Ober's journey, week 14

Oberholtzer Foundation

Week No. 14

Sept. 13-21, 1912

The book of Ernest Oberholtzer’s journey, “Bound for the Barrens,” gives readers far more than the 100-year-old canoe journey itself. When readers read of Bite, the Eskimo (and his family) now helping Oberholtzer and Billy Magee get to Churchill, readers learn a great deal from the21st century research of Canadian author, David Pelly. Footnotes tell us that Bite must have been an English nickname and that the man was known as “Ukkitaaq” (Sharpshooter) though his real name was “Uturuuq.” How amazing to learn, through Pelly’s later research, that Oruluk (Bite’s son, photographed by Oberholtzer as a young boy in 1912) died in 1978. With this hindsight, Pelly remarks about this boy’s father: “Ukkitaaq, it would seem, was an extraordinary person, even among his contemporaries. That it was this man whom Oberholtzer should happen to encounter at the mouth of the Thlewiaza appears to have been an unfathomable stroke of good luck.” 

And “unfathomable” is a fine word for Pelly to choose. Webster says nothing of it, yet “fathom” was a measurement of the depth of water, and “to fathom” came to mean “to take soundings, to comprehend or to come to understand.” At any rate, this is a wonderful word to go beyond meaning in a story on, about, over, and across water at all time. Readers are cheering. It is about time that Ober and Magee get a stroke of good luck, and we agree that it is truly unfathomable that they have reached Hudson Bay alive and strong, and it’s equally amazing that they have met up with Ukkitaaq. 

The reading now shifts from a daily log of weather, food, and campsite to one that refers in detail to the habits and patterns of the Eskimo family. Ober watches them like the anthropologist readers later learn that he is. “…One of the boys had a bloody bladder that he was blowing up and making a noise with; another had caught a half-dead snow bird…” There is so much to see that Ober resorts to his partial sentences, catching details. Readers meet character after character in this extending play, and I must leave days of this good reading to your eyes only, since Oberholtzer must have had a lot of dry journal time and the story is an amazing one. Readers know his camera is snapping photographs. 

Thus, with the help of a sailing vessel, Bite, Bite’s brother, Ah-mat, and several others, Oberholtzer and Magee finally make it to the Hudson Bay Company post at Churchill. “…Constable Percy Rose got out of bed, made supper, and gave us a royal welcome. I talked to the men till nearly midnight, sitting in the kitchen by the warm fire. Billy slept over at the house of one of the half-breed servants.” This would be the re-supply stop crucial to the completion of their epic canoe journey — a completion still almost two months away. 

To follow Ober’s journey, purchase “Bound for the Barrens” available at www.lulu.com.