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A Mara-Burnside Trip/Conference and the First

Franklin Expedition

“And would we have survived, too, if given a chance? Kept peace and sanity and most of our toes? Kept hope when cell phone, wristwatch, and film advance failed and borealis was the only electric thing within range?”[1]

— Elizabeth Bradfield

Is it a canoe trip or is it a conference? Can it be both at once? How will fourteen professional educators and travel guides all used to leading trips work together? What about differences in terms of practice and phil­osophy between the six countries represented, not to mention fourteen dynamic personalities? These were certainly questions on everyone’s mind as we gathered in Yellowknife in 2010 for what we all thought was a first of its kind: a wilderness educators’ conference and canoe trip.[2] We would paddle the Mara Burnside rivers to the Arctic coast at Bathurst Inlet.

We were tired of meeting at conferences in Sheraton Hotels around the world. Personally, it always feels disingenuous as an outdoor educator to gather in Ballroom A anywhere in North America and discuss issues such as, Can the “no trace” camping philosophy fit with a “you can be home in the wilds” philosophy? For the record, the conference with keynote speakers and concurrent sessions isn’t the only way (or the best way) for professionals to meet. Here was my chance to test this theory! It was also the closest I have come to the specific landscapes of the first Franklin expedition, 1819–22.

The canoe trip/conference was the idea of the eminently qualified Morten Asfeldt, who cut his teeth guiding for Nahanni River Adventures in the 1980s before travelling to many (dare I say most) Arctic rivers with students at the Augustana Campus of the University of Alberta in Camrose, Alberta (see Chapter 10). This would be Morten’s fourth time down the Mara-Burnside river system. Along with Morten, the co-organizer was Simon Beames, a Canadian outdoor education scholar teaching at the University of Edinburgh. The two of them made fishing for lunch; regular sightings of wolves, grizzlies, muskox, and the Bathurst Inlet caribou migration; not to mention days of runnable whitewater and esker camping all a reality for those who responded to the invite. Together, Morten and Simon saw this canoe trip/conference to completion. Why the Mara-Burnside? It offers a bit of everything that Arctic rivers can offer. Of course, I would focus on the history.

But first, the conference idea.

Here’s how it worked. Thirty invitations were sent out, and twelve folks signed on. Morten and Simon would have their canoe trip/conference. Delegates came from Canada, the United Kingdom, Denmark, Norway, Sweden, and Japan. We were to write two papers to be distributed to delegates before the canoe trip. These papers served as conference sessions: one a curricular item of practice, the other an important theory to us as individuals. English would be our common language, though Scandinavian dialects were often more practical at times. Sessions included rethinking how we use metaphors to teach, how to use a group writing journal, understanding the body on a canoe trip, the importance of water for life, nature interpretation, how to wisely engage students, finding tools on the land, generating group discussion on environmental lifestyle, and peppering ritual and heritage into the experience.[3] We discussed our personal views of our carbon footprint in coming here, learned of local political issues (the possible coastal shipping port at Bathurst Inlet), and argued the merits of journey-based and local outdoor education. I have just scratched the surface here. Suffice it to say, I only remember dozing off once (or twice) during evening sessions after a full day on the water and my turn on dinner detail.

Certainly there was tension between life on the trail and the need to fulfill our interest in a successful professional conference. That said, it worked! We learned together. We had time for follow-up discussions on esker walks, around (or inside) the bug tent, or in canoes. We had time to expand our practices and ideas with much input from respected and non-distracted colleagues. A canoe partner on the mostly portage-free, lining-free Mara and Burnside rivers affords ample opportunity for the thoughtful dialogue and critique academics love. Though, critique led to an overly wet rapids run for a bowswoman when an enthusiastic conversation distractingly led canoes into the standing waves. The stern paddlers continued the dialogue over the roar of robust waves: the wrong line through the rapid. Such is the way of outdoor educator paddling academics.

As for the overall route, we started just downstream from the usual launch at Nose Lake. As hoped, the lake ice was a minor factor, but early season paddling ensured we would have reasonable headwater levels. By day two we had encountered our first of six grizzlies. By day three, the long, shallow rapids (not an easy go in rubber-bottomed Pakboats) gave way to kilometre after kilometre of easily runnable rapids. By day four on the Mara we were in the midst of the region’s annual caribou migration, travelling a dominant esker beside which we camped on two occasions. In total we had two portages to the Arctic Ocean, one being the infamous five-kilometre carry around the final river gorge. We also had several wind-bound days — good for conferencing, bad for paddling.

The Mara-Burnside river system trip is a classic Arctic River run. There is good fishing, great wildlife encounters, opportunities for long esker walks, few people, lots of bugs, and runnable rapids. We all had our special interests. For some, it was fishing, for others, wildlife sightings or paddling rapids. For me, I’m a happy generalist, with a special interest in the area’s history. The Mara-Burnside is not a historic river corridor like the Coppermine, Thelon, or Back rivers.[4] It is not a primary heritage river route, but it does have an interesting secondary role. Yes, there is a story to tell, and I had the opportunity then to share in some of the connection between the Mara-Burnside and the first Franklin expedition, but some of the story I learned following the trip. I will start with the ending. Sometimes it is the best way to begin.

Bob and Takako Takano on the Mara-Burnside river system.

Photo courtesy of Hans Gelter.

Liftoff! The winds were strong. Our Twin Otter airplane would travel from Bathurst Inlet on the Arctic coast to Yellowknife on the shores of Great Slave Lake. That’s the length of the barren lands of Canada. We would fly low, affording an easy view of the lower Bathurst Inlet; the Mara, Burnside, and Coppermine rivers; eskers aplenty; barrens to treeline transition; waterways as a corridor for easy travel; and a mass of lakes messing up any notion of water as a useful navigational aid. In the air with this excellent visibility, I was thinking of navigation, not because I would ever walk the long distance across the barrens but because the first Franklin Arctic land expedition did so in 1819–22.[5] Might I see Belanger Rapids and Obstruction Rapids, where river crossings by canoe and hastily made cockleshell canoe respectively exacted so much time and energy from the crew.[6] Might I see some dominant eskers as linear features that might have helped Franklin and company once they headed overland from the Hood River just to my northwest? I was flying over the country these men had walked through 193 years ago. This flight, along with the visceral experience of canoeing and walking in similar terrain, one river to the east of their Coppermine River, not to mention our travels in and viewing of Bathurst Inlet, helped put the first arctic

Flying back to Yellowknife from Bathurst Inlet, imagining Franklin’s men’s march.

land expedition closer to my mind.[7] (Although it was second to Samuel Hearne’s two-year tramp with Chipewyan families thirty-five years earlier.) I know the stories. Specific days had long since been etched in my head. These two weeks on the Mara-Burnside rivers were the closest I’d come to being there, and the low-level flight was a great gift.

Who else was thinking this way as the flights began? I was rendering a human story of the past into a felt experience on the land. I was mulling over our trip with its “harsh” summer conditions compared to Franklin’s men’s truly harsh October conditions, (read: early winter) and our viewing of animals for pleasure rather than on desperate survival-focused hunting excursions.[8]

There are many ways to frame the country, and perhaps the best way is no way at all. That would be to sit back and stare with no references to the terrain; to just be with it. Others might be doing that, although I’m not sure it is possible for most humans. Some certainly are naturalists first. They are looking for animals: the land as a laboratory for genetic diversity, perhaps. The geographer or land scientist watches for glacial features. The theologian might explore the possibility of sacred sites or ponder the land as cathedral. The paddler watches for waterways: the land as gymnasium. Some do all of this to some degree simultaneously. I suppose I do, but the land as a storied place is how I primarily tend to look at it. Did I find it, this way of seeing, or did it find me? In other words, did I first have the theory of place-responsive pedagogy whereby as a place becomes imbued with story it becomes meaningful and then bring it to my practice? Or did I see the land as a storied place and then discover a corresponding theory? I believe the latter is true in my case. It was a matter of imaginative spark. Educators Brian Wattchow and Mike Brown discuss the varied privileged interpretations from which outdoor educators see the land: “… nature as an arena where students experience personal development through challenging activity; or nature as a venue or landscape that can be appreciated and encountered aesthetically and for which we should develop some affinity; or nature as an environment in need of sustainable management practices by humans.”[9] William Godfrey-Smith in the 1970s explored ways of seeing nature: as a gymnasium (for recreation), as a cathedral (for spiritual growth), as a lab (for scientific study), and as a silo (for genetic storing and coding of materials).[10] It appears that from these environmental educators’ perceptions that nature is always a resource. It is always to be used. But as we bring personal meaning and an ever wider understanding to nature — simply put, as we bring nature inside — nature shifts toward being home. It provides study and recreation, yes, but as a home place for dwellers, not a visitor’s space for strangers. I was sure the naturalists, scientists, adventurers, and historians among our group all had some desire to move toward this Arctic place as a core place, rather than as a peripheral space. Indeed, we talked of such themes often.

Finally, and adding further to Godfrey-Smith’s list, Warwick Fox in 1995 wisely suggested that our culture’s nature awareness and perceptions have shifted with time. Culture moves. We are more aware of nature as a life support system (“which holds that a diverse non-human world benefits humans by performing functions necessary for our healthy survival, including the recycling of nutrients, the production of oxygen from carbon dioxide, and so on”); we are also moving toward seeing nature as psychologically necessary. This position acknowledges wild places are

A wilderness expedition conference session while windbound.

a needed refuge from human-designed places. While Godfrey-Smith’s position stresses that we like the non-human, the ecopsychology position suggests that we ought to have diverse non-human places for our mental growth and, indeed, our sanity.[11] These two positions (the life support and the eco-psychological) along with nature as a home place were amplified educational directions for our travels on the Mara-Burnside.Paddler/delegate Pete Higgins asked us to seek a “global intimacy” in our lives by living directly with an understanding of basic ecological principles such as the water cycle and photosynthesis. Deb Schrader and Robbie Nicol helped us explore nature as an ingrained part of our psyche through narrative appreciation and exercises of deeper questioning. Remember that intriguing tension between a river camping trip and an educators’ conference: there were heady times in the bug shelter or under the storm tarps.

For me, the flight back to Yellowknife was among the strongest moments of the trip for feeling the storied place. We had travelled together within a place-responsive pedagogy. Now we were leaving, and the place was coming alive before me with stories. That remained my frame of reference; that nature is a resource I must admit, but not a resource for us to use for our gain only, rather one for us to imaginatively dream into and enlarge our being. The difference in thinking of nature as resource is a matter of relationship and connectivity: nature as subject (home) or object (other). These questions were with me while on the land with our thoughtful group and on our visually stunning low-level return flight to Yellowknife. There was also a more specific set of questions. There was a historical storied way of seeing that was my mandate to share with my colleagues.

But first, a brief introduction is needed for the first Franklin Arctic land expedition.

John Franklin, with his four navy men and fifteen Native interpreters and voyageurs, travelled from York Factor on Hudson Bay to Great Slave Lake (the end of Europeans’ geographical knowledge at the time) in 1819. Franklin was gone from home for forty-two months. From Fort Providence they ascended the Yellowknife River to Winter Lake, where they built Fort Enterprise from which to descend the Coppermine River and travel east on the Arctic coast, surveying it as far as Bathurst Inlet. Then they retreated late in the season, walking without food stores and Native support from the Hood River, crossing the Burnside and Coppermine rivers without proper ferrying to return to Fort Enterprise and fresh supplies. The supplies were not there for the starving men, the strongest of whom had barely had enough strength to make their way to the fort. They pressed on until Yellowknife families were found to come to their aid. Before it was all over, there were murders, cannibalism, attempted mutinies, and epic snowshoe walks of twelve hundred miles to resupply. They were hoping to add significantly to the quest of the Northwest Passage to the Pacific Ocean. Suffice it to say, there are many stories embedded in this epic canoe trip turned hiking trip turned starvation march in the central Arctic.

I had wondered before our canoe trip why Franklin had decided to commence the walking retreat off the barren lands from the Hood River. The Hood River mouth is further north down the Bathurst Inlet coast from the Burnside and has a more formidable canyon to negotiate (though he didn’t know that last point). Perhaps he simply did not know about the Burnside River? When you are at the mouth of the Burnside River you look across the inlet to a long row of islands and Elliot Point. If you are travelling down the east shore of Bathurst Inlet as Franklin did, the river mouth is easily obscured from view. Despite the grandeur of the Burnside River sandbars, the river was not observed even with Franklin’s detailed survey work in the Inlet. This becomes clear on site, on the ground, and from the air. I had a partial answer. The Burnside River, though a better walking route inland, was never found.

On returning from our summer 2010 travels, I went back to the books. In all, there are four accounts of various aspects of the Franklin expedition of 1819–22: Hood, Back, Richardson, and Franklin. I had wondered if the Mara and Burnside rivers were known to the Franklin party, and I had assumed not, a point significant to their overall fate. A March 20, 1820, entry in Franklin’s journal, at Fort Chipewyan, provided the full answer. There, the infamous Métis Francois Beaulieu,[12] along with a Chipewyan named Black Meat, provided a rough map with distances and directions to the mouth of the Coppermine and Anatessy (now Burnside) rivers.[13] Franklin had been looking for this Anatessy River as a direct waterway to Contwoyto Lake, a significant landmark to return to Fort Enterprise. Indeed, the Hood and Western rivers were at first confused as the Burnside by Franklin. So conventional wisdom prevails: indigenous knowledge provided the explorers with the best options, but they failed to find it. Also, Franklin had wanted to complete the survey of the eastern shore of Bathurst Inlet. Had I known all this while our group was at the Burnside, I would have taken great delight in bringing our river of travel more directly into the Franklin story. I agree with the main expeditions editor, C. Stuart Houston: “had they found and recognized the mouth of the Burnside they might possibly have chosen this river as their return route as far as Contwoyto Lake.”[14] I’d add, if they had found the river when in the area (August 4, 1821) and identified it as the suggested best option to return, then the death march across the barren grounds that forever defines this expedition might not have happened. The decision was made to ascend the Hood River out of Bathurst Inlet on August 15. The tired men then paddled to the more northern mouth of the Hood River and began to walk with supplies on August 31 (twenty-seven critical days later).

At our trip’s end, further along in the low-level flight path, I was scouting for river crossings. At what is now known as Belanger Rapids, on the upper Burnside, their fragile canoe upset. Belanger was left stranded in the middle of the river. Franklin (with a second canoe swamping) reached the far shore, but Pierre St. Germain was swept downstream. It was mid-September. Snow was on the ground. Eventually a rope was secured across the two riverbanks and all got across. Imagine the scene: at Obstruction Rapids on the Coppermine, by October 4, 1821, the travellers were now without a canoe. Here St. Germain, with a piece of canvas and river willows, fashioned a “little cockleshell canoe.” Others were hunting or preserving energy. This river crossing was a spirit breaker. Following this nine-day delay with many failed crossing attempts, the large group is forced to separate into stronger and weaker parties for a last push to Fort Enterprise.

But one must pause every once in a while when reading history like this; Pierre St. Germain did what? The pause is needed so as not to gloss over the facts and to afford time to imagine the scene and the effort. What about St. Germain’s building of a cockleshell to cross the rapids? While this skilled hunter and interpreter had his request to abandon the expedition denied at the mouth of the Coppermine, he soon became its most indispensable member. One would be right to marvel at Pierre St. Germain’s determination on the return overland walk with two major river crossings. First at the Burnside River crossing, St. Germain was prominent in ferrying the party across at great hardship to himself. But the big story was at Obstruction Rapids on the Coppermine. Here, without any watercraft to cross, St. Germain spent four days searching unsuccessfully for wood to make a raft. He did scrounge enough river willow to fashion a cockleshell out of the fragments of canvas available. All relied completely on the ingenuity and stamina of the starving St. Germain. This crossing was the critical moment of failure or success for the already wretched return to Fort Enterprise. St. Germain had found the way.

But how did he do it? How can one man build a craft to cross a wide river with a strong current with such meagre resources? And what exactly is a cockleshell canoe anyway? Enter my friend André-François Bourbeau. He too was caught by this moment. He too was forced to pause in his reading to ponder. Then, unlike me, he set about duplicating the life-saving canoe building endeavour.[15] (See Chapter 12.)

Reading all four officers’ accounts — Franklin’s, Richardson’s, Back’s, and Hood’s — I was impressed less with the role of these men and more with the role of interpreters, voyageurs, and Yellowknife hunters (Akaicho’s Indians, as they were sometimes called). In particular, Pierre St. Germain stands out. While St. Germain was at times a “ringleader of discontent” (looking back, who could blame him for that — I’m reminded of Yossarian’s plea in the novel Catch-22, “the enemy is anyone who is going to get me killed”). How could St. Germain not voice concern about Franklin’s obsession with pressing on beyond the reaches of food and Native hunter support while travelling in ever more leaky birchbark canoes further along the stormy September Arctic Coast? Taking in personal views of the Arctic Coast from the mouths of the Burnside and Horton rivers provides a bit of perspective on what the coast might have been like to paddle in a stormy September season. I, for one, will stick to the rivers, particularly as the early autumn season kicks in. Pierre St. Germain remains my go-to guy when I contemplate that land expedition.

Back in the Twin Otter float plane, I followed water and land from the air with a keenness to see the Burnside River crossing and then the Coppermine. The picture I imagined of these men dealing with the river crossings sent a chill down my spine. And while I can’t claim to have crossed paths with either rapid, the big rivers and lakes evident from the air showcased the extreme challenges faced by starving men between September and November 1821.

Then, as we flew south, we passed the site where a near mutiny took place. On August 13, 1819, at Reindeer Lake (now called Descension Lake) at the Yellowknife River headwater after days of gruelling upriver travel and frequent portaging, a mutinous spirit broke out. The disgruntled voyageurs requested more rations. The trip leader, Franklin, wrote of this incident:

… whilst this meal was preparing, our Canadian Voyageurs, who had been for some days past murmuring at their meagre diet, and striving to get the whole of our little provisions to consume at once, broke out into open discontent, and several of them threatened they would not proceed forward unless more food was given to them. This conduct was the more unpardonable, as they saw we were rapidly approaching the fires of the hunters, and that provision might soon be expected. I therefore felt the duty incumbent on me, to address them in the strongest manner on the danger of insubordination, and to assure them of my determination to inflect the heaviest punishment on any that should persist in their refusal to go on, or in any other way attempt to retard the Expedition.[16]

The officer George Back wrote on the same day:

… about 10 a.m. a mutinous spirit displayed itself amongst the men — they refused to carry the goods any farther alleging a scarcity of provisions as a reason for their conduct — Mr. Franklin told them we were too far removed from justice to treat them as they merited — but if such a thing occurred again — he would not hesitate to make an example of the first person who should come forward — by “blowing out his brains” — this Salutary speech had a weighty effect on the weather cock minds of the Canadians — who without further animadeversion returned quietly their duty.[17]

I have always taken great delight in these two passages. Franklin is proper in tone. Back, I cannot help think, is more truthful. I shared this story on our trip and discussed how travel literature must always be interpreted and how having more than one account adds fuel to the imaginative fire.

Hours into our return flight to Yellowknife and we were still flying at an unusually low altitude. Somewhere below me in a mess of lakes and undistinguished terrain was their Reindeer Lake. When we hit the treeline, the patches of trees reminded me of Warburton Pike’s 1892 barren ground travels to the east of us.[18] Such patches of trees provided great relief. Here, a fire could finally be had again. Often food and even a canoe would be cached in such locations to aid the return trip off the barrens back to Great Slave Lake. Franklin and his men were too far gone to enjoy any celebratory spirit in returning to the trees, and caches of food were not to be found. The Yellowknife families who had supported the expedition down the Coppermine River before returning home simply assumed the obsessed/confused travellers would perish. The stories of Hearne, Pike, and mostly Franklin lay below me as our flight advanced into the trees.

And what of the scenery I so enjoyed while on the river and on walks from campsites? As one might expect, there was for Franklin’s men, who wrote published journals, a range from desolate to grand. Richardson, while on an advance exploration party, wrote in a letter on June 9, 1821, to send back to Fort Enterprise: “Amongst these hills you may observe some curious basins, but nowhere did I see anything worthy of your pencil. So much for the country; it is a barren subject, and deserves to be thus briefly dismissed.”[19]

To the contrary, George Back wrote in his journal, later that same month:

… the scene was interesting and novel — a lake bounded on each side with high and almost perpendicular rocks, whose green summits were capped with large stones — and whose valleys displayed at certain distances a few solitary clumps of pines — claimed the first attention — whilst the continued ranges of receding blue hills — which the eye lost ultimately in the grey dimness of the atmosphere — was scarcely less attractive — our own cavalcade possessed the centre, and what with the total innovation of transporting canoes in such a manner — the singular appearance of the men and sledges — the positions and dress of the officers as well as the deep contrast between the perpetual silence of the place, and the animation of the party — afforded a most perfect view of a voyage of discovery.[20]

For me and, I trust, my enthusiastic comrades, the scenery was awesome. One person’s bleak or “barren subject” is another person’s “interesting and novel … perfect view.” Despite the fact that our summer travels did not correspond with the wintery conditions on the barren grounds for the Arctic land expedition, I could regularly place the men in certain aspects of the scenery slowly working their way south as I flew by. Once we landed in Yellowknife, I felt the relaxed calm of having exercised my imagination well.

I had enjoyed two weeks of a collegial canoe trip/conference. Our supplies were plenty, our time lengthy, the land welcoming with animals to view (not seen as our only food source), our purpose personal (not driven by the full force of the British Empire), and our ambitions modest. We had come together to learn from the land and share the varied attentions we each brought to the trip. Our story is a good one. It was a successful first wilderness expedition conference. Still, I cannot stop thinking about that darn Franklin story with characters such as Pierre St. Germain.

Conference delegates at Bathurst Inlet Lodge.

Photo courtesy of Burt Page.

Returning home after his distressing trip, Lieutenant Back told the North West Company’s representative, Willard Wentzel, at Fort Chipewyan, “To tell the truth, Wentzel, things have taken place which must not be known.” Wentzel already suspected as much. He had a year earlier written to his superiors, “It is doubtful whether, from the distant scene of their transactions, an authentic account of their operations will ever meet the public eye in England.”[21]

I hope our 2010 trip is promoted widely as an example of a successful idea, perhaps redefining outdoor education conferencing. That first Franklin expedition was to be promoted, but how truthfully? And that is why we need to pause and ponder when reading our Canadian travel literature. Often the truth has to be gleaned from the imagination.

The American poet Wallace Stevens in 1942 wrote: “Imagination is a liberty of the mind, a power of the mind and over the possibilities of things … we have it, because we don’t have enough without it.”[22] To imagine, we become open to ideas. It starts with a spark of possibility. The possibility is that the stories of the place, and indeed the stories we create in the present, become alive and bring meaning to time. The historical muse is a solid part of place-responsive pedagogy; a storied landscape leads beyond meaning to caring and perhaps acting on behalf of the place. All this is a sincere step towards cultivating ecological consciousness — part of an educative process. That is the theory.

The practice is to pepper the trail with stories that, for those who grab onto the imaginative spark of possibility, will render the past as a felt experience. It is not romanticism, but rather a widening of reality. The practice can lead to what novelist James David Duncan explores in The River Why. He writes of characters with “native intelligence.”

… it evolves as a native involves himself in his region. A non-native awakes in the morning in a body in a bed in a room in a building on a street in a country in a state in a nation. A native awakes in the center of a little cosmos — or a big one, if his intelligence is vast — and he wears this cosmos like a robe, senses the barely perceptible shifting migrations, moods and machinations of its creatures, its growing green things, its earth and sky.[23]

The big cosmos storied landscape I aspired to develop and share was that of the barren grounds. Franklin’s Arctic land expedition of 1819–22 was a primary source. Some might have felt that imaginative spark. Others were always more imaginatively driven towards the animals, the landforms, and the body in motion. All of these attentions were shared amongst our group in organized sessions and informal moments. There was a happy air of eclecticism as we bounced off one another’s primary interests. Much talent, much knowledge, much to share by way of theory and practice. We were on a canoe trip and at a professional conference. It worked! We were, in the words of educator David Orr, “re-educating people [ourselves] in the art of living well where they are.”[24]