TRADITIONAL WOODEN DOG TEAM TOBOGGANS

This article will trace the origins and development of the wooden dog team toboggan to the present, with specific emphasis on its origins and evolution. For our purposes, in its most basic form, a toboggan is a flat-bottomed device with an upturned front that is used to transport goods over snow and icy conditions by pulling. The meaning of the word toboggan, when used in association with sled dogs has changed over the years. Today, the modern “toboggan sled”, while retaining a certain similarity of shape, is a much more technologically sophisticated snow travel device than the traditional wooden dog team toboggan. Perhaps it is this evolution that makes this story even more interesting, it is an excellent example of how quickly people of all cultures can make adaptations and changes as new needs, technologies or opportunities present themselves. This change is taking place even as you are reading this.

It is not too difficult to imagine how Aboriginal groups living in those areas where cold winter weather conditions associated with heavy snowfall, ice and difficult winter travel conditions conceived of the idea to pull their heavy loads rather than carry them on their backs. At first it might simply have been a matter of binding their load in leather wrappings and pulling the frozen hide over the snow behind them. Very quickly it would be apparent that the shape of the leather covering would determine the ease with which the load could be pulled. The traditional upturned front or “toboggan” shape made pulling much easier. Experimentation would show that the hide could be frozen into this shape and the result was much easier pulling of heavier loads. Probably the original toboggan was just the hide of a recently killed animal on which a load was placed and dragged (by women). For woods travel however this method would not be efficient, not only would it track poorly, but it would be too bulky to slip between trees.

In some areas, wider pieces of birchbark could be used for this purpose and it would then be a small step to realize that upturned pieces of wood could be fastened together and the load could in turn be lashed to these wooden pieces to create a less bulky, stronger and more efficient “toboggan” to carry even heavier loads with relative ease. Traditional Native builders would use straight-grained wood that was relatively easy to split using the technology available to them. While hardwoods like birch or ash would be ideal and more durable for toboggan building, it would be very tempting to use a soft but easily worked wood like white cedar for toboggan construction. Using wooden wedges and stone mallets it would be possible to split an average sized log and then in turn to split off a relatively flat board that could be smoothed and trimmed with a cutting tool made of flint or obsidian. By boiling the wood and using leather thongs to hold it in place, it would be possible to create the characteristic curve in the front of the toboggan. Of course, until the white man appeared with metal tools and hardware, there would be limits to just how this wood could be worked and shaped.

Simultaneous to the development of the toboggan was probably the development of what we have come to know as snowshoes. Snowshoes have evolved in different shapes in different areas for different weather and geographic conditions but the essential similarity is that their use allowed the user to walk on top of the light fluffy snow, therefore making it possible to travel in deep snow conditions. It followed therefore that the dimensions of the toboggan would be determined by the use of snowshoes. The width and length of the toboggan would have to be compatible with the trail left by the snowshoes and the ability of the user to manage a load of a specific size and weight.

The toboggan therefore evolved and lent itself for use in areas where there was deep snowfall and light fluffy snow which often meant that the areas tended to be forested and hilly. We are talking about central and north central Canada and parts of the U.S. When the conditions were predominantly hard frozen and icy, another type of snow vehicle, the sled, was developed and on the frozen lakes and rivers of the boreal forest, a light version of the sled was often employed. The treeless high arctic has very different climactic conditions with lots of windswept ice and the toboggan is not indigenous to these areas. Here the Inuit developed a more solid kind of sled for heavier loads, known as the komatik. At some point in the evolution process, and as alternatives presented themselves, the matter of personal preference also played a role. This accounts for the fact that in some very similar geographic areas, the toboggan remained the snow vehicle of choice while elsewhere different types of “sleds” evolved.

It is suggested that the toboggan technology may have originated with the Cree people of Hudson’s Bay and then spread westward. The Anishinabe (Chippewa, Ojibwa or Saulteaux) called it nobugidaban, a possible source of the English word toboggan. As it evolved the toboggan came to be made of thin hardwood boards, which were curved up at one end using heat or steam. The number of boards would be determined by the size of available trees and the overall width of the toboggan was limited to the width of the packed trail, usually no more than 16 inches in width. The strength of the person doing the pulling was also a factor and this usually determined the overall length of the toboggan. Hand drawn toboggans were usually only under six feet in length.

Cleats of wood were attached across the boards to hold them together. These cleats or crossmembers were originally fastened with sinew or rawhide. Two holes would be drilled through the crossmember and the toboggan board and then a small groove was cut between the holes on the bottom of the board. The rawhide running from one hole to the other would lie in this groove and therefore be protected from the abrasiveness of the snow. The thong would then be fastened on the top of the crossmember. This would be repeated at each point where one of these cleats crossed over the edge of a toboggan board.

Cleats or cords were also fastened along the sides, providing side-rails through which a cord could be passed back and forth across the load to secure it in place. Another cord was attached to the front of the upturned boards for pulling the toboggan over the snow.

How old is this technology? Certainly reports from the very earliest contact between North American aboriginal people and European explorers make reference to the toboggan (and the snowshoe and the canoe). The earliest artwork depicting life in North America from the 1700’s clearly shows toboggans in use.

Just when dogs were first used to pull toboggans is unclear. Native people probably used dogs to pull heavier loads, certainly dogs have been domesticated in North America for thousands of years. Dogs were certainly being used as pack animals and it is known that they were also used to pull toboggans before the coming of the Europeans. Samuel Hearne makes mention of this fact in his book A Voyage From Prince of Wales Fort about his 1769 journey to the mouth of the Coppermine River:

“Their [Dene] tents, kettles and some other lumber are always carried by dogs which are trained to that service and are very docile and tractable. These animals are of various sizes and colours, but all are of the fox and wolf breed, with sharp noses, full bush tails and sharp[ ears standing erect. They are of great courage when attacked and bite so sharp that the smallest among them will keep several of our largest English dogs at bay. These dogs are equally willing to pull a sledge(l).”

As Hearne points out, in the summer, dogs were also used as pack animals and in other areas they were used in the summer to pull and drag loads piled on a wooden device know as a travois. Certainly the beginning of the fur trade era in the late 1600’s, with the associated requirement that heavier loads be transported over longer distances in shorter periods of time in winter conditions necessitated the use of sled dogs as we know them today. Perhaps the most important point for our discussion is not simply the fact that dogs were used to pull toboggans and sleds but really the manner in which these dogs were put to this use.

It was the fur trade that triggered changes in the construction and use of the wooden dog team toboggan. With the fur trade came wholesale changes in the lives of Aboriginal people living in Canada. Very quickly Native people developed a dependency on the trade goods that the fur traders had to offer. Why wouldn’t they? A sharp metal axe for cutting and shaping wood, a metal knife for working with wood and skinning animals, a sharp-pointed metal sewing needle, a metal pot for boiling water and cooking food...all of these items made life so much easier and freed time for other important tasks. This list could go on and on, with the coming of the fur trade the aboriginal way of life was changed permanently. The one item that the traders wanted in return for these goods was the pelt of the wild animals that lived in the forest. To cover the territory required to trap these animals in the numbers need to obtain the trade goods, the Native hunter had to devise a way to travel longer distances in a shorter period of time and this had to be done in the winter when the pelts of these animals were in their prime.

The fur traders also had the same transportation needs. As fur trade posts developed throughout central and northern Canada, a very sophisticated supply network had to be maintained. In the summer months, the obvious way to do this was on the waterways and the voyageurs in their birch bark canoes and the Hudson Bay Company traders in their york boats were instrumental in covering thousands of miles each paddling season, carrying trade goods westward and fur pelts back on the eastward journey. In the winter however, canoes and york boats were useless, it was necessary to depend on the sled dog to maintain transportation links. This was all the more important as the number of competing traders and trading companies grew in number. There is nothing like competition to encourage innovation.

By looking briefly at the history of the fur trade therefore, it is possible to develop a time line for these changes in the use of the wooden dog team toboggan. The Hudson Bay Company was granted a charter to trade in and around Hudson’s Bay in 1670. Originally their plan was to have the Native trappers come to them so they established a series of forts around the perimeter of Hudson Bay and James Bay, the greatest of which became known as Fort Prince of Wales. This plan did work for a relatively brief period of time and some of the Native hunters living relatively close to the forts on Hudson’s Bay fairly quickly became middlemen and the Cree hunters would trade with the members of the Beaver tribe (for example) living further to the west. However competitors, most significantly the Northwest Company had a different philosophy. Based in Montreal, their plan was to take the trade goods to the Native trapper directly, thereby intercepting these trappers as they made their way each season to the trading posts that were established around Hudson’s Bay. It became obvious that the Bay had to change their trading practices.

Samuel Hearne was an employee of the Hudson’s Bay Company and in 1769 he set out from Fort Prince of Wales on showshoe with Native guides to travel to the mouth of the Coppermine River and back. The trip took him a few years. He learned a great deal about the different Northern Athapaskan groups, he saw how they lived and where. Samuel Hearne went inland again in 1774 and established the very first inland Hudson’s Bay Post at Cumberland House located at a strategic navigational crossroads in north central Saskatchewan. From this point on it was nothing but expansion until the various trading empires stretched north to the small islands of the high arctic, south to the Gulf of Mexico and west to the Pacific ocean. In 1821 the Hudson’s Bay Company and the Northwest Company amalgamated and became one and throughout the North the Hudson’s Bay Company enjoyed what was essentially a monopoly until near the end of the 19th century.

To give an even better idea of the timeline involved in the evolution of the traditional wooden dog team toboggan, let’s focus on a relatively small area and look at the dates that the earliest fur trading posts were established in some of the major communities throughout what is now the Northwest Territories. Hudson’s Bay Company posts were established in Fort Liard in 1805, Fort Resolution in 1819, Fort Simpson in 1822, Fort Good Hope in 1836, Fort McPherson in 1840, Fort Norman in 1851, Old Fort Rae in 1857, Fort Providence in 1869, Fort Smith in 1874, Old Fort Wrigley in 1887, Fort Franklin in 1908. The Northwest Company was established in some of these northern regions as well, even before the Hudson Bay Company. The Northwest Company had established a foothold in Fort Chipewyan on Lake Athabasca where Peter Pond established the trading post in 1778, four years after Hearne had established the post at Cumberland House. Interestingly, both posts are located on the same fur trade transportation route, the famous Churchill River that runs essentially from Lake Athabasca south and east to Hudson’s Bay. If only the cliffs and the trees and rocks along that route could talk, they could tell many stories of sled dogs and wooden toboggans and the traders and the explorers who made their way up and down this route in the winter.

To adapt the traditional hand-hauled toboggan for use with sled dogs required a few changes. The toboggans became larger and this was essentially accomplished by making them longer. Over time the width of the toboggan was governed by the width of the snowshoe trail and then the width of a dog team running in single file. This width was essentially 16 inches. There was no point in making the toboggans wider for they still had to track in a relatively narrow trail left by either snowshoes or a team of sled dogs or both. The nature of the boreal forest was also a factor that determined the width of the toboggan as trees were relatively close together. Because of the terrain to be travelled, it made sense to have the dogs travel in single file, one behind the other, what is today referred to as the tandem hitch.

Traditionally the Native dog mushers would have fastened or hitched the dogs in harness made out of tanned hide, a type of chest or breast harness with traces along the sides of the dog that would be fastened either directly to the toboggan or to the harness of another dog running immediately behind as part of a small dog team. The fasteners would either consist of tying the hide or of using wooden or bone toggles. With the fur trade era, the European traders drew on their experience with draft horses and the traditional aboriginal harness was modified to what became known as the collar harness. This harness was essentially a miniature version of the draft horse harness with a padded leather collar (leather filled with moose hair or cork or harness straw) that fit over the dog’s head with leather traces fastened to each side of the collar, a felt-padded back band and a belly band, with the traces running down both sides of the dog, to be fastened much as the traditional Native harness was fastened, either to the toboggan or the harness of the dog directly behind. Of course the use of metal harness hardware made all of this much simpler. Remember that this evolution process was generally not a matter of one culture imposing one method onto another culture. Rather, this process usually was a case of each culture determining what was good about what the other culture had to offer and then essentially a process of give-and-take took place. So the collar harness is not a European imposition but rather the end result of combining the best of both the European and Native cultures.

With metal woodworking tools, it became much easier to produce the required toboggan boards. With metal or copper bolts, wire and nails, it became easier to fasten the crossmembers to these toboggan boards. Eventually a more-or-less “standardized” toboggan shape and size evolved for use with sled dogs.

A board (known as a toboggan board) was usually 8inches wide by 1 inch think by 10 or 12 feet long, meaning that there would be from 7 to 9 feet of board on the snow. Two of these boards fastened side by side offered a 16 inch wide toboggan. Occasionally three boards would be used. The hood or front of the toboggan was bent in a full curl, almost a 360 degree bend. The front of the toboggan board was usually trimmed narrower to 6 inches in width, approximately three feet of the board would be thinned with a wood plane, a draw knife or even a crooked knife. This end of the toboggan board would then be boiled in hot water until the wood was pliable. Some toboggan builders would add motor oil or lye to the water as the board was boiling, claiming that it made bending easier. An alternative method would be to steam the wood for bending, but in Canada’s rural north, boiling was a much simpler procedure. Once ready, the board would then be wrapped or bent over a form or jig of the correct shape. Once the bend was in place, the bent board would be tied in place and left to dry for several days. Each builder would have their favourite bending form but in some isolated communities like Old Crow Yukon, there existed in the centre of the village a communal bending form made of a large section of a log and virtually every toboggan made in that community, no matter who the builder was, was bent over that same form.

In Canada’s North, the preferred wood for making dog team toboggans was “imported” from the south. The various trading companies would do a brisk business in oak, ash or hickory toboggan boards “brought in” from the eastern part of Canada and the U.S. Sometimes the traders would “bring in” pre-bent toboggan boards and a trapper/musher would simply buy the pre-bent boards and would fasten them together to make his own toboggan. Sometimes a pre-bent toboggan board would be purchased to repair a broken toboggan and this is one reason why the size of the boards became standardized. The traders also did a brisk business in selling complete toboggans to trappers and mushers. One area for further research is to document the source of these toboggans. One can surmise that over the years of the “hayday” of the fur trade, thousands of traditional wooden dog team toboggans were sold by traders throughout the Canadian north (3).

This writer has one photo taken in 1956 by Bern Will Brown in the Mackenzie delta community known as E-3, what was to become Inuvik. In the photo, “trader Slim Semmler [is seen ] selling trapping supplies off the shore before he got his new tent trading post up”(2). The photo is of Semmler with cigarette in hand, two Inuit women are looking at some stove pipe and on the ground in front of them all are 11 wooden toboggans ready to go. Birch was a hardwood species indigenous to the boreal forest and birch was also used for toboggan construction. The birch trees tended to be smaller and so sometimes it was possible to use several narrower birch boards in the construction of a sled dog toboggan.

Traditionally (pre-fur trade), aboriginal people did not keep large numbers of dogs for working purposes. This is readily understandable when one considers the fact that the people of the boreal forest and areas further north lived by hunting and fishing. The food that they sought for their own sustenance was also the exact same food source that their dogs required for survival. It becomes evident that hunting for a large number of domesticated dogs, no matter how well they could pull, would be out of the question. So traditionally, what we have come to call dog teams would be very small and usually the hunter and his wife would also be harnessed to any toboggan along with the available dogs as they family moved their belongings from one location to the other in order to pursue hunting and fishing.

However, the traditional wooden dog team toboggan continued to evolve as new needs surfaced. The fur trade brought with it the increased need to transport traders from one location to another. A unique adaptation to the toboggan appeared, known by the french word cariole. The wooden toboggan was modified with a wooden backboard approximately 25 inches high, fastened to the toboggan about one foot from the rear and looking very much like the back of a chair. Along both sides of the toboggan from the top of the backboard to the hood or front of the toboggan and enclosing the open sides of the hood, coverings made of untanned hide were fastened, therefore creating an enclosed area that could be kept clear of snow. With the addition of a soft pad to sit on and warm furs for cover, this presented as an ideal single person vehicle for travel from one post to another. The cariole would be pulled by a team of three to five dogs harnessed in tandem. The musher (or marcheur) would usually run along beside the cariole, holding on to a rope or line fastened to the hood of the toboggan. If necessary he would break trail for the dogs by travelling in front of the dogs on snowshoes and at these times he was referred to as the foregoer. When the going was really good, he could jump on to the small area behind the backboard and ride on the toboggan itself. Often several toboggans would travel together in what was termed a dog train.

We have discussed how the musher would often run along side the loaded toboggan with the load securely wrapped in canvas and lashed to the toboggan bed. Increasingly however the need to carry even heavier loads and for the musher to be able to ride on the toboggan became evident. It was necessary to develop some way to carry a large load of equipment and supplies in a manner that would allow the musher to quickly transfer goods into and out of the toboggan without having to unwrap a complicated system of lashing and at the same time allowing him to travel on the back of the toboggan when conditions permitted over increasingly long distances. This evolution also coincides with a related development in canoe-building technology.

For centuries North American Native people made canoes in two essential ways, either by hollowing out a large log to make a wooden dugout canoe or by fastening a thin covering of bark, usually birch bark, over a lightweight wooden framework. Birchbark is relatively fragile and requires constant attention and repair. With the European traders came a wonderful product, a fabric known as duck or canvas. It was soon realized that canvas could be used to “patch” holes and splits in the birchbark and in the early to mid 1800’s, bark canoes would be repaired in this manner, with the canvas being fastened using some pitch and then painted to ensure some degree of water proofness. This was not a method for constructing canoes, someone just realized that it was a quick way to repair bark canoes. Eventually, in 1870 however, a totally new method of canoe construction evolved with the production of the cedar canvas canoe, being built over a wooden mold. Canvas was clearly here to stay. It could be easily worked, it could be made waterproof, it was relatively lightweight and pliable, it did not require the backbreaking work of tanning and curing, if cared for it was relatively durable, it became indispensible for use in the bush. It was used to make sails, tarpaulins, tents, clothing and eventually for something called a toboggan wrapper.

The toboggan wrapper along with the backboard is probably the single development in the evolution of sled dog equipment that most nearly attains functional perfection. The wrapper is essentially a piece of canvas folded and sewn roughly in the shape of a canoe. In its finished dimensions it is approximately one fort shorter than the length of the toboggan and about 2 ½ times as wide as the toboggan’s width. The canvas is sewn into the “canoe” shape by folding the fabric in half lengthwise and sewing the front and back seams. Along the edges of the sides, metal grommets or canvas or webbing loops are fastened about 12 inches apart. The wrapper is then placed onto the toboggan with the centre seam on the front directly in the middle of the hood and the wrapper is fastened to the front of the toboggan hood at the highest point of the bend on both sides of the toboggan hood.

The backboard or handlebar is not unlike the back of a chair. It is the width of the toboggan at the bottom and usually increases in width towards the top to approximately two feet in width and it is usually about 25 inches long or tall. The backboard may be simple or fancy. Typically it is essentially two handles fastened together with cross-members, it is something for the musher to hang onto as he rides the toboggan. The handlebar or backboard may be as simple as a piece of plywood with holes cut into the top for gripping or metal hoops bolted to the top to hang on to. The handles may be shaped from the curved root of a tree and finished to perfection.

The backboard is placed inside the canvas wrapper about one foot from the back of the togboggan, snug against a crosspiece that has been bolted or wired to the toboggan for this purpose. A tie-down rope is then run from the side of the toboggan hood, wrapped around the handlebar and then down and back to the very back corner of the toboggan (a perimeter rope has been run around the perimeter of the toboggan through holes drilled into the crosspieces and the tie-down ropes are looped through this perimeter rope). From the back corner of the toboggan the tie-down rope is then run back to the top of the handlebar and then down to the perimeter rope approximately a foot in front of the base of the handlebar. The rope is then run back to the handlebar and then the tie-down rope is tightened and tied. This is done for both sides of the handlebar, the handlebar is now very snugly in place without using any bolts. The canvas wrapper is then pulled up and the sides are folded over the tie-down rope running from the hood and another rope is laced through the grommets or loops and down to the perimeter rope running from front to back. This rope is then tied at the handlebar.

The wrapper is now in place. This method of fastening the backboard-wrapper allows it to flex and move with the toboggan. There is no danger of breaking or splitting any of the wood. The resulting carrying capacity is very significant, allowing the musher to carry quite bulky items like a canvas well tent or a tin stove and pipe. There is also a small area behind the handlebar for the musher to carry personal items, his axe or gun for quick and easy access. Typically toboggans were run without a brake but occasionally a hinged brake or some form of drag is fitted to the back of the toboggan. Dog teams used with toboggans are typically no larger than six or seven dogs, usually no more than five and the dogs would be trained to stop on command, the toboggan would then be turned onto its side, a snow hook was seldom required. A rope would run from the centre of the hood back to the point where the musher stood. He would hold onto this rope to help him maintain his balance as the toboggan was moving. A drag rope was also usually fastened to the front of the toboggan and would trail approximately 20 feet behind. This would be used for tying the toboggan down, but more importantly it was for the musher to grab onto if he fell off the toboggan or if the dogs started without warning.

Riding the toboggan is quite unlike riding a normal dog sled, it is an acquired skill. Imagine standing on the very back of a piece of wood being pulled by something? It is not like skiing where you stand in the middle of the ski and can shift your weight and bend your knees to facilitate turning and to maintain control. Fortunately toboggans don’t usually go very fast and the snow if often quite soft. The musher must be ready to get off and run, going both up and down hill. With no brake, going down hill can be an exciting experience. The “golden years” of mushing dogs with a toboggan coincided with the “golden years’ of fur trapping before the advent of the snowmobile. Dog teams with collar harness and toboggans flourished from the mid-1800’s to the 1960’s, particularly throughout the Northwest Territories and across all of the northern part of the Canadian provinces. Sled dogs are still being run today using traditional wooden dog team toboggans, but they are rare.

The advent of the snowmobile changed winter travel in the north and in the process influenced the evolution of the traditional wooden dog team toboggan. In those areas where the wooden toboggan had been used with dogs, it was inevitable that the snowmobile would simply replace the dogs. In the north snowmobiles are primarily used for work and the ability to pull a sled simply increased the amount of work that the snowmobile could accomplish. Inevitably the wooden toboggans were made wider and longer as the snowmobile is capable of pulling a larger and heavier load and the track left by the snowmobile is often up to 24 inches wide allowing a wider toboggan to be able to track behind the snowmobile without difficulty. A rigid hitch was developed to fasten the toboggan to the snowmobile. There are many different styles of snowmobile sleds made of metal, fibreglass, plastic and wood. It is interesting to note that the shape of virtually all of them is a variation of the traditional wooden toboggan.

Recently a builder in the Northwest Territories has been very innovative, and his development may have brought the evolution of the toboggan full circle. Using heat, he has succeeded in bending a piece of UHMW plastic with a full almost 360 degree curl, identical to the hood of a traditional wooden dog team toboggan. He has then bent two pieces of oak or ash about 1 inch thick and three inches wide and as long as the UHMW with the identical full curl bend. These wooden pieces are then bolted to the bottom of the UHMW extending through the curled hood. Crosspieces are bolted to the plastic, identical to those used with the traditional wooden toboggan, two pieces of plastic are screwed to the bottom of the two pieces of wood. The end result is a fully functional toboggan that can be used behind either a snowmobile or a dog team. The builder, who is a musher says that he prefers using the plastic toboggan in the wet conditions of the spring. This style of toboggan is somewhat easier to build than an all-wood toboggan and it lends itself well to use behind snowmobiles for the size is determined simply by the width of the plastic that is used.

The Yellowknife Dog Derby has a tradition dating back to 1955. It was a dog race for trappers that personified the trapping lifestyle. Many competitors would travel hundreds of miles from their traplines using their dog teams, just to make it to the starting line in time for the big race. Traditionally teams consisted of five to nine hardened trapline dogs pulling a wooden dog team toboggan using the tandem hitch. It wasn’t uncommon for the musher to hunker down into the wrapper and to catch some sleep as the dogs trotted their way around the fifty mile perfectly flat trail on Great Slave Lake. Traditionally competitors were from the N.W.T. or from Northern Alberta and Northern British Columbia but in the early 1970’s competitors started coming from even farther afield.

When these first “outsiders” came to race, they used “funny looking” wooden dog sleds with even stranger harnesses made out of lightweight nylon webbing. They ran their dogs side-by-side in pairs of two, it was something quite unseen in that part of the North up until that time. In 1974 an “outsider” from British Columbia named Herb Brade created quite a sensation as he came a very close third running a 10 dog team of registered Siberian Huskies using a Kimiluk basket sled. The locals took notice and in order to keep the trapline tradition alive, race organizers decreed that if you were going to compete in the Yellowknife Dog Derby, you had to use a traditional wooden dog team toboggan carrying weight for a total fat least 200 pounds and you could not use more than nine dogs.

The number of competitors was dropping noticeably to a low of eight teams in 1986. The local trappers had either lost interest or realized they couldn’t compete with the faster “outside” dogs, but those outsiders were disenchanted with the wooden dog team toboggan/weight rule. They had tried to adapt the wooden toboggans by fastening two strips of plastic along the bottom, but many of them were opting not to travel to Yellowknife to compete. “Race organizers knew that something had to change. Fewer teams were competing every year and sponsorship was getting increasingly difficult to find. They had tried running the teams through the streets to get the people of Yellowknife more involved. They had tried dragging the track to improve it. There were only two options left that might attract mushers back to Yellowknife; shorten the race or drop the toboggan rule and the nine dog limit., Rotary [race organizers] decided on the latter. Starting in 1987, to be more in tune with the way races were run in the south, mushers would be able to use up to 10 dogs and whatever kind of sled they wished. The days of Northern trappers using teams of six or seven dogs to pull their toboggans around the course were gone forever”.(1)

In 1977, the Yellowknife Dog Derby was won by a young engineer from Minnesota named Tim White. This was to be the first of six wins for White over the next 20 years. There is no question that White was attracted to the dog mushing traditions of the North, but one has to wonder what was going through is mind as he spent hours on the Great Slave Lake race trail. White raced the Dog Derby over a period of time of significant transition and he was to be a big part of that transition.

As he was travelling around the Great Slave Lake course, no-doubt he was thinking about ways to improve his most significant contribution (among many) to sled dog racing, what is now known as the Tim White sled. This very simple design that came to be known as a toboggan sled revolutionized dog sled construction and long distance dog mushing. It was made possible because of developments and changes in synthetic, lightweight materials used in the construction of the toboggan sleds, specifically Ultra High Molecular Weight (UHMW) Plastic and lightweight aircraft grade aluminum.

The influence of the traditional wooden dog team toboggan is obvious in the Tim White toboggan sled which retained the basic toboggan shape although the curl or head of the toboggan was only bent to slightly less than 180 degrees instead of the full almost 360 degree bend of the traditional wooden toboggan. The toboggan bed itself was made of a sheet of UHMW plastic, usually 20 inches wide and eight feet long. But fastened underneath the plastic bed were two wooden runners, usually 1 ½” to 2” wide and approximately 2” thick. These were steamed or laminated and bent to the same shape or curl as the plastic bed and in turn were bolted through the plastic bed. The runners in turn had a small strip of UHMW plastic screwed to the bottom running the full length of the runner. On top of the plastic bed a piece of aluminum angle was bolted through to the runners and a handlebar arrangement (made of wood or aluminum or plastic) was in turn bolted to this aluminum angle. Along with a two-pronged brake and a canvas or cordura sled bag for carrying the load, the Tim White toboggan sled was here to stay.

The relatively simple construction, the ability to carry large loads over varying snow conditions, and the ease of repair instantly made the toboggan sled very popular. This was the beginning of the Iditarod 1000 mile sled dog race. Tim White was an early competitor using one of his revolutionary toboggan sleds and people took notice. Before long the toboggan sled was the way to go. Since the early 1970’s, mushers and sled builders have continued to refine the basic toboggan sled design and have taken it to amazing heights In the process they have improved the design’s flexibility, the riding comfort for the musher and the materials being incorporated into the construction of the sled. This represents yet another evolution in the history of the toboggan.

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References and Sources
There are a couple of readily available books that readers might like to consult, if nothing else they offer an excellent visual description of the traditional wooden d team toboggan.

(1) Trapline to Finish Line by Fran Hurcomb, published by Outcrop Ltd. , The Northern Publishers, Box 1350, Yellowknife, NT Canada X1A 1V6. This is the story of Yellowknife’s Canadian Championship Dog Derby an features priceless photos of tradition wooden dog team toboggans and it also documents what was really a painful transition from the traditional wooden “trapline” toboggan to the toboggan sled, the “modern” wooden racing sleds and eventually sleds made of any material imaginable.

(2) Arctic Journal, vols. I and II (these have actually been compiled into a single softcover edition entitled Arctic Journal, A Fifty-Year Adventure in Canada’s North...available from Bern Will Brown, Our Lady of the Snows Mission, Colville Lake, NT., X0E 1L0, published by Novalis, Saint Paul University, 223 Main Street, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada, K1S 1C4. Bern Brown is a former Oblate priest who began his northern ministry in the late 1940’s. Everywhere he went he carried his still photo camera and his movie camera. He has documented the Canadian North as no-one else has. (His incredible photo images are now part of a permanent collection at the Prince of Wales Heritage Centre in Yellowknife NT). Not only did he document life in the North, but he lived it, including the daily use of dog teams. His books are filled with incredible photos and the story of his travels from northern Saskatchewan and Alberta to the Mackenzie Delta, Great Bear Lake and finally to the small settlement of Colville Lake locate south of Great Bear Lake and east of Arctic Red River. The traditional wooden dog team toboggan features in Bern Brown’s day-to-day life....and it still does.

(3) The book When the Chestnut Was In Flower..Inside the Chestnut Canoe by Roger MacGregor, Plumsweep Press, P.O. Box 321, Lansdowne, Ontario, KJ0E 1L0 might shed just a little insight into the source of the canoes distributed by the fur traders. The three major manufacturers of cedar canvas canoes in Canada (Chestnut, Peterborough and the Canadian Canoe Company had amalgamated in the mid 1920’s, but each company continued to do business as a separate entity essentially competing with one another. In 1938 however a consolidation took place, creating three distinct capital structures, the shares of which would be held by Canadian Watercraft Limited. This consolidation produced some significant efficiencies of operation however each company went on selling the goods with which it had made its name: Chestnut Canoe Co. in canvas-covered canoes and snowshoes; Peterborourgh Canoe Co. in canoes; both all-wood and canvas-covered, cedar-strip runabouts, inboard launches and winter equipment such as toboggans and snowshoes; Canadian Canoe Co. in its line of “Canadian” all-wood canoes, canvas-covered canoes and a line of small runabouts.

The Wood and Canvas Canoe, Jerry Stelmok and Rollin Thurlow, Tilbury House, Publishers, 132 Water Street, Gardiner, Maine 04345

Empire of the Bay, an Illustrated History of the Hudson’s Bay Company, Peter C. Newman, Madison Press Books, 40 Madison Avenue, Toronto, Ontario, Canada, M5R 2S1

Fur Trade Posts of the Northwest Territories, 1870-1970, Peter J. Usher, Northern Science Research Group, Department of Indian Affairs and Northern Development, Ottawa. March 1971