CANADIAN ARCTIC

Evening Post, Volume CIX, Issue 5, 7 January 1930, Page 9

CANADIAN ARCTIC

FIGHT WITH'NATURE

REINDEER AND MUSK-OX

(From "The Post's" Representative.)

VANCOUVER, 11th December.

Although in winter, one-third of the Dominion o£ Canada is in the icy grip of King Zero, ranchers and squatters have made nptable progress in their efforts to wrest from the wilderness of the Far North, the products of Nature. , Not only does this Northland hold fabulous riches in mineral ores, but ranching of the production of cereals and vegetables is now carried on successfully within the Arctic Circle. Two thousand miles north of Vancouver there is a big ranch, with corrals, stockyards, and cold storage plants that ships every. year hundreds of tons of Arctic meat to the United States. The pastoral industry, as represented mainly by reindeer, is just now bejng given a new stimulus by the Canadian Government in the tremendous project it has successfully consummated in trekking 12,000 head of reindeer from Alaska to the delta of the Mackenzie River, near the Eskimo metropolis at- Aklavik, after a journey of eighteen months on the ■ hoof. It is intended to use the main herd on the Mackenzie flats as a breeding source to supply colonies of reindeer, moving eastward gradually until they are domiciled on the shores of Hudson Bay, where Samuel Home, crossing these plains in the name of the Gentlemen Adventurers trading into Hudson Bay, christened the territory "Barren Lands." Where the reindeer went to, if they were ever settled in the Canadian Arctic, is not known, but the Government of Canada is determined to migrate them eastward until they provide a permanent food source for the Eskimo and remove the uncertainty arising out of the mysterious migrations of the caribou. The reindeer, domesticated since the dawn of history, need no shelter. /There is already a big trade in reindeer meat between Alaska and the United States; Canadians intend to develop the industry as it has been developed beyond Fifty-four-Forty. THE MUSK-OX. The musk-ox, a noble big-bodied animal, cross between a- cow and a sheep, is another object of paternal interest by Canada. For .thousands of years they have roamed the North until the advance of civilisation led to their herds being decimated in the same way as the buffalo. Like the buffalo, the musk-ox is to be saved for posterity. In the Thelon game sanctuary, a tract of 15,000 square miles has been declared out-of-bounds to all humans, white or native, until the muskox increase and multiply. Living under the most adverse conditions, the muskox can defend themselves against all their enemies except man. The hollow square method of fighting, when refugees are being rescued by modern armies, was practised by the musk-ox before the birth of civilisation1. The cows and calves are horded into the square, with the bullwarriors facing outward on four sides—a perfect form of defence, against any invader except the modern high-powered rifle in the hunter's hands.

Arctic-hybrid wheats are thriving farther north as those remote lands become cultivated. ' In the Great Slave country are huge expanses of lush hay meadow lands that are gradually being brought into cultivation. At the Roman Catolic monastery near Tort Smith, flowers and vegetables are grown under conditions that hitherto were deemed impossible. The development of airways in the Far North, as far as the extreme air mail terminal at Aklavik, has proved a staunch ally to hardy plainsmen, who believe that the soil can be wooed as successfully on the Arctic plateau as on the praries of the South.