RETURN OF THE FAR FUR COUNTRY --A WORK IN PROGRESS

ROMANCE OF THE FAR FUR COUNTRY
A WORK IN PROGRESS

The reconstruction of the movie Romance of the Far Fur Country is almost a reality. At a special (and much appreciated) public viewing, which took place in conjunction with the The International Congress of Arctic Social Sciences May 24, 2014 at the University of Northern British Columbia in Prince George, the audience was able to view all but 20 minutes of the complete two hour production.

With significant fanfare, the Hudson’s Bay Company (HBC) premiered the original movie in 1920, it had been three years in the making.   This movie featured life at the far flung trading posts that comprised the Company’s fur trade “kingdom”, it was made to celebrate the Company’s 250th anniversary. This movie documentary was actually released two years before Nanook of the North, a movie that is considered to be the harbinger of all great documentaries.

Romance of the Far Fur Country enjoyed modest and relatively brief popularity and then it languished for almost 80 years. The complete movie which ran for almost 2 hours had been “cut up” and made into a series of film shorts, so in its complete state the movie had actually disappeared. This was until a Winnipeg-based company called Five Door Films acquired access to all of the film footage and began the task of recreating the original film. This task is now almost complete. In the process, they have also made another film called Return of the Far Fur Country, documenting the process of the recreation of the original movie.  For more information about all of this go to www.returnfarfurcountry.ca

If you are interested in the north, in northern history, in the fur trade or in the Hudson’s Bay Company, viewing this film footage is like opening a long lost photo album and seeing images that have been frozen in time, sadly thought to have been lost and now here they are moving across the screen in the present.  The emotion associated with this experience is one of pinch-me-is-it-real awe,  it is like having the best seat in the house on a way of life that was supposed to have passed and yet here it is for real.  It is especially exciting for anyone interested in the history and use of working sled dogs.

The movie features five communities located throughout Northern and Western Canada, each with a special HBC presence. These five communities are Kimmirut (now in Nunavut), Wolstenholme (now in Nunavik), Vancouver and Alert Bay in British Columbia and Fort Chipewyan in northern Alberta. The film has some features of a travelogue as the story of the journey from one community to another is in part documented, the main message however is the story of the presence and the actions of the Hudson’s Bay Company in each of these very different locations.

The first stop is Kimmirut, located on Baffin Island’s Metacognita Peninsula, on the northern shore of Hudson Straight.  To get to this location, the film makers have travelled on the HBC’s annual arctic supply run aboard the venerable HBC vessel the Nascopie.  We see the ship leaving the dock in Montreal and there are a few shots of the passage up the eastern coast of Labrador.  We get a flavour of travel in the pack ice, we are introduced to the colourful mix of personalities on board and we learn a bit about their reasons for being there.

Remember, this was probably filmed in 1917/1918, Kimmirut was only established as a Hudson’s Bay Company trading Post in 1911.  For much of its existence after 1911, this post was known as Lake Harbour, but for eons before this, the area had been known as Kimmirut (named after a local geological feature) and since 1996, the settlement has been officially called Kimmirut. Today Kimmirut has a population of just over 400 people, during this filming it was much, much smaller.

The Inuit hunters had not yet moved off the land to the established settlements but with the benefit of hindsight, we see the genesis of those factors that led to a major change in the way of life for all Inuit as they moved into permanent settlements in the 1950’s and 60’s.   In 1917/1918, the vast majority of the Inuit population enjoyed a traditional semi-nomadic lifestyle, living  in isolated camps.   Prior to the presence of the HBC in this region, in the late 19th century, they had been introduced to and had become dependent on the goods that traders offered.   The Inuit hunters worked for and traded with the whalers who travelled to this area, and often over wintered, before the whale population of the Eastern Arctic was almost decimated.  Now, at this point in time they were making a livelihood by trapping and trading with the Hudson’s Bay Company.

It could be argued that this period in time was the zenith point for the use of the working sled dog throughout the north.  The fur trade was flourishing and trapping was an established way of life.  Successful trappers needed dogs, and more than just a couple.  This was also pre-snowmobile and it was just the very beginning of the  post WWI era of the bush plane and pilot.  If anyone was going to move any distance of consequence in the winter they had to do it by dog team, especially if they had to transport a load of any kind.

The arrival of the annual supply ship in any isolated northern community was a big deal, perhaps the grandest occasion of the year. Everyone in all of the outlying camps would plan their lives so that they would be at the main settlement for “ship time”.  Kimmirut boasts a good harbour, the Nascopie  had to drop anchor just a little way off shore, being very aware of the significant tides in this area in the process.  This was clearly a festive time and the community was jam packed with people…..and sled dogs.

Everyone had travelled in from their isolated camps with their dogs, in many cases with their dogs acting as pack animals.  Given the lack of both snow on the ground and ice along the shoreline, it is doubtful that these dogs had arrived harnessed as teams and pulling komatiks.  The dog population in this community had mushroomed and there were dogs running everywhere, and no-one seemed to be too upset by this fact.  It was surprising to see so many untethered sled dogs, especially Inuit Dogs that are noted for same sex scrapping. The dogs looked beautiful, they were indeed Inuit Dogs, at this point in time there had been no cross breeding with any other mutts from the south.

I am at a loss to explain just why so many working sled dogs were running loose amidst all of the people.  Some of the dogs were pups, but clearly not all of them. This picture is also complicated by the fact that there is a brief scene in the movie, filmed at Kimmirut, of some Inuit men dumping a tub of fish over a high fence, into a compound filled with what were clearly adult Inuit Dogs.  So some of the dogs were penned while others ran loose, what is the explanation? Could it be that there were simply too many dogs for the settlement to absorb and contain given the influx of hunters and their families attracted to the settlement by “ship time”?

The film shows scenes of the dogs in action.  There is a brief (and clearly staged) scene of a team of about 10 dogs harnessed in a fan hitch pulling an empty komatik over the dirt for about 30 metres.  Of more interest are the scenes of people (clearly not staged) apparently leaving the settlement to return to their camps.  The dogs aren’t in harness, many of them are carrying packs and they walk in a group, dogs and their human “families”, everyone carrying their load.  You can’t help but feel that this is indeed the real thing.

Hudson Straight is essentially the access route to Hudson Bay and upon leaving the harbour in Kimmirut, the Nascopie steamed towards Cape Wolstenholme which is the northernmost tip of the Ungava Penninsula on the left side of the straight, right at the entrance to Hudson Bay.  This was also the site of the HBC trading post simply called Wolstenholme and it is here that the Nascopie off-loaded the supplies for all of those Company trading posts that rimmed the southern part of Hudson Bay and James Bay.  These supplies were then to be delivered to these posts by a much smaller cargo vessel.

The photographers no-doubt travelled on this vessel (along with the cargo) to Fort Albany located just upstream from the mouth of the Albany River, which flows into James Bay from the west.  This community was the start of the journey upstream by canoe for both the film crew as well as a small number of employees of the local HBC post.  The intent was to get to the railway which  runs east-west.  The ultimate destination was Vancouver British Columbia, but the immediate goal was  probably to reach Cochrane, a town located in northern Ontario where the Trans Canada Rail Line crossed the Albany River.

The paddling scenes are exciting, while not actually voyageurs, these paddlers weren’t  too far removed from those paddling predecessors.  In 20 foot cedar canvas canoes, much of their work involved poling upstream in rapids against a fairly strong current,  these fellows knew what they were doing.  The canoes seemed to be carrying light loads but once all of the photo equipment and the photographers were added, those canoes were loaded.

And then we are in  Vancouver, banners announce the opening of the brand new Hudson’s Bay Company department store, the same one that sits at the corner of Granville and Georgia streets in downtown Vancouver today.  This part of the movie was designed to demonstrate the fact that the HBC had evolved past the days of the rural trading post and had now entered the world of up scale retail sales.

From Vancouver the film crew makes their way up the East Coast of Vancouver Island to the  First Nations community of Alert Bay.  This section of the film is visually quite striking and seems designed to highlight all of the trappings of an intact and very impressive Native culture.  While there is very little indication of the presence of the Hudson’s Bay Company in this community, there is no question that there is one.  Viewers would  be impressed as there was significant interest, certainly in Europe as well as elsewhere,  in North American First Nations cultures.  It should be remembered that this movie had no dialogue and the subtitles were in English.  For this recreation, an original musical score has been added.

It would appear that everyone then returned to Vancouver to initiate the last leg of  this photographic journey which would take them to the north shore of Lake Athabasca and the small and very isolated community of  Fort Chipewyan Alberta.   It would also appear that some HBC staff based in Vancouver had supervisory responsibility over the vast area that was known in the days of the fur trade as the Athabasca District, for the man who was known throughout the rest of the movie as “the Factor” travelled northward as part of the entourage.

Fort Chipewyan was established by Peter Pond as a Northwest Company fur trade post in 1788, making it the oldest non-First Nations settlement in Alberta.  This is where Alexander Mackenzie became lost in 1790  following the wrong river flowing out of Fort Chipewyan, and ending up at the Arctic ocean rather than the Pacific.  To his credit he did come back two years later and this time followed the Peace River, eventually ending up at the Pacific ocean.  This is where George Simpson, the soon-to-be Governor of the HBC cut his fur trading teeth in 1820, serving at the Hudson’s Bay Company post called Fort Wedderburn which was located on a small island just off the coast, in clear view of the Northwest Company post on the mainland.  In 1919, Fort Chipewyan had been a fur trade post continuously for 120 years and since 1821 it had become the exclusive domain of the Hudson’s Bay Company.

It was perhaps here that the “Romance” part of the movie’s title surfaced.  This picture-perfect trading post setting complete with a palisade (fence) and an archway giving it something of the appearance of a traditional fur trade “Fort”, no doubt with the distinctive white with red roof trading post (the movie is in black and white).  This is clearly the image that the Company wanted to portray with the viewing public.  This is the image that was so frequently shown in the HBC’s in house publication The Beaver, this was the public’s  image of  the Hudson’s Bay Company.

The group had quite a time getting to Fort Chipewyan.  The quickest way to travel north was to get to Edmonton by train (there would have been a few options from Vancouver) and then to take another train to Waterways, which is located just south of Fort McMurray on the Athabasca River.  From there it would be possible to travel by sternwheeler to Fort Chipewyan.  The film crew took a different route however.  They no doubt did travel to Edmonton by rail but then probably by road to the community of Athabasca which is located  well south of Waterways on the upper Athabasca river.  It was late in the season and the water levels were low, they had difficulty but eventually did make it to their destination before freeze-up.  In the process viewers saw some drama as goods were portaged over an island in the river using sled dogs and a wooden sleigh, something that was not from this region.

Fort Chipewyan is sled dog country and in this part of the movie, the dogs played a  major role.  The dogs in use at the time and in this place were all Mackenzie River Huskies, not really a breed in their own right but a type of dog  that had evolved over time as the perfect animal for the job that had to be done in that area.  Their size, temperament, hardiness, stamina as well as their desire to work and eat and their ability to deal with the harsh cold climate made them ideal.  At the same time they weren’t fast dogs and they certainly didn’t have a very uniform appearance, some with floppy ears while others had the pointed ears of the wolf.  What makes this movie so special is that the dog known as the Mackenzie River Husky has now virtually disappeared and yet here they were “in Technicolor” (as it were) doing what they did best.

All of the scenes were staged, a trip out to the trapline, pulling into the Fort to meet the Factor, travelling out on the lake, lots and lots of furs, but they were very authentic.  An extremely rare dog cariole is featured in several scenes.  This is a dog toboggan fitted out with a compartment made of scraped moose or caribou hide that provides a very cozy place (with the help of  fur rugs) for a passenger to ride.  The cariole in the movie (which may just be the one presently on display at lower Fort Gary north of Winnipeg) is painted with the HBC logo and the five dog team is fitted out with tandem collar harness, the musher usually jogging along but occasionally standing on the back of the toboggan…..and always the Factor is riding.  What is perhaps even more interesting is a second toboggan that features  what is often called a canvas “wrapper”.  Through the ingenious use of rope tension and in conjunction with a wooden handlebar or backboard, the wrapper offers a very roomy and dry compartment for carrying all manner of goods used by a trapper.  This is the first confirmation that I have seen that the wrapper was in use as early as 1920.  The dogs are again fitted with tandem collar harness, some are sporting brightly coloured dog blankets or “tapis” fitted in conjunction with their harness.

While still a work in progress, the reconstruction of this movie is almost complete.   Soon there will be a DVD for all to see.

Jeffrey Dinsdale,
June 20, 2014