.
We ate quickly and had just finished when the storm abruptly hit us. Paul and I were in the fo’c’sle stowing all the loose articles and Rosemary was wiping the plates in the hold with the two patients. Bill Larmour was in the wheelhouse with the two pilots.
The ship began to pitch in a constant shuttle up and down the steep rooftops of the waves and the last few loose items of gear started to shift hard in the fo’c’sle. I tried to hold a balance and carried on stowing things as tightly as possible, slamming the cupboard doors tightly shut as the boat moved violently. Even the planking seemed to buck as the little boat swung about in the waves which seemed to converge from every quarter and fling themselves upon the boat, determined to crush it. She rolled like a wild thing and I clung to the edge of the cupboard seat with one hand and pressed the other flat on the wall. It was useless to try to wedge into a sitting position, so I stood with my feet astride and held to the timbers in the ceiling, made up my mind not to be seasick and fixed my eyes on the horizon through the porthole. The horizon kept disappearing from view and in its place, a wall of water rolled along. Not all the planks of the fo’c’sle door were in position, and as the water washed over the roof of the fo’c’sle, some of it streamed down the companion ladder and sluiced about our feet. The wind’s noise was endless.
Unexpectedly, there was a new, frightening motion in the longliner. She lost power. She was thrown broadside into the wave troughs. Her engine had failed.
Eskimos seldom travel far from the coast and we were in a perilous situation. As we rose up on a broad wave, I could see the rocky shore. Each time we wallowed into a valley of water we moved closer to the shoals.
Paul was wretchedly ill beside me in the fo’c’sle but he took hold of the end of a rope and lifted away the two planks fitted in the doorway and lumbered across the deck towards the wheelhouse. He vomited as he staggered.
Through the buffeting wind I could hear the sound of Paul hammering at the machinery in the tiny engine room. Now and then hammering stopped and I could hear him retching as he was sick again. The boat still rolled violently, inexorably nearer the rocks. I wondered what we would have to do, when suddenly the engine whined into life. Noah gripped the helm and the boat answered. The bow turned into the wind and she plucked herself away from the white breakers behind her.
It was hours before the storm abated and though I was marooned in the fo’c’sle, for nobody cared to try to cross the deck, I felt I was in good company. Looking astern to the wheelhouse, I was able to see Noah’s face blurred at the streaming window, peering into the dim light. Occasionally he would catch sight of my face and smile a roguish reassurance through the squalls of spray and rain, I had every confidence in the boat – provided the engine kept turning over – for it was built in Newfoundland, moreover there was an Eskimo at the helm, a man with an indisputable heritage of seamanship.
Late that night, the wind died away and fog shrouded the boat, hiding one end from the other. It was pitch dark when we anchored and we sorted out the wet sleeping bags and lay down until daylight. When day broke and the’ mist lifted, I looked in amusement at the familiar coastline of George River, Despite the thick fog and the wind, Josephee and Noah had dropped anchor unerringly at Beacon Island.
Keith Crowe came out to meet us in his outboard motor canoe and we took our gear ashore where Rosemary and I pitched our pup tent in the sand, crawled in and fell sound asleep.
A few hours later, Phil Laviere came in with the Norseman plane, picked up the Eskimo patients for hospital, stowed us in with the baggage and as the longliner turned back to Port Burwell, we took off for the hour’s run to Fort Chimo.
