Call of the North

In its post at remote and tiny Wabowden, Manitoba, the Hudson's Bay Company had a new fur-trade clerk. Rupert Brace Tinling, 21-year-old Royal Canadian Navy veteran from Winnipeg, had signed for a three-year apprenticeship. He liked fishing and hunting; he would have ample opportunity for both. Besides, his mother said, "he'd rather wear a parka and old trousers than the best dress suit."

To man 200 trading posts that stretch from Labrador to the Mackenzie basin, the company needed about 60 more men with Rupert Tinling's tastes. Last week, in Dominion newspapers, the company advertised for them. At Winnipeg 300 young Canadians and Newfoundlanders quickly filed applications for places with the "Company of Adventurers" that since 1670 has been "trading into Hudson's Bay." Accepted applicants will follow the sort of life already begun for young Tinling, who is destined for a post on Baffin Island, possibly Arctic Bay at the northern tip.

Life in the Arctic. Next July, Tinling and ten other clerks will board the sturdy H.B.C. supply ship Nascopie at Montreal, which will arrive at treeless Arctic Bay in September, bringing coal and food for the post, fresh fruit, gasoline, medical and dental supplies, 20 new books for the library, the latest copies of the company magazines, the Beaver and Moccasin Telegraph.

Post manager at Arctic Bay for the past three years has been chubby (over 200 lbs.), good-natured bachelor James Bell, who lives in one of the old-style Hudson's Bay houses: two bedrooms, a living room, kitchen, office. Nearby are a store, warehouse, fuel sheds and a "blubber shed," where dog teams eat company walrus meat; a meteorological station built by the U.S. Army but now manned by four Canadians. In the area are about 150 Eskimos; 25 miles to the south is an Anglican missionary.

Bell's stock list for the Nascopie this year, radioed out of the north two months ago, occupies four closely typed long sheets. Items: tinted sun goggles, dolls, Florida water, girls' ski slacks, sewing machines, jew's-harps, thousands of pounds of plug tobacco, spruce poles for spear handles, blubber lamps.

A Man's Job. A new clerk will soon get into the routine of helping with breakfast (canned grapefruit juice, canned butter, toast made from bread which Bell baked himself, canned bacon, powdered eggs and coffee) and cleaning up afterwards; of replenishing the coal supply and providing water from blocks of lake ice; of serving Eskimos who mush in from trapping posts by komatik (dog sled).

Eskimos call at the post about once a fortnight, bringing Arctic foxes. While the huskies eat, the post manager settles accounts for the furs brought in, offers advice on supplies for the next trip. The clerk sells essentials: 30-30 rifles and ammunition, all-steel traps, motorboats costing up to $4,000, tea and tobacco (which the Eskimos love), and beyond that, "anything up to nylons."

In three years Tinling will get a six weeks' vacation with pay. In the meantime he must learn to live with only half a dozen white companions; to be patient and understanding with the natives; to get along without sunshine from mid-November to early February. But, on the rim of the world, he will have time for sport and study, and a great measure of independence. Freebooting coureur de bois Pierre Esprit Radisson defined the feeling three centuries ago when he wrote: "We were Cesars, [there] being nobody to contradict us."

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