|
I
first learned about the 1903 Leonidas Hubbard expedition by reading
Great Heart: The History of a Labrador Adventure, by James
West Davidson and John Rugge, but it wasn’t until the afternoon of
July 4th, 2003 that I began to understand how truly difficult the
trio’s journey into Labrador’s rugged interior had been. On that
day, Jim Niedbalski, Brad Bassi and I reached the intersection of
Susan Brook and Goose Creek and located Hubbard’s final campsite
among the evergreens. We hadn’t made the trip by helicopter or float
plane as most of the 20 or so visitors to the site have done since
Hubbard’s death. Instead, we were the first team in a century to
reach the memorial site by canoe.
That evening, I sat
on the ground and leaned against the granite boulder beside which
Hubbard had taken his last breath and I wrote these words in my
journal:
“Our difficult
journey up the Susan is behind us. Brad and Jim have sought refuge
in their tents from the hordes of insects, but I decided to stay out
for a while and write. I have thought about this spot often for the
last two years. So little has changed here since 1903 that as we
approached I half expected to see the boys gathered in front of
their campfire trying to come to terms with the seriousness of their
situation. I think it is not such a bad place to leave this Earth.
It would have been cold and wet that evening, when Hubbard struggled
to write those final words in his journal. But he was not fearful of
death. The boys chose a good spot for this camp. Hubbard would have
heard the Susan flowing by from inside his tent and the dense forest
would have afforded some protection from the raw winds. I feel a
kinship with Hubbard, even though we lived in very different times.
For it is the timelessness of this place and the inner urge that
beckons us to see what lies beyond distant ranges that joins men,
regardless of when we live our lives. I salute Hubbard for his
adventurous spirit, for his courage both in life and in the face of
death, and for his unwavering faith in both his traveling companions
and his creator.”
The Hubbard
Memorial Centennial Expedition was a 650-mile, 50-day canoe trip in
Labrador and Quebec retracing the 1903 route of the Leonidas Hubbard
expedition up Susan Brook to Hope Lake then northwest to Lake
Michikamau (Smallwood Reservoir) and continuing on the 1905 routes
of the rival Mina Hubbard and Dillon Wallace expeditions through
Smallwood to Cabot Lake and down the George River. The expedition
began on June 24th in North West River, Labrador (which by sheer
coincidence was also Wallace’s birthday) and ended on August 12th in
the Inuit village of Kangiqsualujjuaq, Quebec (formerly George River
Post), which is located on the southeast side of Ungava Bay.
We
based our planning on experience gained on five previous canoe trips
in the Nunavik and James Bay regions of Quebec, dating back to 1992.
Although Jim and I had gained some upstream experience during a
successful 1999 crossing of the Ungava Peninsula, there was nothing
that could have prepared us for the backbreaking labor of ascending
Susan Brook, Goose Creek and the Beaver River. Because of the
difficulty we had anticipated on this 150-mile upstream phase we
pared our equipment down as much as possible, but we still cursed
the heavy loads. Our only resupply occurred on July 17th at Alan
Gosling’s cabin on Lake Orma Road, which lies 38 miles north of the
town of Churchill Falls and seven miles southeast of Smallwood.
Caroline Scully, the fourth member of our team, met us at the cabin
and traveled with us, after a much-needed two-day respite, on the
second phase of the journey that stretched 500 miles downstream to
Ungava. Each phase of the trip took 25 days to complete.
We had the good
fortune of speaking with Max McLean in North West River shortly
before pushing off from a small beach in front of the old Hudson’s
Bay Company Post, where all three original expeditions began. The
building now houses the Labrador Heritage Museum. The museum has a
very extensive collection of artifacts and photographs from the
Hubbard expeditions. Max is a member of the museum’s board of
directors and is a direct descendent of Duncan McLean, who was one
of the trappers on the 1903 rescue party as well as a member of
Wallace’s 1905 expedition. His other uncle, by marriage, was Gilbert
Blake, who was also a member of the party that rescued Wallace.
Blake later joined Mina’s 1905 expedition. Max, who is now in his
early 80s, trapped along the Naskapi River in the 1940s with his
father. He has wise, aged eyes and a hearty smile and his bright
white hair covers just the fringes of his head. He was very pleased
to see that we had taken such an interest in the land and the
Hubbard story. Max mentioned that he would love to go back up the
Naskapi, but was simply no longer able due to his advanced age. He
seemed happy to have us head into the bush in his place. He
confirmed that no one had successfully followed the ‘03 route and
seemed very excited about the prospect of our success. “It would be
good to see someone follow Hubbard’s route to show that it can be
done,” he said. He shook our hands, wished us well and said that he
was going to go have himself a beer. He waved as he pulled out of
the dirt parking lot in his pick-up truck. A few minutes later we
took our first expedition paddle strokes in nearly four years.
Grand Lake was as
still as glass that first evening and only the chirps of frogs and
the hum of a few mosquitoes permeated the thin walls of my tent. The
next day we reached Cape Law. It was at this point that Hubbard’s
troubles began. He had been advised at the post that the Naskapi
flowed into the end of Grand Lake and from Cape Law it was easy to
see how he had mistaken the Susan for the Naskapi. Across the lake
to the north was the mouth of the Naskapi River. Several layers of
relatively flat, uninteresting hills separated the surface of Grand
Lake from the interior. To the west, which clearly looked like the
end of the lake, was the Susan Valley. The view was much more
mountainous in this direction and I could see deeper into the
interior. Therefore, from a strictly visual standpoint, the view of
the Susan Valley would have exerted a much greater pull on Hubbard’s
adventurous heart than the mouth of the Naskapi.
Up the Susan
Hey hey, ho ho. Up the Susan we go, go, go!
We knew it would be
the toughest 20 miles of the summer and by the end of the first day
we had gotten a glimpse of what the Susan had in store for us - and
it wasn’t pretty! The riverbed would rise 1,000 feet in just 20
miles; the shorelines were choked with alders and the air was heavy
with humidity. The woods were a tangle of spruce limbs and deadfall,
with an occasional trip-ending sinkhole thrown in to make the near
impossible task of portaging even more challenging, and the forest
was so dense at times that it was impossible to turn the boat while
carrying it. All we could do was stumble in the direction the trees
channeled the hull and hope to make a first down. Most of our
portage attempts ended with a loud crash and the type of word that
shouldn’t be spoken at a Thanksgiving dinner. It quickly became
apparent that we had to stick to the river whenever possible.
Fortunately, the
water level, although low, allowed us to spend most of our time in
the brook pulling, pushing and dragging our canoes through knee-to
chest-deep water. This tactic would not have been possible without
Royalex canoes. Jim and I dragged a Dagger Venture 17 and Brad
dragged a Mad River Explorer 15, which he reports to be an excellent
solo expedition canoe. He and I paddled the Explorer tandem on the
downstream phase of the trip.
Much of the riverbed was a boulder field, so the disturbing sound of
our hulls grinding over either slightly submerged or fully exposed
rocks was a continual annoyance. It pains me to think that Hubbard
and his team likely found themselves in the woods more than in the
river. Their wood and canvas canoe could not have taken the
Cont'd |
|