Coppermine (21 page)

“If you ever had to, you could simply curl up in a snowstorm, let it bury you, go to sleep, and you would live. That is what they are made for.”

THE LIGHT SNOWSHOES
lasted well as they finally crossed over the divide of land Creed had first seen weeks before. That accomplished, they made their way down to the headwaters of the Dease. They found Angituk’s cache of frozen meat near the river. Half of it had been taken by others in need. A doll-sized sealskin coat and a copper knife had been left as compensation. They still had more than enough meat for several weeks, and so they left a substantial amount at the cache for other, less fortunate travellers.

As the days passed and grew incrementally longer, they walked on the surface of the frozen river and drew closer to Great Bear Lake. Creed noticed for the first time the tops of a few tiny black spruce and willows poking through the snow in a sheltered gully. They were approaching the treeline. The appearance of trees seemed so foreign to him after all this time, he had to smile to himself. He had learned to live in a world without them.

He saw nothing more than the odd stunted copse for days before the saplings multiplied into anything resembling a forest. But soon the travellers were enjoying roaring fires at night, and then he realized how much he had missed the trees. To Uluksuk and Sinnisiak they were a curiosity, and the campfires were impressive but indulgent. The hunters had never been this far south. Of course, they had seen trees before. There were a few famous little oases of trees in the southern Arctic where the people could travel to find wood for qamutiks and spears, but as the trees multiplied and grew in size and began to dominate the bare land, Creed noticed that the hunters’ mood had changed. They studied the increasingly taller trees around them, finding the vegetation disconcertingly oppressive.

They reached Imaerink Lake late in the winter and camped two nights by the burned-out remnants of the priests’ cabin. The hunters were impressed by the design even as a ruin. They had heard of log cabins before but had never seen one. Uluksuk found it shameful that it had been burned.

“Eskimos would not do this. This was done by the Cree or Dene. Both are wasteful and unwise.”

It was at this forlorn camp that Uluksuk and Sinnisiak first expressed regret for killing the priests. Sinnisiak was eager to explain how it had happened and why they had to do it, but Creed cautioned them. Anything they said he would have to report, and they should first speak to a lawyer, or “older brother,” when they got to Edmonton. Even after Angituk translated this, they did not understand. They looked around at the strange trees that seemed to be closing in on them and became silent with worry.

Creed took out Rouvière’s tattered journal again and by the light of a roaring fire read the description of the priests’ impressions of their final objective: the mouth of the Coppermine. It had taken Rouvière so long to get there:

We have arrived at our destination. It has been a hard trip with the Eskimo Kormik and his band. We slowed him down and there have been disagreements over food. Now we look out on the gloomy expanse of the Coronation Gulf, flat treeless hills behind us, a gravel beach extending east and west. A cold wind is blowing. It would be the Catholic Church’s most northerly post! We have taken the word of God to the farthest shores, the very edge of the world. We are the pioneers of the Lord! But yet … my good Lord, how would we live here? Through the months of killing cold and darkness? So incredibly far from home. Like a distant planet. Good God, forgive my doubts. Mother Mary, be our protector and make us worthy of this mission that you have entrusted to us.

Father Rouvière’s journal went on to tell the story. Kormik’s band had been greeted by some other Eskimos who had arrived for the winter hunting season, and they all set up camp on the little islands in the mouth of the Coppermine. They gave the priests a small hide tent to sleep in. Rouvière’s journal described how they stayed together for five nights with the sun very low on the horizon. The ice on the sea was still too thin to hunt seals and food was scarce. The Eskimos gave what food they could spare to the priests, and the women fixed the holes in the priests’ boots and mended their mittens and clothing. Rouvière’s apprehensions remained:

I ask myself if we can truly teach these people. Could there really be a time when they would help to build a church and come to hear my Mass? Could they incorporate our beliefs into theirs? Could they ever accept the idea that animals are our inferiors when for thousands of years they have believed animals are all-knowing? This I don’t know.

Creed closed the little journal and felt sadness at the fate of the passionate young priest, and again the sense of loss that they would never share a conversation.

CREED AND HIS PARTY
arrived on the shore of Dease Bay at the north end of Great Bear Lake and were surprised by the sight. The enormous lake was a clear sheet of ice! Whatever forces of weather had conspired, perhaps a windstorm that had blown the snow clear or an unseasonable melt and refreezing, it was a flawless, dazzling skating rink. At first Creed thought this a good thing for them, until he ventured out on the surface and fell promptly on his backside. The others laughed and he glared at them. This was serious. They were facing three hundred miles of a route—two or three weeks of travel—too slippery to walk on. The snowshoes wouldn’t work and Uluksuk and Sinnisiak could provide no solutions. These conditions were rare. The hunters would normally choose to go around such a lake, but with the massive bays of the Great Bear to the east and west, such a detour through stunted, dense forest would add weeks to the journey. Frustrated, Creed decided they would make camp here and consider their options.

Angituk and Sinnisiak set up camp near the frozen shore while Creed walked very carefully out onto the slippery ice. This was amazing. He remembered a winter with ice like this when he was a young boy living at Rice Lake. Clear, perfect ice for miles. They had played hockey from dawn to dusk, unlimited by boards or blue lines. They could skate with the puck and make a breakaway, undertaking a battle for possession that could last a mile until the goalies left in their wake shouted for them to come back. And when the wind rose, they had put down their sticks, unbuttoned their coats, and opened them wide to let the wind blow them on their skates, faster and faster, skimming across the pristine black mirror, their only destination the setting sun.

Creed scanned the horizon to the south and returned to his problem. They could not walk on this surface. He often found that solutions would present themselves in obtuse ways, when he wasn’t thinking about them, so he resolved to put the problem out of his mind for a while. He returned to shore, toward the pebbly beach. He found scattered lengths of sapling spruce, driftwood, their surfaces smoothed by the water. He chose one with a sharp curve on the upright end. He examined it and then flipped it end for end and laid the curve on the ice. Next he chose a small stone, the size of a fist, flat and smooth, and tossed it onto the ice. The little puck travelled a few feet. He smiled.

He decided to keep the rules of the game simple for the two new recruits. He placed two big rocks ten feet apart on the ice. He provided suitable sticks for his opponents from the spruce driftwood and he told them all they had to do was slide the puck past him through the two rocks. Their shackles would not limit them too much. Angituk had come to watch and translate. Uluksuk and Sinnisiak were interested to learn a white man’s game, but even with the support of the sticks they slipped and fell before even touching the puck. When they reached it, Creed called to them, “Spread out and pass it back and forth to each other to warm up.”

The puck went everywhere but stick to stick. Uluksuk fell hard a couple of times and was in a bad mood. He fanned at the stone, once, twice, three times. He went down on his knees, grabbed the puck with his hand, and slid it toward the goal. Creed stopped it easily.

“You have to use the stick.”

“Why?” The shaman scowled at him. Creed slid it back to him. Both men could shoot an arrow through the heart of a caribou, or spear a seal with speed and accuracy, but propelling a small object toward a target with a stick on a slippery surface held no relevance in their world.

Uluksuk, now on his feet, hit the stone with his stick and made a reasonable pass to Sinnisiak.

“Good. Good work,” Creed called out. And Sinnisiak passed it back. All right. They were getting the idea!

They moved toward him, focused and determined. They passed the stone between them, two, three times, sliding along the ice with one foot pushing.

“That’s good, that’s good. Get ready for your shot. Okay. Let her go.”

Sinnisiak was in possession at the sweet spot and he wound up, his backswing high and ready. Before he could follow through, his feet went out from under him again, his windmilling stick came around in a powerful arc, and the end made contact with the little stone. It rocketed between Creed’s legs and slid a hundred feet behind him on the perfect ice along the western shoreline.

“You did it! That was a beautiful goal!”

But Creed’s opposition had abandoned him. The two hunters limped unsteadily for the shore.

“Don’t you want to try it again? We’ll play to five!”

Their speed of retreat increased.

“I think they’ve had enough,” Angituk told him, amused. “I better go make dinner.”

CREED WAS LEFT STANDING
in his goal. He turned and looked to where the puck had stopped, well down the shore. And like a thousand times before in his childhood after a score on an open goal, he went to retrieve the puck. Though there were a thousand stones on the shore to replace the puck, it was the puck, and he had to go and get it. He could almost hear Charlie’s command on the wind.

He walked carefully, slipping and sliding, trying to stay on his feet. He arrived and bent down and picked up the stone puck. He glanced back toward the goal and the empty path to their camp. He would have liked to play a little more. He hadn’t played since Charlie left for the war. Charlie had been a beautiful hockey player. While Creed managed a scrambling, physical game, Charlie floated across the ice, untouched by the opposition, his stick blade guiding the puck with the grace of a rapier, a smile on his face, as if the puck in the net was a foregone conclusion.
God, that was a lifetime ago,
Creed thought.

His tentative, slippery walk to retrieve the stone had brought him around the shore of the bay not far from the old wrecked York boat they had passed on the trip in, its mast still standing. Creed put the puck in his pocket and made his careful way to the derelict hull. A drift of snow provided a solid path to the abandoned craft. He climbed aboard, sat on the wide, weathered thwart, mused about the men who had sailed her this far, and looked south again across the broad expanse of ice.

Sometime later, he heard a voice. Angituk had come out to him with a stone bowl of hot caribou broth. How she had not spilled it on the ice was a mystery. She had found some wild leeks, she told him, under the snow, and the addition tasted wonderful. She smiled with her perfect teeth when he complimented her. Her hair was braided up on her head again. The light of the late day gave her skin a tawny golden glow and illuminated her blue eyes, and in the interest of remaining faithful to their understanding, Creed had to quickly look away from her and concentrate on the current problem. Also, he was starting to have an idea.

She broke the short silence. “They are worried about crossing the lake.”

“I know. So am I.”

“No. They are worried about what’s on the other side.”

“The trees make them nervous.”

“No. It’s not the trees. It’s the Indians. The Dene, the Cree, and the Chipewyans are their sworn enemies.”

“They’re under my authority. I’ll protect them.”

“We are still a long way from other white people.”

“Fort Norman is not that far from the south side of the lake. They are my prisoners and my responsibility. The Indians will respect that.”

This seemed to satisfy her. “I will tell them. But what are we going to do?”

Creed got up and went to a long metal reinforcing bracket on the gunnels of the
Jupiter
just below the oar pins. He ran his hand along the three-foot strip of flat steel, three inches wide, half an inch thick. The heads of the iron bolts had rusted through and he was surprised to be able to pull much of the steel free of the wood. There were six of the heavy strips on the boat. He’d only need three. He picked up and inspected one of several long, straight, three-by-eight-inch planks loose in the bottom of the boat. Finally he looked at the still-erect mast and horizontal boom. The sails were long gone, but the weathered wood of the mast and boom had not rotted and the brass hardware was still functional.

Creed licked his finger and held it up into the breeze that came from behind him, and he mumbled out loud. “Northwest. Excellent. We have to hurry. It’ll clock to full north by tomorrow if we’re lucky.” He turned to Angituk, who still awaited patiently an answer to her question. She would have it soon. “Ask Sinnisiak to come. I’ll need some help.”

THAT NIGHT,
by the light of a roaring shore fire, as the others looked on and helped where they could, Creed constructed his ice boat. He and his father had built a simple version of one when Creed was a boy, and they had taken turns roaring across the wide frozen surface of Rice Lake. Why couldn’t it work here?

With the boards from the ruined York vessel he constructed the basic frame of a Christian cross about sixteen feet long and twelve feet wide. He sandwiched the steel strips from the boat between blocks of wood to make runners, crimping the iron nails securely. The runners were then lashed with cords of gut to each end of the forward crossbeam. Under the stern section, where he would sit, he bolted a similar swivelling rudder blade with a long tiller for steering. The mast and boom he took complete from the old boat, used nails and cords of gut to secure the base at the cross point, and reinforced it using support members lashed together with more gut cords. They offered terrific strength and yet enough give to the joints to sustain the structure against vibrations. Three strands of the gut were woven together to create each of the two cablelike stays, attached from the masthead to the port and starboard runners, which served as outriggers. Angituk wove the heaviest stay from five strands, and it was was secured to the stern behind the rudder to support the old mast in the freshening northerly, for their course would be southwest. Finally Creed bound twelve-inch secondary boards at forty-five-degree angles from the cross member to the main beam on each side for strength and to hold passengers.