Week No.17

Oct. 3-9, 1912

Paddling in Hudson Bay itself, and nearing York Factory, now was one time in the canoe journey when Ernest Oberholtzer and Billy Magee were split up. Magee, as readers recall, had just last week found them some help in the form of a Cree man named Jimmie Niebie.

Oberholtzer writes, “On Jimmie’s assurance that the fort was only seven miles away round the sands, I set out on foot with my pack, hoping to have a few extra hours at York. Jimmie and Billy were to follow in the canoe.”

But Ober is still a ways away and stranded boatless across a large bay when he muses, “I began to realize that it would be possible to starve not half a mile away from the fort. I had just a bit of chocolate in my pocket.”

At last they arrived at the fort at York Factory.

Our footnotes introduce us to the man that Ober then met, George Ray, post and district manager of the Hudson Bay Company, York Factory. Again, Ober spent the evening telling stories, after a good meal of “fried trout and tea and cakes and butter.”

It is here at York Factory that Ober and Magee meet with the suggestion of help from the Swampy Cree. Ober conceded to contract with them for limited assistance “to see (us) safely over the rapids.” They will now paddle the Hayes River, upstream. Later that same day, however, they disagree with their guides who insist that “…’you will never reach Oxford,’ and urge me to leave my canoe behind. This I would not think of doing. No leaking lumbering tankard of a Peterboro for me.” Later, at lunch, Magee agreed.

The men will now spend the next two weeks paddling, sailing, tracking (with ropes), and essentially racing their Cree companions up the Hayes River. Winter is imminent, as we hear in Ober’s terse notes, “Very cold night. Ice along the shore. Canoe full of frost.”

Their goal, although Ober does not write much of it, is to make it to Oxford House and then Norway House on Lake Winnipeg by winter close-up. Footnotes tell readers that the distance from York Factory to Norway House is 400 miles up the Hayes. Four hundred paddled miles. We might well begin to wonder about the cumulative effects of fatigue on this epic journey. But on they go.

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