By BETH WATERHOUSE

Executive Director,

Oberholtzer Foundation

Week No.7

July 26- Aug. 2, 1912

“Du Brochet, with its picketed cemetery and church and numerous clay-covered houses the south side of a sand ridge, looked a considerable village. On closer inspection, however, most of the buildings especially the HBC store which has a pair of caribou antlers on the gable, proved pretty dilapidated.”

As a reader of Bound for the Barrens, and reading this late July week of paddling Reindeer Lake, I wonder what Ober expected Du Brochet to be like? He is candid in the above description, and after last week’s dashed hopes, you can again hear his disappointment. There are houses, however, and people, and the presence of the Catholic Church, and the prospect of supplies or possibly even that elusive guide.

“Alphonse who was there too answered all the questions intelligently but said he did not know what to do with his wife and two children. I proposed to him a salary of three skins ($1) a day, and then went away to let him think about it.”

Meanwhile, Ober, ever the anthropologist, attends a church service and he notices the practices and the Indian women in church in Du Brochet on the morning of July 28, 1912. His descriptions are endearing, including “an intermittent wheezing turned out to be an organ, with Alphonse presiding.”

In Du Brochet, Ober was still determining the overall route of their summer and autumn journey. “At noon, I met Laurent at the priest’s and learned that the only way I could go east was by way of Nueltin, using preferably the northern river course.” (So in fact, Ober did have guidance on that day, at least!) At nearly six in the evening, “Billy and I set out for the (Cochrane) river. We paddled on till nearly ten o’clock…”

Following the map, readers can note Ober and Billy pressed on and are now headed north on the Cochrane and will be traveling mostly on rivers for a time. It could not have helped their sense of urgency that, on August first, “The water in the bean pot and Billy’s wet socks had frozen solid.” Certainly the window between ice and ice is a small one up in the far northland.

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