Week 22
Nov.7-9, 1912
It is hard to imagine how Billy Magee felt or how Ernest Oberholtzer managed to let go of the paddle and do something else with his life in the coming weeks of winter.
On Nov. 7, 1912, however, back in Fort Frances, having come down from Gimli, Manitoba on the night train, there is a little more to the original story. Magee, fellow paddler, camping expert, wise man with wind, wave, and fire — was still connected to Oberholtzer with the thread of a contract. On this November day, Ober “found Billy at the hotel at four o’clock and paid him $84.35 in cash (had advanced $10.00 at Winnipeg) and a check for $200. This was $2.00 a day for 144 days, railway fare twice and return to Mine Centre and board and bed at Fort Frances. He said he would deposit $150 in the bank. Then he took my pots and eskimo boots and shook hands.”
With that shake of their strong and calloused hands, the two men parted. After having shared the small and smaller space of a canoe, upright during the darkening days and sharing the space underneath it in some hundred of those 144 nights, the connection was broken. The contract was honored. The promise to “go end earth” had been fulfilled.
Readrs may believe that at this point, Oberholtzer still thought, in fact imagined in some detail, that he would do something with his notes and get them published. He felt he had made big news and that it would catch ‘hold and become increasingly important. Back in Gimli on Election Day, Ober had a small chance to begin to promote himself with a druggist, Dr. Dunn, but he chose not to. “…having learned that he was the correspondent of the Winnipeg Free Press, I had to close down on him.”
Nine decades later, Ober’s biographer, Joe Paddock of Litchfield, Minn., “Keeper of the Wild,” writes of this decision.
Says Paddock, “One wonders if Ober made a mistake in doing so (closing down). It is difficult for an individual to convince the world that he or she has done something wonderful, and as would become apparent, Ober might have more wisely allowed Dr. Dunn to celebrate his story in the Winnipeg paper as fully as possible.”
As readers breathe a centennial sigh and close the re-telling of this journey, they now know, however, that the two men did do something “wonder-full.” That they would return to their lives healthy and sane, that Ober could recount the nights and firelights of that epic journey again and again… this is a wonder in itself.
