and suicide, the elders made a motion to move back to their homeland of their own volition, without compensation or support from the Manitoba or federal government. The new village was built on an esker at the northeast end of Tadoule Lake, a string of plywood and board dwellings strung out with no particular pattern to the village.
The Dene are a fiercely proud people with close ties to the land around them. The men still engage in traditional “hand games” and talk about the old days, the caribou hunt, and of battles with their enemies, the Inuit and the Cree. The paltry few canoeists who paddle the Seal usually spend little time at the village, choosing to move their gear and canoes down to the lake as quickly as they can. The Dene are gregarious, if given the chance, and enjoy talking with outsiders — except once, perhaps, when an elder followed a couple of kayakers to the lake and placed a curse on them, thinking they were Inuit enemies.
Alan had invited us to stay a few days and partake in a traditional ceremony performed by three visiting Navajo healers. The Navajo and Dene have anthropological roots, sharing the same language and beliefs even though they live thousands of kilometres apart. Hodding and I helped cut and peel twenty-foot spruce poles to be used in the sweat lodge ceremony. Unfortunately, at that time the government was evacuating elders and children because of the fire, now only two kilometres away. Ceremonies were postponed but I did manage to persuade the Navajo healers into giving us a private one instead.
Hodding and I were able to track down the Navajo healers who were staying in the village guest house near the lake. Russell and Andy had wandered off along the esker to the north to see how close the fire was to the village. It was dusk by this time and no light was coming from the shack, except for the incident glow from a TV accompanied by the sound of laughter. The three healers had been watching a movie, Robin Hood:Men in Tights, and eating a late dinner of microwave entrees. The TV was quickly turned off when they saw us at their door.
A couple of packages of Borkum Riff tobacco and fifty dollars cash weren’t enough to buy us a couple of buttons of peyote, but it was sufficient to procure a water ceremony. The Navajo men cleared the floor and set down a beautifully ornate wooden box. It contained the healer’s religious items; eagle feathers, various smudges, polished stones, and ornamental bones were laid out in front of the eldest of the three Natives. He handed Hodding a Styrofoam cup and asked him to go to the lake and bring it back filled with water. When he returned, the shaman was already chanting and waving the smoke smudge around the room. Hodding and I sat cross-legged, watching and listening while the Navajo blessed the water in the cup. He blew smoke into the container and said something in Chipwyan then handed Hodding the vessel.
“Drink a quarter of this,” the healer said. After Hodding was finished, I drank a quarter cup and set it down on the floor.
“Take the cup and make sure your friends drink the water,” the Navajo elder told us. We left carrying half a cup of blessed water, looking for Russell and Andy. By the time we found Russell, who had been out photographing a hand-game at the community centre, there was only a mouthful of water left in the cup. Andy had disappeared. Russell was glad to have had the ceremonial water; the angst and uncertainty of travelling in the Canadian wilderness was helping him to establish a more spiritual footing. A fourth member of our party had been left out and I hoped that it wasn’t earmarking some kind of future dilemma or incident.
Alan had told us that the private ceremony was a good idea. It also showed the Dene our respect for both their culture and the power of the river — a custom I learned to accept with devout seriousness over the years. The Seal is a complex waterway with many dangers, and we knew we would be heading into Manitoba’s worst wildfires. For me the trip was particularly unnerving — I would later learn that Andy had managed to pimp some dope from the Dene police constable, and later when the going got tough, Andy would get stoned.
It was a 385-kilometre paddle from Tadoule to Churchill, with an elevation drop of nearly three hundred metres. Eighty percent of the forty-two rapids would be technical runs, some over ten kilometres long, with a variable current of five to fifteen kilometres per hour. We were heavily loaded: three weeks of provisions, “traditional” gear including two wannigans and a reflector oven, and close to seventy-five kilograms of photography equipment Russell had brought along. The seventeen-foot canoes were rigged with detachable spray covers; these would be indispensable on the bigger rapids or if we chose to sail down the Hudson Bay coast. Because of the steady current and voluminous rapids, most Seal River adventurers have been using motored rafts and not canoes.
Unlike Canadian Shield rivers to the south, the Seal’s water flow peaks in June instead of April or May, and recedes quickly after that, generally exposing shallow, bouldery rapids. The prevailing wind is also out of the north and east, making travel down the Bay coast particularly hazardous. Alan also warned us not to cross Button Bay as we pushed off from Tadoule against a stiff southeast wind. It was early July. The water was cold … the lake ice having just melted off. The wind had an Arctic edge to it and whipped against our faces for three days, eventually forcing us to lie up on Negassa Lake after being pushed back by metre-high waves. We were forced to pitch camp on a tiny beach in a recent burn. The only wind protection was the shelter we made of an overturned canoe and a rain fly. But it was sufficient enough to keep a fire going, eat fresh-caught lake trout, stay dry, and smoke our pipes.
The river was swollen with winter melt, heaving the rapids into furious standing waves, some over two metres high. Mosquitoes and black flies assaulted us at every moment while not on the water, and during the day there was no respite from the scourge of horseflies that would bite at any exposed flesh whether we were on the water or not. The Dene kids called them “bulldogs” and would eat them as candy. At the village, they showed me how to dislodge the gel-sac by squeezing the abdomen (after pulling off the wings), then licking the sweet bubble of nectar from the carcass. Horseflies are basically nectar-eaters when they aren’t sucking the blood of animals.
For Russell, who had never done anything like this before, it was traumatic; assault after assault from all forces of Nature with no reprieve. He was having a tough time of it, mostly because of his inexperience and lack of confidence. Hodding was born with a joie de vivre and took everything in stride, complained about nothing, and worked hard at learning the skills. As Russell became adept at paddling strokes and camp chores, he relaxed more into the trip and was able to concentrate on his photography. Andy had gone into his own self-indulgent world; he was no longer an assistant to me, countering any decision I made about route selection, safety considerations, or respect for needs other than his own. He began rooting through the food packs and treating Hodding and Russell to treats that were supposed to be saved only for morale boosters at the end of, or during, hard days of travel; or he would argue about what meals to prepare for dinner, disregarding the strict adherence to the expedition menu. During an expedition, the allotment of food is carefully organized and rationed each day; Andy broke the cardinal rule of guiding by challenging the leader, stealing specialty foods, and disrupting the menu plan.
Andy had already used up his insect repellent and was bumming it off the rest of us. Refusing to wear a protective bug-jacket and just a pair of cut-off shorts, Andy relied on the heavy lathering of DEET-laden bug dope on all his exposed skin. DEET (N, N-Diethyl-meta-toluamide) is a harmful chemical absorbed into the bloodstream and has the ability to melt plastic. Prolonged use can cause behavioural problems, poor muscle coordination, neurological disorders, and brain cell death.
During this time, while trying to impress Hodding and Russell with his cavalier presence, Andy’s flesh had reacted to too much insect repellent and was breaking out in blisters and running sores. This wasn’t enough to dissuade him from over-applying the repellent; however, he did sport the best tan of us all. The rest of us kept covered, either with heavy canvas clothes and bug-jackets, or our wetsuits when we were running whitewater. It was getting increasingly more difficult to abate Andy’s actions in front of the others; he used them as a shield and an audience. I didn’t want Andy’s personality disorder to be the theme of the magazine story, yet he demanded everyone’s attention, mostly the curiosity of the clients or through admonishments from me. Andy was the only one who didn’t partake in the Dene ceremony at Tadoule.
Samuel Hearne was commissioned by the Hudson’s Bay Company out of Fort Prince of