Chapter 17 ~ The Place of Many Lamps
Health was a topic of conversation at Burwell that July. Max swore if you kept your socks on all fishing season no harm could come to you. Even if your socks wore out, you ought to keep on the remnants and pull the new ones over them, he maintained, and he certainly looked a fit advert for his advice. The rest of us were in fine condition even though we wore clean socks, but two of the Eskimos were off colour.
One of them, Jimmy, came to me and indicated he wanted me to look at his back. High between his shoulder blades he had an ugly red swelling. The medicine chest was called for and it was discovered an enormous supply of penicillin and sulfa drugs had disappeared.
The lovable Henry Anatok was called in as he was patriarch of the tribe and officer commanding the medicine chest when the government officer went South in the winter.
Max either could not believe his ears, or he could not understand Henry’s explanation, and as the conversation was conducted in both broken Eskimo and broken English, we could not understand either. That evening, Max raised Fort Chimo on the radio and asked George Koneak at the other end to find out from Henry, who was standing by us in the hut, exactly what had happened to the drugs. A three-way conversation took place between Max, George and Henry. The upshot of it was, Henry had maintained the tribe’s health in a remarkable manner during the previous winter. Anyone who had so much as a headache had been given three hundred thousand units of penicillin.
And the Port Burwell Eskimos, crowded at the door to listen to the radio, were all there, bright and smiling, proving its efficacy. Not a dose was left, so it was resolved to get some drugs from the first ship which called in, in case an emergency should arise. Meanwhile, Jimmy still needed treatment. I banked on the swelling being a giant boil, and by some fortuitous chance I recalled an old wives’ tale that soap, sugar and saliva would draw out poison. Sitting in the hut with his parka on his knees, Jimmy watched as I prepared the mixture with my own spittle.
Even he looked wary of the remedy, but luck was on our side. It proved to be a boil and cleared up beautifully and I considered the treatment was my small contribution to the char fishermen’s welfare, because Jimmy hauled nets with the rest of them when we reached Ikkudliayuk.
The other sick person was an Eskimo woman in the opposite cove. Her temperature fluctuated, she vomited and took to her bed for several days, and when we obtained drugs from an ice breaker which called in, she confounded us all by saying she felt better and got up.
On the last Saturday in July, I was up first and served coffee to the men, Paul, Bill and Max as they came in to the hut from the freezer where they slept. As I handed round the cups, a deputation of Eskimos headed by Henry came in.
“We will go fishing today,” said Henry, and we immediately whizzed into action.
Rosemary and I were to accompany the boats to Ikkudliayuk with Max, while Paul and Bill continued their work at the freezer site. Bill put on a large pot and cooked an enormous stew for use on the trip. It was vitaminised with manglewurzles, a coarse large type of turnip, usually fed to cattle, but the only fresh vegetable in Port Burwell.
We deflated our air mattresses, packed films and cameras and a few clothes and found a comfy rock each before departure. The only alternative on the longliner was to have the men all look forward while the women went astern, and that was not going to be good for navigation in the Straits of McLelan.
The Eskimos, looking like pirates, moved up and down the cliff with boxes on their shoulders. Cooking pots, puppies, bannocks and babies were piled on board. They loosened the guy ropes and their tents fluttered and fell to the ground and were stowed in the hold. “I won’t take me gun, but where’s me pipe and tobacco,” said Max as he set about stowing a mountain of fishing gear, anchors and nets on deck.
Deck space was soon limited by the number of dogs and people, and Max moved about them like a referee in a football match played by three teams, dressed in a pair of fireman’s overalls fastened with orange buttons, numbered “199 Guarde Feu Auxiliare.” Before we slipped our moorings at noon, two small boats were lashed on deck and the Newfoundland dory was towed astern and we entered a thin fog towards the straits. By half past one in the afternoon, the fog had lifted and a clear blue sky covered us.
The battered whaleboat followed the longliner and Max called for us to “hang on tight” as we entered a seething cauldron of whirlpools. The passage through the mountains was like a canal, it was so narrow and straight, but the water was in constant turmoil. Webs of tenuous mist drifted down each valley, cleaving the desolate north shore and not a blade of plant life seemed to grow in the canyon. Snow lay in north facing furrows and the whole fifteen miles of water had a black, brooding air of the most evil aspect. The Eskimos spoke little as the longliner and whaleboat struggled ahead, but when we thrust into the Atlantic side of the strait, the kettles went on and tea mugs and slabs of bannock were handed round. The motion of the ship was entirely different in the broad swells of the Atlantic as the waves pressed the last of their energy against the rugged coast of Labrador. We hove-to until the whaleboat, with Henry Anatok at the helm, caught us up and took the lead down the coast into the tranquil waters of Ikkudliayuk Fjord.
The inlet wended fourteen miles deep between sheltering mountains, and flocks of eider ducks bustled away as we disturbed their quiet dominion. Seals bobbed in the water and the men aboard jerked to life, unslung their rifles, loaded them up and peppered away in an outburst of active joy.
Henry called, “You find many seal and trout,” and from their bundles, one or two of the Eskimos hauled out ancient telescopes to scan the fjord with an awakening interest. Henry Anatok had known the fjord as a boy and he had promised them it would be good hunting country. He had lived there until the flu epidemic of 1919 and already they had seen enough game to justify his claim.
At the head of the fjord, a waterfall cascaded over low rocks. It was the outlet of a broad lake which was flooded by salt water at high tide. It was on the salt water side of the rocks where Max and Henry planned to spread the char nets to catch the fish as they returned to the lake after summer feeding in the sea. The movement of Arctic char can be predicted with a fair amount of precision, and the fishermen had arrived at what was promised to be a fruitful time.
The land between the head of the fjord and the mountains to the north was a half-mile-wide strip of gentle green tundra, and as far as the eye could see, stone tent rings lay in ranks, right to the foot of the hills. Empty rings were the only traces left of Ikkudliayuk’s Eskimos in the camp once known as The Place of Many Lamps, for not a soul lived there any more, only the lemmings and the ptarmigan and the foxes.
The two small boats were slung over the side of the longliner and the women and tents were ferried ashore. Josephee, who had piloted us up Ungava Bay, took the dory full of dogs and puppies, then he came back for Rosemary and me. It tipped ominously as our gear was dropped in and Max allayed our fears by saying: “A Newfoundland dory will never tip up. They’re wonderful boats. They don’t tip, they just sink straight under you.”
With such reassurance, no sensible person would hesitate, so I hopped down and Josephee pulled for the shore. Already the people had pitched their tents inside some of the old stone rings and they came over to help raise our tent inside another empty ring near the beach.
The plateau began to fill with life again and looking round at the pathetic traces of a once busy camp, I could picture the tribes of people, the cycle of birth, life and death inside those small, enduring circles of stone – their cheerful courage of no avail under the onslaught of a foreign disease, their tenacity for survival obliterated like wheat before a scythe.
Henry Anatok’s tent was pitched a little way from the rest of us so I walked over to visit him. When I asked why he was so far from the rest of us, Henry gave me the most exquisite smile. He pointed to the stones holding down the ropes of his patched tent and said gently: “This is my home, I was born here inside this tent ring.”
Henry, aged sixty, had indeed led his people back home.
