Alone Against the North

by Adam Shoalts

  The next day, I used the satellite phone to call the lodge’s office in Moose Factory to see if it was possible to arrange a shuttle. That was a challenge in itself—it was a rainy day, and the satellite phone wasn’t waterproof. I had difficulty picking up a signal, and when I finally made a call the phone cut out. I thought that I heard a voice over the crackling line say that weather permitting a boat would arrive sometime in the next few days.

  The following day it rained furiously and high winds gusted ceaselessly off James Bay. I collected rainwater in my cooking pot, tea mug, and water bottles—the water at the mouth of the Harricanaw was too salty to drink. Given the weather, it seemed unlikely that any boat would arrive that day. But that evening I was surprised to hear the sound of a distant engine. On the horizon, a small boat equipped with an outboard motor appeared—somehow it must have made it through the storm. Two men were on board, clad in yellow rain pants and jackets. When they arrived at the lodge, it was high tide, and they came ashore in hip waders. I assumed that the three of us would spend the night camping and head to Moose Factory in the morning.

  Instead, the two men, Mark and Tyler, were eager to leave as soon as possible. They were both members of the Moose Cree First Nation. We chatted briefly about my journey, and I asked if either of them knew of the Again River. Mark, the elder of the two, was vaguely familiar with its outlet on the Harricanaw but knew nothing else about it. They both seemed rather surprised that I had travelled all this way alone.

  “It’s rough out on the Bay,” said Mark, who looked about thirty. “We had a tough time crossing—big waves out there.”

  Tyler nodded. He appeared to be in his early twenties. We briefly waited onshore to see what the weather would do—the wind remained fierce, and it continued to rain sporadically. But Mark and Tyler felt that we could safely make the journey back to the Moose River. So we loaded my canoe and gear onto the boat and shoved off into the river. I waded into the cold water then climbed on board. Neither Mark nor Tyler had lifejackets.

  The boat was a fibreglass vessel about twenty feet long, with a high prow to handle the rough waves of the open sea. Mark operated the motor while Tyler and I sat on a loose bench placed near the front of the boat, with the canoe stashed behind us. Mark revved the engine and we headed full speed downriver toward a vast expanse of open water. Roughly the size of Lake Superior, James Bay is a southern extension of Hudson Bay and, as such, is usually classified as part of the Arctic watershed. All the islands within the Bay, even small ones only a few kilometres offshore, are part of Nunavut. Notoriously prone to storms, even today no accurate marine charts exist for much of this sea. Many small craft have foundered and sunk on its murky, storm-tossed waters, taking mariners and canoeists to a watery grave.

  In 1984 four American canoeists, after completing a six-week descent of the Albany River, the largest river in the Lowlands, attempted to paddle along the desolate James Bay coastline south to Moosonee. None of them were ever seen alive again. Storms were so severe during the search to find the missing canoeists that rescue aircraft had to be grounded for four straight days. They were all presumed drowned.

  One of the larger vessels to fall victim to James Bay was the El Dorado, a fur trade supply ship. In 1903 the El Dorado struck a reef and sank near James Bay’s eastern coast. When the survivors reached the shore, they didn’t receive the welcome they had anticipated. None of the isolated fur trade posts on the Bay had enough provisions to provide for the El Dorado’s survivors through the winter. The castaways were bluntly told that they had a choice—starve to death or try to reach the nearest settlement, more than five hundred kilometres away. They chose the latter. In the words of one of the survivors:

  [We] left the Moose River on the 22nd [of September] and set out on our fearsome journey of what we expected to be at least 300 miles overland to reach civilisation. We met many very bad rapids, and had several narrow escapes.… [T]wo canoes overturned in one great rapid, and it was all we could do to save their passengers from drowning. We had to go up to our necks in water to reach the capsized canoes, and, of course, we lost most of the food they contained, which made our plight terrible.

  Ragged and starving, they staggered on with their grim journey, realizing that most rapids were too dangerous to navigate:

  After this accident it was arranged that we should carry the canoes as much as possible where the waters were too dangerous…. Carrying a canoe in such a place is awful work. There was no path by the riverside … often men had to go first and cut away trees…. Then, also, the ground was so undulating that only two men could possibly support the canoe, one in front and one behind. The banks were sometimes almost perpendicular, and thick with trees…. We camped in flimsy tents at night, but our clothes were always wet through, even before we lay down. Then it was piercingly cold, and everything froze on us.

  The Cree guides from Moose Factory who were leading the party soon became lost and admitted they had no idea what lay ahead. They abandoned the group and headed back the way they came. The survivors continued alone, and after another arduous week, they arrived at an isolated frontier settlement. As far as shipwreck survivors on James Bay went, they were lucky—others never lived to tell their tales. According to Inuit oral tradition, Europeans shipwrecked in the nineteenth century on the Belcher Islands, which lie north of James Bay on Hudson Bay, were massacred.

  THE BOAT RIDE was extremely rough. Tyler and I were tossed violently about on the bench as the prow flew clear out of the water when we crashed over large waves at top speed. The land was barely visible—we were some six or seven kilometres offshore—which meant that if we were to capsize or swamp, we would have no chance of reaching land before hypothermia killed us. I began to wonder if it might not have been safer to paddle across the Bay in my canoe. After half an hour battling fierce waves on the open sea and steady rain, Mark yelled from the stern that conditions were too rough, and that we had to turn back. He piloted the boat around, and we sped off to seek the safety of the Harricanaw’s mouth.

  We returned to the lodge to wait out the storm. The sun was setting, and I figured we would wait until morning before attempting a second crossing. But in another half hour the storm seemed to have slackened a little, so Mark and Tyler, in spite of the fading daylight, resolved to try again. Back out on the ocean the waves seemed nearly as rough as before, and we banged about in the boat as Mark gunned the engine full throttle. At one point, Tyler pointed to a white dot barely visible on the muddy sea—a beluga whale.

  We were cruising far offshore, smashing over the large waves, for about two hours when suddenly the engine sputtered—then died. Bewildered, Tyler and I pivoted round on the bench to see what the problem was—only to see Mark in the stern looking equally puzzled. He yanked on the engine’s pull cord in an attempt to restart the stalled engine. It sputtered, then died again. This wasn’t the time or place to experience engine troubles—we were pitching about in sizable waves, five or six kilometres offshore. The sun was setting on the horizon; in less than an hour darkness would cover the sea. Mark swore and pulled on the engine’s cord again. This time nothing happened at all—not even a tentative sputter. He removed the engine’s cap and inspected the motor.

  “What’s wrong with it?” asked Tyler.

  “Don’t know,” replied Mark. “Got plenty of gas. It just died.”

  After a few more futile attempts to restart the motor, Mark accepted that he could do nothing further. We were at the mercy of the elements, adrift on the ocean in a small boat, with no fresh water and only one lifejacket between the three of us. The sun had nearly disappeared, the temperature was dropping, and we were a long way from any help. But none of us panicked. Mark and Tyler were my sort of people—calm in the face of trouble.

  Fortunately, Mark had a satellite phone—a much better, more expensive model than the one I had rented for my expedition—and he now attempted to call Moose Factory. Over the phone Mark explained our situation to his boss, the perso
n in charge of Washow Lodge. She was understandably alarmed and said that another boat would be sent at once to find us. With his GPS, Mark gave her our coordinates. But it seemed doubtful the other boat would find us at all. We were drifting in big waves, and it would be dark by the time any boat could arrive in the general area. To make matters worse, the wind was blowing offshore, which meant we were drifting farther and farther from land, which was now hardly visible.

  “I guess we’d better try to paddle to shore,” Mark grimly suggested.

  The boat was equipped with only one oar for an emergency, and the big, clumsy thing was not much use for paddling. Luckily we had my two paddles, which we used along with the oar to try to paddle to safety. The nearest island—a windswept spit of mud and grass—was about two kilometres away, and we headed toward it as best we could. The boat was difficult to paddle—it was not designed for that purpose—and given the large waves, we were making little progress. Though we kept up the effort, it was obvious we would never reach the island. I could see, or thought I saw, some sort of white object erected on it.

  “What’s that white thing on the island?” I asked.

  “A cross,” said Mark.

  “A cross?”

  “Yeah, ten years ago a family drowned here when their boat swamped in a storm. So a cross was put on the island.”

  “I see,” I said.

  This news wasn’t very encouraging. It was nearly dark, and we were just a small speck adrift on the immensity of James Bay. Growing a little desperate, Mark moved to the front of the boat and began throwing the anchor overboard in the direction of the distant island, then dragging the boat toward it, repeating the process over and over. It was painfully slow-going, and though he made a valiant effort, he was soon exhausted and gave up. As we pitched about on the boat, I gave Mark and Tyler a couple of granola bars from my plastic barrel.

  The moon had risen above us and cast an eerie glow over the surface of the sea. We drifted aimlessly in the dark, bobbing along with the waves. I shivered in my wet boots and rubbed my legs to keep warm. The boat was not equipped with lights, and neither Mark nor Tyler had a flashlight. I had two small pocket flashlights—we would have to rely on these to try to signal the other boat.

  After several tense hours spent drifting in the dark, I thought I saw something glimmer on the horizon. “Look!” I said, pointing at a faint light in the distance.

  “It’s the other boat!” shouted Mark.

  The light was a long way from us, so far that we could not even hear any sound of an engine. The faint light would temporarily disappear then reappear. We attempted to signal with the flashlights, but their weak light gave little hope that we would be seen.

  “I don’t think they’ll ever spot us,” said Tyler.

  “Be patient,” replied Mark as he continued to shine a flashlight in the direction of the other boat. Eventually, we heard the sounds of their engine and the light grew bigger. At last they had seen us.

  The rescue boat was identical to our own, except that its motor seemed to work just fine. On board were two men from Moose Factory, Thomas and Jeff, good friends of Mark and Tyler. We transferred everything from the disabled boat to theirs, except for my canoe. With rope, the disabled boat was fastened to the working one and towed behind as we headed for the Moose River in the dark. Our rescuers used a GPS to navigate because nothing could be seen in the dark and there were many hazardous rocks, shoals, and sandbars. Towing the other boat further reduced our speed, and we chugged along at a slow pace. As it was, we would be lucky to arrive in Moose Factory before the sunrise.

  The wind had died down, and now the surface of the sea was fairly calm. I shivered in the cold night air. Exhausted from lack of sleep—it was well past midnight—I nearly nodded off. Meanwhile, my on-board companions spoke of strange things. They discussed their experiences with unidentified lights in the night sky above James Bay—which they thought might be alien ships—and some enormous tracks found sunk in the moss onshore near an isolated creek, apparently left by some unknown creature.

  Suddenly, the boat struck something and we all lurched forward in our seats.

  “We’re snagged on something,” said Thomas, from the other boat.

  Mark and I jabbed paddles over the side into the dark water. To our surprise, it was only knee deep—though the shore was still several kilometres away.

  “We’re on a sandbar,” said Mark.

  The boat’s propeller had struck the bottom. Thomas lifted the engine out of the water and the rest of us jabbed with paddles to push the boat into deeper water. But when the engine was started again, we found we were still snagged.

  “It must be the engine on the other boat,” said Thomas. “It’s hit the bottom.”

  Thomas, Jeff, and Mark plunged overboard in their hip waders. It was a strange sight—the five of us somewhere on the immensity of James Bay—struggling to free a stranded boat in the moonlight, with nothing but black water visible in all directions. Thomas, Jeff, and Mark stood nearly knee-deep in the water and attempted to raise the other boat’s engine off the bottom, but its hydraulics weren’t working and they couldn’t free it from the sandbar.

  “We need a screwdriver to get the engine off. It’s the only way to free it,” said Jeff.

  Neither boat had a screwdriver, but I had my old Swiss Army knife—a thoughtful gift from my grandparents for my third birthday, which had served me well ever since. With the Swiss Army knife’s slot-head screwdriver we were able to unscrew the engine, raise it out of the water, and at last free ourselves from the shallows.

  It took us several more hours to reach the mouth of the Moose River. The Moose had been a major artery of the historic fur trade, since it connects directly with dozens of other waterways that reach into the heartland of the Canadian Shield. Just as the first faint streaks of orange sunrise appeared on the horizon, we arrived at Moose Factory—a small Cree community situated on an island some eighteen kilometres upriver from James Bay. We were all exhausted from our journey and eager to get home to sleep. I was left at the band office, which also functioned as a sort of museum, where I was told I could make myself comfortable. I curled up on a metal bench near an exhibit of a stuffed polar bear, and I found that I slept soundly beneath the snarling gaze of this deceased predator.

  WHEN I AWOKE several hours later, I still had the feeling that I was bobbing on the boat. For breakfast (or rather brunch), I met with a retired trapper, Sinclair, who had spent a lifetime in the wilderness around Moose Factory. He had heard I was in town and was keen to meet me. We sat down opposite each other at the only diner on the island, located inside the band-owned co-op building. After introductions and small talk, I began to tell Sinclair about my journey. His reticence melted away and he became rather excited as I showed him pictures of black bears, canyons, rapids, and waterfalls on my camera.

  “That’s a big bear!” Sinclair said, looking at one of my photographs. “You did this all alone?” he asked incredulously, shaking his head.

  “My last partner bailed on me, so I’ve become used to travelling alone,” I explained.

  “I’ve never known anyone to canoe the Again River,” said Sinclair. “My family used to trap on the Corner River. Do you know it?”

  “Yes,” I nodded, “but I’ve never canoed it.” The Corner was a small waterway near the Kattawagami—one of hundreds in the area.

  “What made you want to canoe the Again?” asked Sinclair, sipping his coffee.

  “Because no one I knew of had ever canoed it.”

  “There’s usually a good reason for that,” he laughed.

  I nodded. “The river is full of rapids and falls, and the upper part is mostly too shallow to paddle.”

  The revelation that even Sinclair had never heard of anyone canoeing the Again River was significant. Unlike the dozens of other people I had spoken to about the river—bush pilots, prospectors, trappers, canoeists, old-timers—most of whom had never heard of it, Sinclair was an abori
ginal elder with plenty of experience in the area. The fact he had even heard of the river was a testament to his considerable knowledge. But given the thousands of waterways in the James Bay watershed, no one person could know them all. While the lack of written documentation about the Again River had been the basis for my exploration of it, hearing this news from Sinclair made my journey feel a little more special.

  After brunch, I wandered around Moose Factory, exploring the town and looking at rusty old cannons lying half-forgotten in an overgrown patch of grass near the river. They were relics from a bygone era, when a Hudson’s Bay Company fort had stood on the island and served as a major centre of the fur trade. As I stood there on the riverbank, I thought to myself with satisfaction that while the glory days of the fur trade were past, the age of exploration was not yet over.

  [ 13 ]

  CHANGING THE MAP

  But his soul was mad. Being alone in the wilderness, it had looked within itself and, by heavens I tell you, it had gone mad.

  —Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness, 1899

  THE AGAIN RIVER had haunted me for years—a nagging obsession that frequently dominated my thoughts. I had expected, or rather hoped, that after I had finally explored this mysterious river, I could banish it from my mind and seldom think of it again. But I found that its spell over me had not yet been broken—not even by canoeing the entire river.