A double review with The Lost Canoe: A Labrador Adventure
by Lawrence W.Coady
The first decade of a new century spawned great interest in the exploration of the interior of Labrador. Between 1903 and 1910, the vast wilderness attracted intrepid American and British adventurers, including Leonidas Hubbard, Dillon Wallace, William Cabot, and Mina Hubbard. They were lured by the possibilities of mapping new territory, glimpsing great herds of caribou, and meeting the elusive Naskapi (Innu) at their summer hunting grounds around Indian House Lake.
The story of another British expedition, led by Hesketh Vernon Hesketh-Prichard in 1910, is practically unknown.
More than thirty years ago, author, hiker, and now-retired biologist Lawrence Coady established an Arctic char research station on the Fraser River in northern Labrador. Over the course of his field studies, Coady learned of Prichard, an author, adventurer, and ardent hunter who, together with a fellow Brit and two hired guides, had canoed the Fraser in 1910 with Indian House Lake and trophy game as their goals.
Disregarding local advice, the expedition headed up the narrow Fraser Canyon. The explorers were forced to climb five-hundred-metre cliffs with a canoe. Later, somewhere along the route, they abandoned the canoe.
Reading of the journey in Prichard’s out-of-print Through Trackless Labrador, Coady was hooked. Over three summers, he coaxed friends and family (both his own and Prichard’s descendants) to help him search for the location of the ninety-two-year-old cedar canvas canoe. Along the way, he retraced and mapped Prichard’s trail and verified the locations of the earlier expedition’s campsites.
Combining field and archival sources, The Lost Canoe weaves together detailed information on the lives of these explorers while telling of their little-known expedition and Coady’s own quest for the cached canoe.
Coady produces a convincing and comprehensive narrative that is well researched and referenced. It alternates between a more formal account of Prichard’s life and journey and an often humorous portrayal of his own adventures.
He excels at describing landscape and natural history and rivals some of the best writing on northern biting insects. Coady’s efforts are as feisty as the flies he inevitably battled. A series of paired photographs — taken at identical locations nearly a century apart — provide a captivating addition to the chronicling of these expeditions.
Still, Coady’s scrambles up the treacherous canyon are geographically confusing and would have benefited from the addition of a complete map showing both his and Prichard’s entire routes. And while most details are well documented, the feelings ascribed to the Inuit guide — who leaves Prichard’s expedition prematurely — are written without an attributed source.
These minor points aside, Coady amply succeeds in shining a light on an important chapter of early twentieth-century Labrador exploration. Just as important as providing historical context for Prichard’s lost canoe, Coady writes passionately on the loss of a way of life, summarizing circumstances that have changed the face of Nitassinan (the Innu name for the Labrador-Quebec peninsula) and irrevocably altered the lives of the Innu.
Prichard is perhaps the least known explorer of Labrador in the early 1900s, and he might well have perished of starvation like Leonidas Hubbard had it not been for the courage and skill of his Newfoundland guide, Robert Porter — a fact ignored by Prichard, but duly noted by Coady.
Yet there is another explorer of that era who has for some time been relegated to a minor role. Fortunately, with the centenary of the chronicling of her milestone accomplishments — being the first white woman to cross Labrador and the first explorer to accurately map the George River — academics, historians, and biographers are revisiting the story of Mina Hubbard’s extraordinary 1905 journey.
The most recent of these reconsiderations is a reissue of Mina Hubbard’s A Woman’s Way Through Unknown Labrador, edited and introduced by Sherrill Grace, a recent recipient of the coveted Killam Prize and well recognized for her work on Canada’s North.
Based on the 1908 first edition, the reproduction of Hubbard’s text of her journey includes the introduction by explorer William Cabot, the diary of her husband Leonidas, and a narrative by their guide George Elson.
Hubbard is fascinating for several reasons, not the least of which is that she undertook this improbable adventure as a complete novice — a trained nurse mounting an expedition in unmapped territory to complete her husband’s work. While most of the press at the time dismissed her claims, Hubbard proved herself an able writer, cartographer, and lecturer.
The landscape of twentieth-century Labrador exploration and contemporary wilderness adventure is enriched with the publication of these two texts.
— Alison Dyer (Read bio)
Alison Dyer is a writer, researcher, and paddler based in St. John's, Newfoundland and Labrador.