Читать книгу River Rough, River Smooth - Anthony Dalton - Страница 8

PREFACE

SINCE I WAS A BOY, roaming alone across a deserted Second-World-War aerodrome¹ in southern England on foot or on my bicycle in search of wild creatures, or building a makeshift raft out of oil drums and old rope and paddling across a flooded gravel quarry, I have felt at home in the outdoors. In those long-gone years, when not at school, my days varied between solitary adventures and reading about the travels of larger-than-life figures from history and from fiction. Books by H. Rider Haggard, G.A. Henty, and R. M. Ballantyne adorned my bookshelves. Later, as I grew older and my literary education improved, I found much satisfaction in the heroic deeds as told by the masters of Greek mythology. Homer in particular thrilled me with his dramatic opus The Iliad and his glorious tale of the epic journey undertaken by Ulysses in The Odyssey. Equally, I was inspired by the magnificent prose poems crafted by Samuel Taylor Coleridge, John Keats, Henry Wordsworth Longfellow, Sir Walter Scott, and Alfred Lord Tennyson, plus the controversial but brilliant Charles Beaudelaire.

Those feelings of youthful comfort in the outdoors, combined with the books I devoured, eventually translated into a nomadic adult life of adventure that has taken me across great deserts, into the high mountains, through steamy jungles, down mighty rivers, and over the world’s seas. By the early 1990s I had travelled just about everywhere I wanted to go, and I had a memory bank full of extremely personal treasures. For these reasons I included the three enigmatic paragraphs from an old tale by an unknown author² to open this book. Those few words, more than perhaps any others, could reflect the possible raison d’être for my many long journeys, including the two related in this collection.

From my earliest years the sea held a fascination for me that I could never deny. Perhaps that had much to do with being born in Gravesend, on the south bank of the Thames estuary — in its lower reaches, one of the most important commercial rivers in the world. Every day a never-ending parade of ships of all sizes and from all maritime nations steamed up and down the river, to and from Tilbury Docks and the Pool of London. As a small boy, whenever I could, I watched from the shore and dreamed of faraway places.

In direct contrast to the sea, following an extended visit to Egypt, Sudan, and Libya, followed by the equally sand-covered lands of Syria, Jordan, and Iraq in my early twenties, I developed a passion for deserts. As a direct result of that initial North African and Middle Eastern experience, I later spent much time exploring the western and central Sahara, the incredibly beautiful Namib, much more of the Middle East, and the barren parts of the Australian Outback. Most years, my love of boats and being on the water fitted comfortably in between desert journeys.

Despite my devotion to the deserts and seas of the world, often when back home in Canada I would study maps of the North. In the late 1970s and mid 1980s I travelled in the Arctic a few times and knew I wanted to see more. Equally, I was fascinated by the barren lands between the populated southern corridor across Canada and the Arctic Circle. The great rivers, in particular, called out to me, perhaps inspired by my early years on the banks of the Thames. Tales of the adventures lived by the hardy fur traders and explorers of the Hudson’s Bay Company intrigued me. I knew that one day, when I had had my fill of deserts, I would roam north and see more of Canada.

In 1992 I visited Churchill, Manitoba, on a photojournalism assignment. There, on the shores of Hudson Bay, I met Mark Ingebrigtson. Mark, owner of a local travel agency, loaned me his truck so I could go exploring on my own. He arranged for me to take a helicopter flight over the Hudson Bay shoreline in search of polar bears. He and a fellow photographer, Mike Macri, showed me Churchill and its environs in a way that few could. Across the Churchill River, easily visible from where I watched beluga whales cruising in from the bay, stood the concrete bulk of Fort Prince of Wales: once a bastion of the Hudson’s Bay Company.

Eighteen months later Mark’s friend and business associate, Rob Bruce-Barron, a marketing advisor to a variety of Manitoba organizations, contacted me with an offer I could not resist. A team of Cree First Nation rowers from Norway House were planning to take a replica of a traditional York boat down the full length of the Hayes River to York Factory in the summer of 1994. Would I like to go with them to document the expedition? Would I?You bet I would.

At that time I was living in Antwerp,³ Belgium. Manitoba and Norway House were on the other side of an ocean. Fortunately, I had a few months in which to make arrangements. Between other writing and photography jobs, I studied maps of Manitoba, I read about the Hudson’s Bay Company’s use of the Hayes River, and I learned how York boats were built. I still had no idea what I was getting myself into. I just knew I had to be a part of that historic voyage.

River Rough, River Smooth is, for the most part, the remarkable story of an expedition on an historic Canadian river that started full of promise, yet failed because, I suspect, the reality of the journey was considerably more demanding than the dream that inspired it. The original expedition by York boat was terminated less than half the way down the Hayes River. That rather abrupt ending of what could have continued as a great adventure for all of us on board saddened me deeply. However, I had committed myself to travelling 650 kilometres on the Hayes River and, despite the unexpected change of plans at Oxford House in 1994 and again in 1995, I was determined to continue the journey one way or another. After a few false starts, six summers later I did just that.That journey, too, is part of this story, as are brief glimpses into life as it was for the river runners and other travellers during the fur-trade era.

York Factory as it looked in 1853. The author’s goal was to reach York Factory by travelling the full length of the Hayes River.

I am grateful for the opportunity of challenging the Hayes River with the easygoing members of the Norway House York boat crew. Most of the time I enjoyed myself immensely and I learned so much from them. Equally, I can smile with satisfaction when I think of the later expedition by canoe: of my travelling companions and the adventures we shared on the next stage of that great river coursing across Manitoba to spill itself into Hudson Bay. Both journeys were physically challenging. Both were important history lessons for me. In combination, they were another realization of some of my boyhood dreams.