Oliver's Twist Read online

  8

  NORTH OF NORTH

  Whatever upheavals or changes might attend their professional and personal lives, the members of the Rideau Canal and Arctic Canoe Club continued to meet faithfully in Toronto, by the Rideau and, come high season, in the Arctic. The Far North offered incomparable obstacles but abundant rewards. With the confidence of a decade’s adventures behind us, we joked that anything south of the Arctic Circle might as well be the Mexican Riviera.

  The Arctic is still one of a few places on Earth where entire mountain ranges and ecosystems remain almost as they have been for millennia. Many people imagine a winter scene all year-round; in fact, even near the pole, there is a fleeting and urgent summer. The ephemeral nature of that season is what gives it its intense beauty. How sobering, then, to realize that global warming threatens the seasonal rhythm of life for all Arctic dwellers and may end the isolation that has been the region’s best protection. Our generation could be the last to experience this terrain in its largely untouched, pristine grandeur.

  Not that the conditions are always heavenly. Mosquitoes and other biting insects are plentiful, kept somewhat in check by the relentless winds, though being wind-bound is itself a dismal prospect on a canoe trip. Days pass in a monotonous cycle of sleeping, reading, talking, and cooking. It’s not uncommon to have to tie the tents to the canoes, which are in turn weighted down with small boulders. The decision to resume a trip is taken after judging the ferocity of the flapping inner and outer flies against the tent skin or, worse, the sound of nylon ripping. The din inside the tent rises and falls like an audio barometer—so loud it can be hard to carry on a conversation. Having to shout at your companion tells you it is pretty bad and likely means more hours confined to quarters.

  At the conclusion of the Hanbury trip in 1979, while our canoe group waited out brutal conditions until our plane could pick us up, Peter Stollery pulled a bad practical joke. He was out of sight in his tent while the rest of the group collected at the riverside camp. Peter shouted in despair that he could take no more and let off a pistol shot. After a moment we laughed, though one of the group murmured that Peter never was a great shot.

  Even in fine weather, paddling in the Arctic meant that our routines had to be especially well disciplined and thorough. The first order of business on reaching a campsite was to look after personal matters—erecting tents, laying out sleeping bags, finding dry socks. Group responsibilities came next, with the canoes dragged into a semi-circle as counters for the cooks, while a stove, rather than a fireplace, was set up. In the Barrens there was no wood.

  L’heure de bonheur found me at my customary bartending duties, but the pre-dinner gathering was more than a social nicety. It was the first group meeting since breakfast and an opportunity to rehash the events of the day. Plans and maps for the following day were reviewed and a consensus reached on the critical question of how many miles must be covered and what hour we must start out.

  Any complaints were aired and debated. Once a chronic grumbler was told that we were to pass an outfitter’s lodge the next day. He would be left there and arrangements made to fly him out. When tempers cooled overnight, he asked whether a few mitigating words might be said on his behalf prior to the punishment’s being carried out. He was allowed to stay with the group. On another occasion, in Alaska, we held a trial when someone let a fresh catch of salmon—the evening’s meal—slip into the river and disappear. The sentence, summarily enforced, allowed each person to throw a ball of mud at the defaulter from a distance of five yards.

  As members of our all-male group married or settled into long-term relationships, the question of breaking the gender barrier arose. Any number of capable wives and girlfriends would have eagerly come along. But we could never overcome the issue of numbers: As long as the regulars signed on faithfully, our crews were large and logistically cumbersome enough. Responsibility for everyone’s safety was also a constant concern.

  We had learned that one cannot bluff a rapid. No amount of bravado or blind stubbornness can compensate for lack of skill, and in big and remote whitewater, the ability to overcome fear is equally essential. To go for it—what Hemingway described as “the final lunge at the bull”—becomes the elemental moment of truth. I was able to overcome my early fear, but it never quite left me: the dry mouth, the urge to urinate. Once we were committed, the butterflies lifted. But on many a restless night, I lay listening to the ceaseless roar of a rapid I would meet in the morning. Would it be my last? Was I, as someone once unforgettably told me, a drowner?

  Drowning takes only a few minutes, fewer when strong currents are tumbling you end over end, preventing you from finding air at the surface. I dumped seriously only once, in the swollen Rouge River in Quebec during spring runoff. I could not keep my head above water; the standing waves and surging cross-currents kept sucking me under. I could feel the blood throbbing in my ears. Within seconds, the near-freezing water turned my hands into claws. My fingers lost the dexterity to grasp or hang on to the rocks that swept past.

  Fortunately, one of my companions was Judd Buchanan, six foot five and strong and lanky. He raced ahead along the shoreline, waded out into the rapid as far as his tall frame allowed, and snared me as I tumbled by. Just below that point the river presented a sharp turn and even greater speed. I was glad I did not have to face those odds against my survival.

  There is a hanging moment of suspension at the top of a big chute or rapid. The lead canoe team makes an irrevocable decision about whether to enter and what line to take, then contends with whatever faces it. The options can never be accurately judged from a far shore or a high point above the obstacle. At a distance, the forces are almost always underestimated. Modest standing waves become monsters at water level; ledges are deeper and rocks much wider at their base. In that blood-rushing moment of risk and excitement before the rapid, nothing else exists, no past and no future, only that instant of crazed exhilaration. And when it is over and safety is reached, who would not succumb to feelings of triumph and relief? Or discover again a sense of balance with the natural world and joy in the camaraderie of sharing it all with like-minded friends? John Godfrey once described any canoe trip as a legalized reversion to adolescence. Indeed, ours kept us young.

  Our education in river running never ended entirely, nor could we allow ourselves to believe we were invincible or beyond accepting assistance when needed. That lesson was reinforced in 1982 when we completed an arduous and mishap-plagued trip down the Korok River in subarctic Labrador. Our put-in point on a lake near the headwaters in the Torngat Mountains was too high and we discovered there was not enough water to float the canoes. We spent the first three days dragging fully loaded vessels down shallow creeks, an ordeal that inflicted the usual injuries to feet and ankles.

  Matters got worse when we finally reached the main stream. Canoe driver David Silcox and his bowman, John Godfrey, went over a ledge and into a souse hole. When the two abandoned ship, the canoe sank bow-first like a submarine going into an emergency deep dive. We could see it clearly lodged under a rock six feet below the surface as if preserved in aspic. Nothing could budge the canoe, which no doubt will remain in plain sight to amaze and puzzle future travellers for years to come.

  The loss meant a dramatic change in transport accommodations. The two boatless paddlers, plus their baggage, had to be distributed among the three canoes still afloat, which left those vessels overloaded and less seaworthy. In two of the craft, the guests sat in passenger class, propped amidship against the backpacks. This was not good since we would shortly have to make a run for it across a wide stretch of open water. Ungava Bay is a vast expanse of water, but still small enough that winds can quickly whip it into a whitecapped frenzy. Before then, however, we had to run the last series of heavy rapids where the river crashed down out of the Torngat Mountains into the bay.

  Tim Kotcheff and I now had on board David Silcox, an expert sternsman in big water. This was not unlike a third person interpo
sing between a happily married couple. As we descended the rapid, David could not restrain himself from shouting instructions as to the safest course through the waters. But he was not in command in this vessel and often his choice was the opposite of ours. We soon had a full-scale domestic quarrel on our hands. For the first time in almost a decade, Tim and I began to argue with each other, and David, about technique. Decisions had to be made quickly as rocks loomed up fast in the steep rapids. Now we were three individuals countermanding one another instead of a team of two operating as one. Others remarked that we sounded like a brass band coming down the river.

  That night we camped at salt water on the shoreline of Ungava Bay with David sharing our accommodation and peace restored at last. The view to our north looked very like open ocean. In the morning, we found the shoreline had receded, leaving our canoes high and dry. Ted Johnson had inadvertently left the tide tables on the charter plane. Had it been a flood tide, we would all have been twenty feet under, although Ted reassured us that the water lapping at our feet would have awakened us soon enough.

  The route that morning took us across the mouth of a large bay to a point of land where we had to turn south, hugging the east coast of Ungava Bay until we reached our pickup point at the Inuit hamlet of Kangiqsualujjuag on the George River. About halfway across, we were engulfed in a pea-soup fog that came rolling in from the bay without warning. The fog was so impenetrable it was impossible to see a canoe more than ten feet away. We resorted to shouting out at intervals of five minutes or so to keep the three canoes from drifting apart, following a compass heading with a declination wildly off true north. All of us were only too aware of the risk that we might miss the point and head out into the open bay. That could be a serious misstep in overloaded open canoes designed for running rapids, not navigating heavy seas. Our relief was immense when, after about three hours, a rocky outcropping loomed up out of the fog. The compass perched on the canoe pack in front of me had not failed us, though the temptation to second-guess the needle in dodgy situations is hard to resist.

  But this was not the end of our problems. When the fog dissipated, it was followed by persistent rain and a wind in our faces so strong that we were barely able to move forward against it. Worse yet, we obviously were fighting a twenty-foot outgoing riptide. I vowed to reduce Ted’s rum ration as punishment for losing those tide times. The combination of wind and tide was pushing us farther out from shore where waves were blowing up, tall and ice-cold as only salt water can be.

  The occasional wave started breaking over the gunwales, but it was impossible to stop paddling and bail. To do so in the high winds would have put us at risk of losing control of the canoe and broaching. We were the last canoe in line, and we knew if we went over we could endanger the lives of the others who might try to turn around and paddle back to us. A few years earlier, Pierre Trudeau had underscored that truth as some of our group had been forced to cross a choppy lake on the Hanbury trip. When someone asked what to do if the canoe behind swamped, Trudeau’s reply was chilling but realistic: “Sing louder and keep paddling.”

  Fortunately, salvation arrived in the form of an Inuit hunting party and their lifeboat-sized freight canoe. They came alongside and, with typical Aboriginal understatement, asked if we needed help. That was putting it mildly. In my judgment, we were well beyond the margin of safety. Some of our crew disagreed, but no one declined the offer of a lift. The Inuit took our canoes in tow and we, shivering with wet and cold, piled into their boat and found space between the hunters and three freshly killed caribou.

  When we were safe in our lodgings, one of the Inuit men came to see me and asked, somewhat shyly, if I would consider selling our canoes. They were valuable commodities, and for him to buy them in Montreal and ship them in would be prohibitive.

  I suggested he make an offer and he started at three hundred dollars each, fully expecting I would try to bargain higher. Instead, I countered with two hundred each. He looked at me as if to ask what kind of white man’s trick was this. I figured our lives were worth a few hundred dollars.

  As we boarded our charter flight the next morning, the Inuit brought us a stack of frozen caribou meat, a delicious treat we later enjoyed at that year’s annual canoe reunion.

  After a dozen years of paddling challenging rivers, everyone in the group had capsized except Tim Kotcheff and me. We attributed this to my limited vision. In running whitewater, both ends of the canoe have to act in unison, each paddler using whatever strokes are required to perform the necessary manoeuvres. Any confusion, disagreement, or delay can be fatal. Since my eyesight was not reliable enough to make calls of my own from the stern, I responded without question to whatever moves Tim initiated up front. We thought we were invincible—not just the Affirmative Action Canoe but also the OK Canoe, the one that always ended the trek intact. Unfortunately, that boast did not survive an incident in 1987 on the fierce Isortoq River in northern Baffin Island, when we lost everything but our lives.

  In aerial photos and maps, which showed the Isortoq flowing some thirty-three kilometres southwest into Foxe Bay, it appeared doable. It had never been canoed, so there were no eyewitness accounts of conditions at river level. Ted Johnson, David Silcox, John Macfarlane, Peter Stollery, Tim Kotcheff, and I could not resist the call to be the first to record them.

  From the moment we gazed down on the river from the windows of the aircraft delivering us to the starting point, however, we knew we were in over our heads. The riverbanks were solid stone, with hardly any sand or pebble beach to land canoes. Where the river wasn’t a roiling torrent, it narrowed into miles of unnavigable cascades between sheer walls. It was too late to back out, so we soberly considered what lay ahead as we camped that night in bitter cold, directly across from the Barnes Ice Cap, one of the last remnants of the great glaciers that had covered the better part of the continent ten thousand years earlier.

  Next day, we paddled where we could through waves reminiscent of Atlantic rollers. Whenever we encountered an impassable obstacle on one side of the river, we ferried to the opposite shore, one canoe at a time. For a few heart-stopping minutes, those waiting their turn watched the crossing canoe disappear into the waves as if swamped. David Silcox and his bowman, John Macfarlane, pulled ashore after one traverse as if sitting in a bathtub, their canoe full to the gunwales. Another ten feet would almost certainly have cost them their balance and dumped them into the churning rapids. David’s face showed both anxiety and triumph. John silently lowered his forehead to his resting paddle as if in thanksgiving prayer.

  Where paddling wasn’t possible, each two-man crew pulled its canoe from the safety of the shoreline by manipulating the bow and stern lines. At the best of times, lining is a tricky business. Though you are off the water, life jackets are worn as padding against frequent falls on slippery boulders. Oftentimes it is necessary to run and jump to keep up with a canoe caught in a charging current. Twisted ankles and bruised feet are expected, but the worst outcome is a cracked head. When falling, heads up is the rule.

  In some places through the canyons, there was no passage on either side, only steep granite walls. We did not know it, but we were engaged in a hybrid sport called “canyoneering,” a combination of rock climbing and canoe lining. We crept along the walls, gripping whatever ledges and crevices our boots and free hands could find. Our other hands held lines to the bows or sterns of the loaded boats, pitching and tossing in the rapids five to ten feet below. In a balancing act worthy of the Cirque de Soleil, we teetered on narrow ledges while controlling the tension on the ropes that held the boats. Occasionally, an unexpected tug or a loss of balance meant one of the team had to throw away his line rather than risk a fall. The lone hanger-on then had to manage the charging vessel single-handedly until his partner had recovered his balance. The thundering river was frigid and the possibility of rescue, should someone slip, frighteningly slim.

  Two days of this was enough to convince us that the enterprise was madness. The
volume of the river was immense, greatly increasing the danger of its rapids. The unrelieved tension of physical effort was exhausting. Hands and feet were cut, ribs bruised from falls, nerves frayed. My mind has done me the kindness of erasing from memory whether it was Tim or I who stumbled and dropped his lead line. The current bit into our canoe’s stern like a ravenous animal and ripped the line from the other man, who could not hang on to what was now a two-ton torpedo. I watched sick and disbelieving as our canoe flew downstream fully loaded and upright with no one aboard. It disappeared into a cauldron of piled-up water and waves.

  Even now, many years later, I search in frustration for a favourite item of clothing or equipment. Then I remember. Was it Proust who said the hours of our lives are embodied in material things? I grieved the loss of personal possessions lovingly collected and cared for over many years. On the other hand, Tim and I were not in the canoe; we were alive and the trip was over. Fortunately, the accident occurred near an ancient riverbed lined with hard sand. This was one of only a few times we used Ted Johnson’s emergency radio transmitter to contact a passing pilot.

  There was a postscript. As luck would have it, the spot where we ended our expedition marked the last significant drop in altitude on the Isortoq. Just past that point, the river flows into a series of calm lakes that lead all the way to Foxe Bay. The following year, a few of the group insisted on completing the balance of the river. They found our canoe, its gunwales and guts ripped out. Nothing else surfaced except two bottles of our best wine, buried in the sand alongside the shell of the boat. Happily they were intact, and all of us enjoyed them in urban comfort at the club reunion a few months later.