SLED DOGS IN CANADA'S CENTAL ARCTIC IN THE 1950's and 60's

I was saddened to learn of the death of my special friend, Anglican Bishop John Sperry on February 12, 2012 in Hay River N.W.T. Bishop Sperry was certainly one of the last of the “dogteam” missionaries, that incredible breed of God’s servants, both Anglican and Roman Catholic, who chose or perhaps were chosen to minister throughout the northern and arctic regions of North America before advances in mechanization and communication changed a way of life forever. They arrived at a time when northern peoples still lived the nomadic lifestyle that was necessitated by their hunting and gathering existence, before the centralization of northern peoples into settlements. As a necessary part of their ministry, these missionaries travelled throughout the vast region of their “parish”, visiting and living with, and meeting the needs of their parishioners.



Jack Sperry arrived in Fort Hearne/Coppermine/Kugluktuk N.W.T. as a newly ordained, single, Anglican minister during the summer of 1950. Jack was born in Leicester, England in 1924, at the time of his ordination, also in 1950 he was 26 years of age. At the time of his death, he was age 87 years, having spent 61 years in Canada’s north. During that period he served for 20 years as a missionary in Kugluktuk, then as the rector of St. John’s Anglican church in Fort Smith N.W.T. In 1974, shortly after being appointed as rector of Holy Trinity Anglican Church in Yellowknife, Jack was ordained as the third Anglican Bishop of the Arctic. He was to meet the strenuous responsibilities of this position until his retirement in 1990.

It was during the time of his ministry in Fort Smith that I met Jack, became a member of his “flock” and spent many happy hours strengthening our special friendship. We both lived in “Smith” for a very short few years before my wife and I moved to Whitehorse Yukon and the Sperrys [Jack was married to Betty and they had both a son and a daughter] moved to Yellowknife. But we kept in touch over the years, we corresponded, we visited occasionally, Jack’s name and his activities regularly appeared in the media and we had mutual friends who would often share welcome news. Some of the most memorable memories of my days in the north were of the times that I spent with Jack Sperry.

It turns out that Jack and I had a few things in common. His religious roots were both Methodist and Anglican [Church of England]. My religious roots were in both the Salvation Army [through my father] and the Church of England [through my British born mother]….before he founded the Salvation Army, William Booth was a Methodist minister. To make a long story short, Jack and I hit it off, and shared many meaningful as well as quite funny and entertaining experiences. When I discussed some kind of community or personal dilemma with Jack, his response to me, complete with a twinkle in his eye would be “….well Jeff, what would William Booth do in that situation?” We also shared an interest in sled dogs and as this Blog is about sled dog history, I will forgo discussion about many of the adventures we shared and focus on Jack’s involvement with and his stories about sled dogs. As I said above, he was one of the last of the “dog team” missionaries.

Fortunately, Jack has recorded his time as a dogteam missionary in his book Igloo Dwellers Were My Church, Published by Bayeux Arts, Inc., Calgary, Alberta, Canada, 2001, Outcrop Communications Ltd., Yellowknife, N.W.T., Canada.

In the remainder of this blog entry, I will include [in quotation marks] some of the sled dog-related excerpts from this very special book. The book’s title says a lot about sled dogs at this time [the 1950’s and early 1960’s]. The Inuit people were still a nomadic people and still living in Igloos. If there was to be a church, then the missionary had to travel and if he was going to travel in the north, it had to be by dog team. It is true, Jack’s religious base was nominally in Coppermine/Kugluktuk, which is where there was a mission church building and it is where he and his wife made their home. And it is true, that as time passed and government-provided services such as health care and education were established in various settlements strategically located throughout the north, the Inuit of this region, [known as the Kitengmiut] did move into the settlement of Coppermine, and the need for Jack to travel became less and less. But sled dogs were a big part of the lives of everyone, white and Inuit alike, right up to the 1960’s.

This book is more than simply an accounting of the adventures of a missionary in the Central Arctic in the 1950’s and 60’s. Jack Sperry sets his ministry into a very clear perspective, describing for the reader not just a way of life [that was rapidly changing] but also a way of thinking and of viewing factors that influence day-to-day existence. At one level this book is a great history textbook, at another it serves as a primer in cultural anthropology. We learn about Samuel Hearne’s visit to Bloody Falls on the Coppermine River, about the Canadian Arctic Expedition, pioneer Great Bear lake fur trader D’Arcy Arden and the Inuinaktun language . We learn that these Inuit dwellers of the central arctic coast were actually the last Inuit group to establish contact with the white man and the white man’s culture. In a period of 50 years they experienced an evolution from what was essentially a stone age culture to the introduction of the airplane. We learn about the many factors that contributed to the inevitable change in a way of life for the people that Vilhjalmur Stefansson referred to as the “Copper Eskimo”.

As early as 1715, traders at Fort Prince of Wales on Hudson’s Bay at the site of present-day Churchill heard from Indians who had travelled far and wide about a great river that flowed into the northern ocean where there were large deposits of native copper. In 1770, Samuel Hearne was sent to look for that copper and wrote a journal detailing his journeys. He travelled with the Dene people and describes the small number of dogs that they used, essentially as pack dogs but occasionally in harness. Hearne describes a massacre of the Inuit on the Coppermine River at a place now known as Bloody Falls and after the slaughter he notes that his group “spotted several dogs tied at the tents [of the Inuit]. They deemed these to be of good quality, and did not harm them, but later regretted not taking a few for themselves”.

I well remember Jack Sperry telling me with his typical good humour about the special Christmas season in the settlement of Coppermine. This was the time when the Inuit would travel to the trading post after living on the land for several months. I learned in this book that these people were able to intercept the enormous Bathurst caribou herd travelling to it’s northern calving grounds in the spring and then on it’s return to the forested interior in the fall. It was estimated that an Inuit family required 300 caribou in order to feed themselves and their dogs over a harsh winter. In the fall, the caribou were harvested not just for their meat, but also for their hides, which were actually a large item of trade. Prime caribou hides from the Central Arctic were shipped to the Eastern Arctic, where good caribou hides in any quantity were not readily available for making clothing.

“Also, people who had spent the summer hunting caribou on the inland lakes and rivers usually returned to the settlement in December, sleds piled high with skins. Coppermine usually increased its population by some three hundred percent at this time. Hundreds of dogs were tethered along the shoreline, adding to the chaos of greeting each incoming team with a chorus of howling…..Dogs are unharnessed and staked out on lines so they cannot fight. Calls for tea echo all over the place. Iglus are built along the shore on the sea ice”.

“In the Mission, we prepared for Christmas. We were to feed everyone after the morning service on Christmas Day. To feed upwards of two hundred people required energy, imagination, strength, and stamina. We had a large dog pot, usually used to give our dog team an occasional warm meal of commercial feed. This was scoured out and filled with a large quantity of cooked rice into which raisins were mixed”. I think of this story every time I cook up some dog food in what is really part of a 45 gallon oil drum, and I wonder if I would look forward to a special treat of rice and raisins if I knew that it had been cooked in that same old barrel.

“Travelling on the land in the Arctic required a good deal of work and preparation. The dogs [kinmit] could only pull so much weight. This depended on the quality of the snow on the trail, the temperature, and the weather. The harsh cold meant that anything that could not be frozen required protection. Dog food had to be carried if its supply along the way was not assured. Personal gear was bulky and occupied a lot of space on the adliak [sled].”  This was before the day of high tech and lightweight camping gear and clothing, for this reason, the much larger komatik-style sled was preferred, but this style of sled was not used exclusively. There were significant western or Alaskan influences in this area. The Herschel Island/Mackenzie Delta area bowhead whaling era of the 1880’s brought hundreds of white whalers as well as Indian and Inuit Alaskans to this area. Many Alaskan Inupiat moved into the Mackenzie Delta in the early 1900’s. With them came their ways of doing things…..the Mackenzie Delta area was a true ‘melting pot’ of ideas and these influences spread eastward to Coppermine.

Often in the same photo it is possible to see not only the komatik, but also the wooden trapline toboggan and the Alaskan basket sled, all being used by the dog mushers in the same place at the same time. By the 1950’s, dogs in this area were no longer being run in a fan hitch, but rather in the Nome hitch using a central gangline and modified collar harnesses that utilized a spreader bar placed below the dog’s tail. The dogs used by the Inuit were primarily Canadian Eskimo Dogs however this region is also the birthplace of those dogs known as the Mackenzie River Husky and it would seem inevitable that the smaller dogs of Hearne’s Dene travelling companions, the Eskimo Dogs of the Central and Eastern Arctic as well as those dogs brought from Alaska would all interbreed. It is interesting to note that the dogs used by Stefansson during the 1913 - 1916 Canadian Arctic Expedition were all purchased from Scotty Allen in Nome as Stefansson travelled towards the Central Arctic. Allen was a dog racer although he was also apparently a dog broker. There is every reason to believe that the bloodlines of those dogs that comprised the ‘mishmash’ of dogs used during the Klondike Gold Rush were included in the bloodlines of those dogs purchased from Allen. When these dogs representing these various backgrounds ‘got together’, the Mackenzie River Husky was the outcome. These were the ‘Peel River Dogs’ that are described during the Klondike Gold Rush.

“Travel in a blizzard is usually impossible, and the wise traveller stops and makes camp as soon as it is evident that a storm is approaching. However, if the families you are seeking are encamped upwind, it is possible to let the dogs follow their noses, and they will take you right to your destination…..If the wind is from the side, you are of course out of luck. Once, we were searching for a sealing camp, and the weather became so bad that we had to stop and camp. With the end of the storm and the coming of daylight, we could see the iglus not five hundred yards off to one side of our path”.


“All dog teams are fed at night after the day’s travel is done. A full stomach hampers their motivation and pulling power, and can make them sick. As long as they are well fed, the husky dogs can work reliably in all kinds of weather”.  The dogs diet was very high in protein and fat. The exact ration was dependent on whether the owners were living on the land [where the diet was primarily caribou with some fish] or on the sea ice [where the diet was primarily seal and some fish]. The dogs would be given the offal including stomach contents once a caribou or seal was butchered. Rarely was the food cooked although occasionally the musher would ‘cook up’ some rice to mix with the meat or fish or a special treat of commercial dog food which had somehow found its way to the Arctic. We now know that the Inuit had it right with their traditional diet of meat and fish and that the early day commercial dog food was far from a balanced diet for sled dogs.

“Sickness occasionally sweeps through the Arctic, decimating the teams. One such sickness struck one year as I travelled with Alfred Okkaituk. Our dogs were always immunized for distemper and treated for worms, but whatever this was, they did not escape it…..We were returning from Holman and having lost one dog on the way, started a long overland portage. Amidst the rocky highlands, our remaining dogs began to drop,. In all, we lost six animals. This left only five, and those were sick too…..Alfred and I took turns at being the ‘leader’ and at a slow pace, we coached our team to the Hudson’s Bay post some eighty miles away…..After our arrival we took a few days to rest and purchase some replacement dogs, then continued home to Coppermine”.   Distemper was a highly contagious killer, and for most dogs vaccination was unknown. The RCMP did make distemper and rabies vaccinations available throughout the north, but the coverage was far from comprehensive. This was before the emergence of parvovirus.

The 1950’s and 60’s saw the beginning of the dramatic decline in the numbers of sled dogs throughout the Canadian North and Arctic. When Sperry first arrived in Coppermine, the numbers of sled dogs was probably at its zenith. This was the time when the Inuit of the Central Arctic still lived on the land in small family groupings and large dog teams were absolutely necessary for travel over extended traplines. However a number of factors contributed to the downward spiral in numbers of sled dogs, particularly among the Inuit. A decline in the market for furs and therefore a decline in trapping activity negated the need for large dog teams. The establishment of localized services in the major settlements [like Coppermine] attracted people to a different lifestyle remaining sedentary near the school, store, church and nursing station..the settlement was no place for large numbers of sled dogs which became a liability as they wandered throughout the settlement and many of them were killed as a precaution/result. The dawn of air and snowmobile travel throughout the north meant that there were now readily available and reliable alternatives to the dog team. The availability of wage employment on the Dew Line sites that were built every 50 miles along the arctic coastline meant that a traditional hunting and gathering lifestyle which required the use of dog teams was under further attack. Fatal epidemics of distemper swept through communities, often killing the vast majority of the dogs in that community. The recently-released NFB video Qimmit, A Clash of Two Truths examines this loss of thousands of sled dogs, particularly in the Eastern Arctic during this period, with the premise that these dogs were deliberately killed by the RCMP as a way to put a stop to the a traditional way of life, all of this as part of a bigger plan by the government to assimilate the Inuit into the white mainstream. I believe that this video does not succeed in upholding the premise upon which it is based. However, if nothing else, this video sheds light onto the complex combination of factors that contributed to the loss of thousands of sled dogs in a very short period of time.

“In springtime, the sun melts the surface of the snow during the day, making it soft and wet. The chill of the night refreezes it and this creates a crust on the surface that will support an animal like a fox, but not a dog. Dogs are supported by the crust for an instant, before it can break through with the edges of the icy crust causing injuries. Their feet quickly become cut and bleeding. To continue travel, you must have boots for the dogs. These are made from sealskin or canvas. Properly fitted and tied on each foot, boots protect the dog’s feet from further damage and permit them to keep on working”.  Of course dog booties are very commonplace today, but those used by the Inuit bore only a passing resemblance to those in use today. They were designed so that the toenails of the dog actually poked through the bootie, which was tied into place around the dog’s “wrist” with a piece of leather lashing.

“Travel through rough ice [maniilak] is a science. One slip in guiding a laden sled through this ‘jungle’ of ice could result in a crushed leg or irreparable damage to the sled itself. The process requires an understanding of physics, but it also requires brute strength. Pushing, heaving, gasping, shouting, stopping and starting, clambering over pressure ridges, chopping our way through jagged ice with an axe, freeing dogs entangled in the traces….then having to do it all over again. One wonders whether there is an end to the challenge”.

Sperry doesn’t go into detail regarding the traditional Inuit method for preparing the runners of the komatik for each day’s travel. During the brief summer, a quantity of peat was carefully set aside for later use as a “base” for the runners of the komatik. This base was applied to the runners, allowed to freeze and then carefully smoothed over, sometimes with a wood plane. A thin layer of warm water was then applied to this base and smoothed with a piece of polar bear hide….the end result was a super slick but very brittle runner surface that made sled travel that much easier. When the runner hit an obstacle, particularly this jumble ice that Sperry describes, there went the runner surface and the whole process had to be repeated. Sperry states that he developed the idea of using a batch of porridge as a “quick fix” when the peat base became damaged, and apparently it worked. Everything changed when the spring weather arrived however, and for mushing in the wet spring conditions, the mushers applied strips of metal to the runners. I have read one anecdote regarding Amundson’s ship Maud, which was later purchased by the Hudson’s Bay Company and renamed the Baymaud before sinking in the harbour at Cambridge Bay. This is where it still sits today in the midst of a controversy about whether or not it will be returned to Norway where it might go on display in consort with Amundson’s other [more famous] vessel Fram. For a brief period after it sank, the Baymaud became a treasure trove of metal which was salvaged by Inuit hunters and fashioned into all manner of useful articles, including snow hooks, spear points and komatik runners.

“Despite all the efforts to increase health services, immunity against foreign diseases was still very difficult to establish……In my memory, the epidemics of 1957 and 1960 were the most devastating. These particular ‘bugs’ travelled throughout the population with terrifying speed…..In their homes, still pretty primitive by today’s standards, the affected people lay on their beds, most too sick to attend to their own physical needs. Meanwhile, along the shore, hundreds of dogs still needed to be fed. I recall on brave RCMP constable, though unwell himself, gallantly cooking dog food for his own team and trying to meet the needs of many additional dogs”.


“As time went on, both the Federal and Territorial governments played an increasing role in the administration of the North……In Coppermine, the changes were obvious. The Royal Canadian Mounted Police had less preoccupation on maintaining dog teams, and more involvement with law enforcement for the increasing populations in each community”. I suspect that Jack had fun taking this little poke at his RCMP colleagues. You can be sure that close friendships developed among the traders, missionaries, policemen and health care workers in these isolated settlements.

One thing that Sperry’s book confirms however is that the “mounties” had their own dogs and maintained their own dog teams. There has always been a question about whether the dogs the RCMP used were in fact their own or whether they simply leased dogs from local First Nations mushers. This is made a bit more confusing by the fact that RCMP detachments often employed First Nations special constables to assist with the police work. Just as Sperry always travelled with local hunters, it only makes sense that the police would do the same thing, the travelling conditions demanded that the local knowledge of geography, terrain, weather and survival be available. This is not unlike the rationale behind the present day Canadian Rangers program, which pairs local hunters and trappers from communities throughout the north with military personnel who might be called upon to work and travel in the Arctic.

“Upon my arrival in Coppermine in 1950, there were only three modest outboard engines for boats. Twenty years later, dozens of outboard motors propelled freighter canoes at fantastic speeds day and night, throughout the open water season. And during the long winter season, the jangle of harnesses and the shouts of dog-drivers have been exchanged for the staccato roar of the snowmobile…..The mournful howls from the doglines, perhaps in response to a wolf call in the silent night, were heard no more”.