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Updated: June 26, 2025
More than one of the hunters have assured me that it is safer to molest a mother Bear than a mother Wolverine when accompanied by the cubs. Bellalise, a half-breed of Chipewyan, told me that twice he had found Wolverine dens, and been seriously endangered by the mother. The first was in mid-May, 1904, near Fond du Lac, north side of Lake Athabaska.
In 1907 I set out to journey by canoe down the Athabaska and adjoining waters to the sole remaining forest wilds the far north-west of Canada and the yet more desert Arctic Plains, where still, it was said, were to be seen the Caribou in their primitive condition.
But it was hardly founded before Mackenzie had already conceived a wider scheme. Chipewyan should be the emporium but not the outpost of the fur trade; using it as a base, he would descend the great unknown waterway which led north, and thus bring into the sphere of the company's operations the whole region between Lake Athabaska and the northern sea.
Out in the wilds he becomes a child of nature, simple and clean and elemental as the trees around him or the stars above him. I think of one prospector whose range was at the headwaters of the Athabaska. In the dance-halls he had married a cheap variety actress.
Another fine city of which we may well be proud is Electropolis, on Lake Athabaska. Electropolis can boast of 100,000 inhabitants, and most enterprising citizens they are. Their great idea is to work everything by electricity, and to them belongs the credit of all the latest discoveries in electrical science.
The spring of 1792 saw him hurrying back to Fort Chipewyan to prepare for the expedition on which he had set his heart. When October came he launched his canoes, fully manned and provisioned, on Lake Athabaska, and, ascending the Peace river to a point about six miles above the forks formed by its junction with the Smoky, he built a rude palisaded fur-post and spent the winter there.
The regulation portage load was one hundred and fifty pounds, and many a man was known to carry this weight the whole ten miles and back within six hours. There was need to hurry. Supplies were going west to Lake Winnipeg, up the Saskatchewan, and even on to Athabaska; while furs were coming down for the autumn trade to Europe. As a rule the traders were Scottish and the voyageurs French Canadian.
On our modern maps this great stream after it leaves Lake Athabaska is called the Slave river: but it is really one and the same mighty river, carrying its waters from the valleys of British Columbia through the gorges of the Rocky Mountains, passing into the Great Slave Lake, and then, under the name of the Mackenzie, emptying into the Arctic.
For about forty miles they ascended the course of the Athabaska river, finding themselves among splendid woods with tall pines and poplars such as Hearne had never seen. From the Athabaska they struck eastward, plunging into so dense a forest that at times the axes had to be used to clear the way.
The month of March found them clear of the level country of the Athabaska and entering upon the hilly and broken region which formed the territory of the Northern Indians. At the end of March the first thaws began, rendering walking difficult in the bush. In traversing the open lakes and plains they were frequently exposed to the violent gales of the equinoctial season.
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