DOWN SNOWY' TRAILS

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 626, 1 April 1929, Page 14

DOWN SNOWY' TRAILS

XMAS IN NORTH CANADA

WHITE WOMAN’S ADVENTURE

Ordered to take up a post 300 miles

north of the Peace River, Corporal Barber, of the North-west Mounted Police, who was accompanied there by his wife, tells of Christmas in the Far North, where his wife was the first white woman,. For the first 150 miles they followed a trail opened by the Government for winter traffic between the Peace River and the Mackenzie delta. They averaged ten miles a day with three four-horse teams and one two-

horse team, packing two tons of freight, baggage and rations. It was a creditable performance, with capsizes, broken parts and bogged transport.

The rest of the journey was by river. They built a scow, called it the Lady Barber, and, in the absence of champagne, Mrs. Barber broke a bottle of fruit salts over her prow. Three miles down she ran on a rock and sprang a leak. Mrs. Barber bailed, while her husband and his relief constable were constantly in the water, prying the scow over the sand bars. After making only five miles the first day they renamed the vessel the Sikanni Devil, after a treacherous current, they were following. Next day they arrived at the trading post, Birch Hat, named after a trader who lost liis hat and made one out of birch bark. He was known afterwards by the Indians as “Ketsia” (birch hat).

Next day they found the scow frozen in. They built a cabin ashore to store their freight for the winter. Their diet of potrtoes and rice was varied by an occasional rabbit. Food running short, the two men took a canoe, and essayed a trip to the nearest Hudson’s Bay trading post. They had not gone far before the canoe was frozen in.

They finished the journey overland. On the return their three dogs had enough to haul their own rations, and the men had to carry their stores. They were six days on the trail. Meantime, Mrs. Barber had built a comfortable home on the banks of the Conroy until the river froze sufficiently for dogs to travel on. They remained there two months and eventually arrived at the mouth of the Tontas River, where they got a new dog team. HEARD CATHEDRAL BELLS Here they spent the Christmas, in an old cabin loaned by the Hudson’s Bay Company. They had a radio set, and tuned in on the bells of the Holy Rosary Cathedral at Vancouver, and let fancy play round the bright lights and warm firesides of the “outside.” Here they left Mrs. Barber behind again, and the two men set out for Port Nelson. Meantime the weather was 50 below when they set out together again. It was a time of real endurance for Mrs. Barber. They reached their destination four months out from Vancouver, and found the cabin rented to the Government in such a had shape that they had to rebuild it. When the spring approached they returned and picked up their scow and freight and travelled by the river. When they got back they found Mrs. Barber running a small hospital, with the worst case a trapper with only a few sparks of life left. The three took turns watching him till they could get him to the Northwest Territories’ hospital at Port Simpson. To reach there they had to take him 350 miles downstream by canoe. The nature of his illness was such that he could only rest in a sitting position. His head must not fall forward or he would be strangled. They had to keep a hand on his forehead all the time. The trill took three weeks. TRAPPER’S FORTITUDE The last flour was being rationed out when their first supplies arrived. During another patrol Mrs. Barber was called on to tend a trap- 1 per who hr.d fallen on his axe and severed an artery. He had applied a tourniquet and lashed himself to his sled. His dogs brought him in after he had been unconscious. He pulled round. Christmas morning arrived, and bucks, squaws and papooses came in. Copious helpings of stew, doughnuts and bannock warmed them toward the Boss, as the Mountie is known among them (The Big Boss of uisMajesty the King). The Christmas tree was decorated with, tinfoil from the tea packets. Stockings were filled with candy and a cap and sweater for each papoose, knitted by Mrs. Barber, a packet of tobacco and three sticks of “Nigger” for each of the adults, irrespective of sex, for the female of the species is as fond of the weed as the male. On Christmas afternoon they tuned in on the Pacific Coast network of broadcasting stations, to the wonderment of the natives, wlto could understand the gramophone, hut to whom the radio was a mystery. In the evening a few w'hite men, in from the traplines, were entertained by the first white woman who had ever reached so far north. The meal consisted of a roast from a king of the forest, washed down, for the sake of something stronger, by snow-water tea.