… very well at all just now. It was another pretty miserable night from that point of view and I didn’t have much sleep.
I’d been on my travels too, but no idea where to because it’s all gone out of my head … “beacuse there’s nothing in there to keep it in” – ed … now.
Another thing that I didn’t do is to take my tablets. Not when I have an early start like today where I need to be on the road by 08:00.
And I arrived in North West River at 08:45, beating my local guide by about 30 seconds.
While he was busy provisioning the motor boat, I was busy provisioning myself. We are going quite far today – a lot farther than WE DID AT CARTWRIGHT.
It’s for this reason that I need to stock up with the supplies because there’ nothing whatever where we are going.
And so leaving North West River behind us, we head off down Hamilton Inlet.
We’re heading due east, in the general direction of Rigolet and the open sea.
But we’ll be turning off a long way before then – going probably about a quarter of the way down and then turning off to the north.
The first settlement that we pass is the rather enigmatically-named “Butter and Snow”.
I’ve no idea why it was so named, although it is known that the family who lived there, called Rich (although I have seen it spelt “Ritch”) owned a cow.
There was still a permanent resident there a couple of years ago, and he would be here today had he not died in a skidoo accident.
While you admire the absolutely stunning scenery of the Hamilton Inlet, maybe I should fill you in on a little history of Inner Labrador.
In the late 18th and early 19th century the Hudsons Bay Company recruited Scotsmen mainly from the outlying islands of the North, to come and work here.
That explains the proliferation of family names such as McLean, Campbell, Baikie, Goudie and the like.
There was a very strong French-Canadian presence here too and a rival company from Paris – Revillon Frères – set up competing posts in the area.
That explains the presence of French family names, the most famous of which is Michelin.
The job of these Europeans was to liaise with the natives and deal with the furs that the Innu and Inuit brought in.
Very often, being left to their own devices out of season, these “European” people would go off on their own to spy out the possibilities of the land.
Many chose to stay here after their term of engagement ended, and they quite often set up on their own account as trappers and fishermen.
But the fact is that they all would have died, because the climate here and the living conditions can be vicious.
The only thing that saved them were encounters with the Inuit – or occasionally Innu – women.
Most of the men took native women as partners and it was they who showed them how to survive in the extreme Labrador climate.
Each family would settle in its own cove or river mouth, and that was where they would fish, and hunt and trap in the hinterland.
Occasionally though, you might find a mixture of families living in the same cove.
What might have happened is that a family only had daughters, and sons from neighbouring families would marry the daughters.
These men would stay on to inherit the traplines of the wife’s family, rather than taking the daughters back to their own coves.
And the fishing and trapping lifestyle was carried on until, I suppose, the last 60 or 70 years.
Firstly the huge American air base and secondly the Government’s controversial resettlement programme resulted in the exodus.
But everyone here who is native to the area is what one would call a Métis – the offspring (sometimes many generations removed) of a “European” male and a “native” female.
A former phrase used quite commonly until about 50 years ago is now considered to be offensive
People still come out here regularly to the cabins of their ancestors, whether for weekends or holidays.
And a limited amount of trapping is still carried on. There’s a fur buyer in Goose Bay and a couple of fur auctions in Montreal and Winnipeg.
But mainly it’s to escape from the towns and return to the olden days.
Rather than take the direct route, because there’s quite a storm brewing up in the Inlet, we are hugging the coast.
And threading our way through the offshore islands – the North West Islands in fact.
According to the censuses of 1935 and 1945, these were inhabited by the “Baikie” family. Hordes of them in fact.
So after about 90 minutes of sailing (or, rather, motoring) we arrive at our destination.
This is the abandoned settlement of Mulligan, and it’s probably the most famous of all of the settlements out here.
And its claim to fame is that is was the home of possibly the most famous person in Labrador – Lydia Campbell.
I’ve come here with one of Lydia’s descendants. He’s going to show me around the settlement and later on, we may well be going to meet her.
And so we moor the boat up an the bank and step ashore – back into almost 200 years of history because the “Campbell” of our story is a late arrival.
He didn’t turn up from the Orkneys until the early 1840s
Mulligan was a huge settlement by the standards of the day. At one time there were 20 families living here and the settlement had its own school.
By the time of the census of 1935 there were 6 families of 32 people, all Baikies and Campbells.
And in 1945 there were 8 families of 39, and we have acquired a family called “Chaulk”.
the hump of earth that you can see in the foreground is said to be the site of the cabin of the more famous Campbells.
Of course, it’s long-gone now, just as they are. But it’s still interesting to see the site where they are said to have lived, even if there is very little left to see.
No memorial of course, because it’s not exactly on the tourist track here.
Of the more modern descendants of Lydia Campbell, that is their own former family home from before the relocation.
It still receives some occasional use and is currently undergoing a process of renovation.
Who knows? We might even end up with some more permanent residents. Wouldn’t that be interesting? But it’s unlikely.
By the time of the turn of the 20th Century most people had forsaken the traditional log cabin for a wood-plank house.
And then promptly realised their error, for nothing is as suitable to the Labrador environment than a traditional log cabin.
But one family has kept its original log cabin, and kept it in excellent condition too, regularly painted and maintained.
This is what all of these villages would have looked like 150 years ago – minus the paint of course.
By now, after all of our issues, it was lunchtime. So we sat in the shade and ate our butties.
I was regaled with stories of life out here 70 years ago, and life in Labrador in general.
But one interesting fact that I was told was that the red berries – the partridgeberries – were unknown in Mulligan when the place was in permanent occupation.
Today, there are partridgeberries everywhere all over the ground. You can’t move for stepping on them.
There’s something else around here that you can’t move without stepping in.
I can personally vouch for the fact that it’s a lie – bears DO NOT go to the bathroom in the woods.
Before we move off from here, there’s just something else to see. And it’s how Mulligan has been brought into the 21st Century.
One of the cabins here has not only an array of solar panels but a wind turbine too. Just like me back home.
So let’s hear it for the solar panels. Hip, hip, array!
Now comes the exciting bit – we have to get across there to thefar bank of the river.
And in case you haven’t noticed, there’s a sand bar blocking the passage for the boat. I have a feeling that the next part of our adventure is going to be very cold and very wet.
And I don’t have waders.
We’ve made it across to the sand bar anyway, but our adventure is only just beginning.
We now have to reach across the creek to the shore and I’ll tell you something for nothing – this water is deep and it’s freezing cold.
And I have no footwear either – no point in having that soaking wet.
So up to our waists almost we were obliged to wade.
And then a good trek through the woods in bare feet, which was probably not a good idea.
But we made it all the same, and here we are at Mulligan Cemetery, the home of the most famous woman in Labrador – certainly in the 19th Century.
and here is the heroine of our story, Lydia Campbell.And what an effort it has been to reach her grave.
She was born in 1818 and in 1848 in a second marriage she married Daniel Campbell, not long out from the Orkneys with the HBC.
Family tradition has it that Campbell knew absolutely nothing about life as a “liveyer” and Lydia taught him absolutely everything.
Later, as she grew older, she lamented about the loss of traditional “liveyer” skills, apparent even in her own lifetime.
As a result, a visiting clergyman encouraged her to write a book about the traditional liestyle of a “liveyer” woman and the result – Sketches of Labrador Life by a Labrador Woman is probably the most significant book ever to come out of Labrador
My guide took me to see the grave of his grandmother, Druscilla. I’d seen from the various censuses that his grandfather had lived alone with his children and I had wondered why.
And the date on the tombstone gives us a clue as to the cause of death.
November 12th 1918. That was at the height of the Spanish Influenza epidemic. It wasn’t as overwhelming down here as on the coast but nevertheless it had quite an impact
Of all of the other graves here in the cemetery, this one is quite important. In here are buried what are believed to be three bodies
One night, part of the bank underneath someone’s house collapsed and a pile of bones, believed to be of three people, were washed out.
They were sent to St John’s where there were examined and said to be “Inuit bones of historical date”. They were reburied here in 2004.
We’d spent so long in the cemetery that the tide had come in quite a way, and if we thought that it was deep coming in, it was even deeper going out and I was perishing.
Not only that, the wind had got up and the Inlet was now a churning mass of waves . We were going to be in for a rough passage.
Our trip to the abandoned settlement at Pearl River was summarily abandoned and we turned back.
But what made my day, and made me quite proud was my guide who tol me, afer all of the wrestling that we had done with the boat and the river “you’re some tough cookie”.
We were heading back that way, in the general direction of North West River, and that was what was awaiting us.
In fact there were several storm clouds building up all around us
They do say that Labrador is very much like the Auvergne in the respect that “if you don’t like the weather, just wait a few minutes – it’ll soon be different.
It was round about here that we had the legendary moment of
Our Hero – “is that a sailing boat over there?”
Local guide “it’s an island with a couple of trees growing on it”
Note to self – arrange appointment with opticians on return
But then, I suppose, if I’d been able to see what I was doing, I would never have set out.
Our next stop, which was going to be our last one given the weather, was the settlement of Sabesquacho.
Or however you might like to spell it because I’ve seen it spelt a thousand different ways
There never was an approved way of spelling many of the place round here in the 19th and 20th Centuries and people wrote down the names as they heard them
This was the home of the “Michelin” family – or, at least, one of their homes because they had spread out quite a way down the bay.
My guide told me that at one time there had been as many as 12 children (and presumably the adults too) living in that house.
Big families were not necessarily prolific here though. You’ll find many families with 6 or 7 children but the death rate was appalling.
Despite this being a British colony until 1949, there was no Government Health Service here until modern times. From about 1900 until the 1980s you had the “Grenfell Volunteers” and prior to that, there was nothing at all.
As well as the Michelins, there were a few Pottles living here in the vicinity in the censuses of 1935 and 1945
And of course we still have the summer cabins for the families, mot of whom resettled in North West River.
The cabin on the left is said to be a cabin of former permanent occupation but the one on the right is more modern.
And you’ll notice the ty bach on the extreme left. No plumbing of any sort here.
Having made a race of it when conditions allowed, we made it back to North West River, beating the torrential downpour by a matter of minutes.
There were some kids playng around on the quayside when we arrived. “I wonder how long it will be before one of them falls in” I said
“Pushed in, more like” muttered my companion
And so considerably lighter in weight and considerably wetter, I headed for home. My wallet was considerably lighter too but I may not be coming here again and I needed to make this visit now
Final trip for today was to Goose Bay airport.
My landlord had told me where there were several planes on display, including an Avro Vulcan “V-bomber” of the 1950s and 60s
Of course I didn’t want to miss out on seeing that and so I took a deviation on the way home topay it a visit. After all, I remember these from my childhood on the beach at Ramsgate
and remember yesterday when we saw the football ground in town?
Here, would you believe, is one on the air base. And it’s in much better conition too.
Actually, it’s no surprise really to find a football ground here. There were various branches of NATO air forces(British, Dutch, German) who came here during the war so I imagine that it’s something to do with them.
Everywhere else that I wanted to visit in town was closed by the time that I returned wo I went back to my digs, had a coffee and shower, and washed my clothes in the washing machine.
Tea was potatoes, veg and onion gravy made into a kind of soup, and then an early night. I was totally exhausted.
.
. So when I go past there on Tuesday I’ll take the camera there and try it out. See whether it’s the lens or the camera itself that is faulty.
