it is, so it is,” nodded the captain. “Two days with this southeast wind in our favour.” The captain paused, giving David ample time to speak, then turned his gaze seaward. “I’ve spent many years at sea and have seen many a man and boy pass over my decks,” said the captain, as though thoughtfully addressing the waves. “Most were good men, all and all. Oh, they had their frailties, mind you, some for gin, some for worse, others just lazy. And some, some was lower in nature than hag-fish – mean and hateful. And I can say now that the measure of these men was not known ‘til seen in adversity. The sea throws up her hardships sure enough. And some can weather a storm, float’n easy like petrels fly’n in a gale. Others, loud and brassy in the calm, why they can crawl into themselves and shrink from the wind and fury like a snail hiding in its shell. Aye, and there’s no telling. I’ve seen some starts like snails and become stout hands and others, veterans of the bloodiest battles on land or sea, take to trembling uncontrolled at just the sound of a hatch slammed shut.”
“It’s not bloodlines. Nobleman or foundling makes no difference. God knows our very own King is bound for Bedlam. They say Mad George is at present strapped to a gurney and wailing at the moon. If he were on this ship I’d be putting him in leg irons for his own safekeeping. Half the Royal Family is mad. Sheltered too long, I think, from real hardship and lost the ability to cope. But it’s not hardships either that makes the man, David. Why if that were so, you are all the man you ever needs be now. What worse can befall a boy than to lose all his kin, hav’n everything safe and familiar stolen from him when he needs it most? Now you stand here hale as any, yet that other lad, same age, same Grey Coat boy, same orphan, he ran.”
“No, I’m think’n it’s like each man’s heart is a bucket with a slow leak. The heart can hold only so much trouble and misery. Given time, disappointments will gradually drain away. But too much and it fills a heart to flood’n over and not the bravest man can stand it. He brims over with anger, or hate, or shuts himself off, or shrinks away, each in his own way. But by God, Master Thompson, I can see you’ve already grown a barrel of a heart, lad. Stay open to it, keep it big, and you’ll make this New World yours, all right. Aye, and I wouldn’t be surprised if you’ll be the best damned apprentice the company’s ever put ashore.”
On September 2, 1784, Prince Rupert slipped her way into the wide mouth of the Churchill River. They sailed past the ruins of Prince of Wales Fort where charred granite walls and rusting guns stood as mute guards on the low-laying north bank. The fort, destroyed in the war with France, was never rebuilt. Captain Tunstall steered his ship on the rising tide, eight kilometres farther upriver to the new post at Churchill Factory. His destination reached, he ordered the factory’s provisions offloaded. This done, he commanded, “Make ready for loading,” and the crew began to take on the forty-kilogram bales of pressed beaver, muskrat, and marten pelts, which were stacked on the dock ready for London’s fur market.
The captain gave David a friendly nod as the apprentice disembarked to the longboat. Ashore, David followed the well-worn footpath that led to the factory. Part way up, he turned and stared back at the ship. He put his hands into his coat pocket and discovered the hard biscuits and the rock-hard piece of salt pork given to him by Grey Coat’s cook five months earlier. He tossed them into the marsh grass by the trail. Then, as hungry gulls descended noisily on the offering, he walked up the path to the factory.
No friend of Thompson. Samuel Hearne, the embittered Hudson’s Bay Company chief factor at Churchill.
Guns for fur. Firearms and alcohol would forever change the way of life of the Aboriginal Peoples.
3
Churchill Factory
Within ten days the Prince Rupert was loaded and ready for London. She could not delay. A cold arctic front was blowing its icy breath over the river. Northward, sea ice was already starting to block navigation out of Hudson Bay. From the rocky headland, David watched Prince Rupert’s longboat tow her into the out-flowing current where the ship drifted quietly downstream to the sea. My ship could be off Dover’s white cliffs , he thought, within the number of weeks counted on one hand, but I’ve no chance of leaving this place for seven years at least, maybe never. When the Prince Rupert was finally out of sight, he felt he had lost all hope of contact with England, with his school friends, with his childhood.
He wandered back to the unfurnished bunkhouse and pulled a rough wool shirt from under the wooden planking of his new bed. The morning sun seemed to give him little warmth, and he buttoned on another layer under his coat and joined his new workmates, two company clerks, who were collecting firewood. The three of them had been scouring the river for days, hauling driftwood up the bank, chopping it into stove-size pieces, and stacking it inside the factory’s stockade, which was nearly four metres high. Wood was scarce. Over one hundred years of occupation at the fort meant even the smallest of the stunted trees had been stripped away. The already naked landscape had become lunar-like, emptied of all wood and scrub. The river floated a fresh supply of driftwood downstream each week, but that was still not enough, and the work parties trudged many kilometres each day in search of more firewood.
For David, the weary chore of wood collecting was interrupted only by joyless clerical duties. With ink and quill he made entries into the Hudson’s Bay Company ledger: 7 forks, 12 balls of twine, 118 small bags of gunpowder, 20 eight-lb. bags of bird-shot, 4 one-lb. packets of salt, and on it went until every item in the multitude of items unloaded from Prince Rupert were packaged and stored into the company’s inventory.
Pelts of muskrat, fox, and beaver brought in by Chipewyan trappers would be exchanged according to strict standards established in London. One blanket had the trade value of forty muskrat, or two black fox, or seven prime beaver. The post’s chief trader, called the factor, added his own markup, which in some cases doubled the number of furs required by London for a trade item. This was called the Factor’s Standard. Each night the inventory from the previous day’s trade was tallied and recorded in the company’s books. The factor’s take was recorded in a separate book.
“Still at it this late at night?” a voice called through the storeroom door as David sat reading a borrowed book. Through the dark room he watched a slim-built man approach and reach his open hand into the dim light surrounding David’s candle.
“Hello. I’m Hodges, company surgeon, pleased to make your acquaintance.”
“Thompson,” David replied, shaking the surgeon’s hand. “Pleased to meet you, sir.”
“Mr. Prince and I are off hunting grouse tomorrow. We could use a third if you’d care to join us?”
“I’d like that, sir, very much so Mr Hodges, but I have firewood to collect and the factor gave me his maps and journal to edit.”
“Don’t worry, I’ve already cleared it with the factor. A lad can’t spend all his time bent over books.”
“But I don’t know how to shoot,” David admitted, then wished he hadn’t. The offer to get away from the boredom of the post was too good to miss.
“Well, then, it will be my pleasure to teach you. You won’t be of much use in this country if you can’t shoot. Meet us at the stockade gate at sunup,” said Hodges cheerfully as he left.
The day broke grey and cold. The first snow of the year drifted lazily on the wind and covered the rock-strewn peninsula with a dusting of drifting white powder. David followed Hodges and Mr. Prince from the factory gate to a dinghy beached on the riverbank. They rowed past the small HBC sloop Charlotte, anchored in a quiet back eddy