Chapter 8 ~ Fort Chimo
We had two stories to cover in Ungava Bay; a newly established char fishery at George River, and a new small Eskimo co-operative venture at Port Burwell. Both places were on the East Coast of Ungava and both places were approached through Fort Chimo in Northern Quebec.
The camps of George River and Port Burwell were said to be simple in the extreme, so we boarded the plane with our warmest clothing, our tents and camping gear, certain at last our basic equipment was going to be put into use.
Using some of Frobisher’s newly laid runway, we took off in a two-engine Nordair plane for Fort Chimo at three o’clock on the afternoon of July 13. The coast below us sparkled in bright sunlight where the Sylvia Grinnell River splashed and rushed into the bay. Snow still clung like cake frosting to the rocky landscape and ice still plugged the bay like a champagne cork.
Clouds hid Hudson strait from view and our next sight of land was two hours or so later as we neared the flat landscape that rims the horseshoe shape of Ungava Bay. Compared with Baffin Island the countryside looked lush and verdant, and there were even a few small trees to be seen.
We circled the gravel airstrip lying on the west bank of the Koksoak River, slowly lost height in a gusty wind and we touched down in Northern Quebec.
A group of Eskimo women stood watching at the air terminal building – an unpainted shed comprising office and warehouse. The women did not wear sealskin boots nor did they wear parkas like the Eskimos of Frobisher Bay. Instead they wore bright tartan blankets over their heads and wrapped round their shoulders in the fashion of Indians or Scottish fishergirls. They wore long Mother Hubbard dresses, introduced by missionaries years ago to replace the sealskin trousers which were un-Christian, though warmer. Some women achieved a compromise wearing trousers beneath their dresses. On their feet they wore leather shoes bought at the HBC store. The women carried babies in their arms, instead of on their shoulders as in Baffin Island, and they waved rags or some cloth over the children’s faces to disperse the myriads of flies. Geographers may describe Fort Chimo as on the banks of the Koksoak River, but for me, Fort Chimo is in the heart of Canada’s Mosquito Region.
Its precise location is sixty eight degrees and eighteen minutes West of Greenwich and fifty eight degrees, nine minutes North of the Equator which is the same latitude as the Isle of Lewis in the Hebrides. It also lies precisely at the northern limit of Canada’s great forests, usually seen on a map as only a line of printer’s ink. Seen from the air, the Treeline is a dramatic boundary between forest and tundra, a breeding ground for millions of mosquitoes which thrive in the swamps and countless lakes, eternally fed by winter snows and cradled by the earth’s frozen subsoil.
To the South, the coniferous trees grew straight, dark green but sparse on the fringes of the sub-Arctic, while from the treeline northwards, they dwindled, shrank and disappeared, Only Arctic willow and birch survived, contorted to conform to the low configuration of all Arctic plant life, no more than one foot tall.
Fort Chimo is also on the great frontier dividing the Eskimo and Indian races. Traditionally enemies, the two people are roughly separated by the Treeline. The Indians live in the forest where game is richer and fuel is abundant. The less aggressive Eskimos live in the bleak, treeless Arctic, hunting mostly on the ice of the North’s coastline in winter and on the sea in summer. The two races live in the same community in only a few places, usually under the aegis of a white administration, such as at North West River in Labrador, or at Churchill in Manitoba.
When white men reached Ungava Bay in the 18th Century, the Eskimos used the word “Chimo” or “Shake Hands” as a welcome to the traders, seeking to expand the fur trade through Hudson Bay – Canada’s back door – when the main entrance was dominated by the French in the St. Lawrence River. Today, the word is seldom used but it gave the main Ungava Bay settlement its name in 1830, when the Hudson’s Bay Company first established a fur trading post in the Koksoak Valley. In those days, great caribou herds crossed the river each winter on their annual migration. The waters were rich in salmon and the land was rich in game and fur bearing animals.
In the 1960’s, only an old woman, the oldest inhabitant of Fort Chimo, remembered seeing caribou herds cross the river, for they have long since disappeared. Improvident hunting and the repeating rifle have taken their toll.
The advent of an air base, built during WorId War II, dissuaded most of the Fort Chimo Eskimos from following their traplines in the vicious temperatures of winter. Instead, the men took simple, highly paid jobs at the American air base. When the war ended, two main factors contributed to the impoverishment of Fort Chimo. The Americans went home and synthetic fibres and man-made fur fabrics knocked the bottom out of the fur trade.
White fox and silver fox furs were no longer fashionable and former trappers who had clustered round the air base turned to the HBC trader and government officers to live largely on relief rations and handouts. The U.S. airstrip had been built on an air route through which it had been intended to evacuate the expected heavy casualties of the second front in Europe. The number of wounded was fewer than the strategists anticipated, so Chimo was never used to the extent the planners had expected and the result had a curious and long-term effect on the Chimo Eskimos.
Millions of gallons of fuel, stored on the west bank of the river were left behind when the war ended, and it was made available to the Eskimos. Fort Chimo developed an oil drum based economy.
Although the people lived in the most humble shacks by the airstrip, they had a constant supply of fuel for their stoves. It was free and seemingly from an endless stock. When the Department of Northern Affairs sent in officers to look after the Eskimo affairs, one of the most constant complaints from the people was that the outboard motors they used on their canoes had a short life. They burned out in a season, although they developed plenty of power while they lasted it. It took a little while before a Northern Service Officer discovered the reason. The Eskimos were running their outboard motors on high octane spirit, originally intended for hospital planes carrying wounded men back to the United States in World War II.
Eskimos are nothing if they are not ingenious and they allow nothing to go to waste, if they can help it.
