FORTUNE DEFIED

Greymouth Evening Star, 4 July 1933, Page 10

FORTUNE DEFIED

WELCOME TO HARDSHIP.

VANCOUVER, May 10. Defying depression in Canada’s Northland to-day are thousands of men who would never have learned how to wrest a living from Nature but for the stock market crash of 1929 and the lean years that followed. Apart from those intended from childhood to be hewers of wood and drawers of water, this new breed of Northmen —college professors, navalofficers, railroad builders,-? ranchers, farmers, salesmen, clerks—face the world with a new courage, born of their conquest of the wilds. They call no man master.

Donald Petley, building superintendent in Montreal, and Harold Dew, assistant professor of modern languages at McGill University, lingered a month in their old surroundings, long enough to assure themselves that they were not needed there. They bought a second-hand canoe, a strip of canvas for a sail, a roll of blankets and grub-staked themselves with the rest of then* They put their canoe in the Red River and headed north from Winnipeg.

SUMMER OF HARD WORK Two weeks later, ’they drew their craft ashore at the Hudson’s Bay post at Behrens River, where they met Oscar Lindoeken, former ship’s officer and son of the Norwegian poet, Oscar, despite his meagre knowledge of English, was working on contract, freighting supplies by canoe to Little Grand Rapids, 110 miles upstream, for the company, at eight dollars a hundreds pounds. The newcomers were attracted by the work, applied to the post manager, and were given a contract.

There are 53 portages on that stretch of river. Lindoeken and his partner knew them by heart, from the smallest, a pack of twenty-five yards, to the gruelling grind of Hell's Half Mile. He told his new companions of tho rapids which could be “run,” of others that invited suicide. One such was Moose-Painted Stone. The head of a moose, painted on the canyon wall, many years ago, caused legends to grow up around it. Indians had placed a shrine there, to appease the evil spirit of the Salteaux. No Indian dared cross the portage without leaving a small offering, such as a piece of tobacco, in propitiation. With a summer’s profits, they went further north, tho Norseman with a. new partner, a. former heavyweight. boxer, settling in the Clearwater Country. The pair are still there, having had consistent success with fur-bearing animals, with money in reserve and a modern outfit —rulers in their little domain. Dew and Petley took to the heavily-timbered country, eastward. The second freezeup found them a thousand miles from Winnipeg, in North-western Ontario. Dew, a successful hunter, earned the soubriquet, gee-wy-ou, the hawk, from the Indians. Petley, master of t.railcraftr was mying-ghin, the timber wolf.

Another year, and the pair separated, Petley to lay traplines on the western shore of Lake Winnipeg, where he brought his bride. The Factor says he has brought, in more fur than any ten Indians. By way of reward, his wife presented him with

a son. The proud father has a pair of snowshoes and a .22 rifle ready for him. Dew lives on a. beautiful island where the Behrens River empties into the lake, trapping, hunting, fishing, and conducting tourist parties on canoe trips, here and there. There are hundreds of Dews and Petleys scattered through the North. Too proud to go on the relief, they left the scenes of failure behind, and broke trail where no man is allowed to starve. They were soon in surrounding where hospitality reaches its highest expression. No cabin door is locked. As you pass along, i you will insult the owner if you do not enter, boil the kettle, and fry a slab of I bacon. For such is the code of the. Northland.