WITHIN THE ARCTIC

Evening Post, Volume CXIII, Issue 55, 7 March 1927, Page 11

WITHIN THE ARCTIC

CANADIAN COMMUNITIES

ADMINISTRATION AND TRADE

(From Our Own Correspondent.)

VANCOUVER, 24th January,

That satisfactory economic progmis is being made by the communities administered by Canada in the Arctic is the text of tho annual report dealing with their activities for 1920. Thcsie communities centro round Aklavik, at tho mouth of tho Mackonvdc River, which is the general assembly point for trado, communication, and tho general amenities of civilisation. This progress has been accentuated recently by the establishment of a chain of wireless stations, connecting the five principal centres of population in tho Northland —Mayo, Dawson, and Hcrsohol, in tho Yukon, and Aklavik, Fort Smith, and Simpson, in the North-west territories.

The big event of tho year was tho trial of two natives for manslaughter. Judge Dubuc made tho trip north from Edmonton, his -headquarters, to try them. One was acquitted, and the other sentenced to two years' detention in the Northwest Mounted Polico post at Horachel. The whole adult population of. Aklavik attended the trial.

Trapping, the main industry, is progressing securely. A considerable amount of prospecting has been going on during tho recent summer. An aeroplane was used to transport somo of tho prospectors. Two prospectors wore imprisoned by an explosion of thoir dynamite, and they socurod holp by scribbling a note to a frionil, sixty miles away, which was borne to them over a snow-clad mountain trail by a malamute dog he had loaned them. Help arrived in Mine to got tho men by air to hospital.

At Aklavik, in mid-summor, there were 40 small schooners, all ownod by Eskimos. Each had an auxiliary engine. They averaged 50 feet in length, and were built in Edmonton to the order of tho Eskimq purchasers and transported down tho Mackonzie to its mouth, whore Aklavik lios. As soon as trading is ovor, tho Eskimos dispoi'no, sailing in their sehoonors to tho sealing and hunting grounds, returning to Aklavik in the following summer. Those two branehos of thoir industry have been enormously fiiuilitatod by the new schooners. Aklavik ia fast becoming a prosperous little metropolis under Canadian administration within the Arctic Circle.

The cable news In this Issuo accredited to "The Times" has appeared in that journal, but only whero expressly stated Is such, news tho editorial opinion of "The Times."