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By Max Finkelstein “Get up! There’s a grizzly bear in camp!” Those terse words, hissed through clenched teeth, cut into my dreams like a news flash. Jim and I crawled out of the tent into the brilliant stillness of an arctic dawn. All traces of sleep evaporated instantly when our bleary eyes focused on the silver-tipped barrenland grizzly nonchalantly investigating the gear we had stashed under our canoe. Without any clear plan of action, we shouted, “Stupid bear! Get out of here! That’s our stuff!” The big bruin looked up, snorted, and shambled up the beach towards a willow thicket. At the edge of the ticket, about 10 metres away, he turned to face us, stood up on his hind legs, slowly shaking his head from side to side. Three thoughts filled my head. The first was that I was looking at the photo of a lifetime (if only I had my camera). The second was that we might be in trouble. The third was that I have had both these thoughts several times before on this trip. Leaving no time for a fourth thought, the bear hunkered down into the waist-high willows and disappeared. We urged the other four members of our expedition out of their tents and waited. All was quiet; the deep silence that can only be found in the barrenlands. Fifteen minutes passed. Then we saw the bear, 100 metres away, loping along the beach. A collective sigh of relief was exhaled. But our hearts were still pounding hard an hour later. The bear had ignored Katherine’s muffins, which were sitting on the upturned canoe, and instead gnawed on a bottle of liquid soap. Perhaps this was an indication of the quality of the muffins, we gently chided Katherine. This incident occurred on the last day of our canoe trip down the Thelon River in the Northwest Territories. It was an apt finale for a magical trip – and a reminder that we were merely visitors here. It was our presence that had interrupted the bear on his regular river patrol. The bear didn’t invade our camp; rather, it was we who had intruded on his domain. The Thelon flows through a land barely out of the Ice Age, a land unchanged by humans where you can travel for weeks and not see another person. This was the last mainland area of Canada to be explored. David Hanbury, an English gentleman-explorer, was the first European to canoe this river. In 1899 he paddled upstream from Hudson Bay, following the Thelon, and then paddling up its major tributary that now bears his name, eventually reaching Great Slave Lake. Hanbury wrote in his diary that “. . . the sense of freedom the Barren Ground gives ... cannot be described.” This is still true today. According to Hanbury, the Inuit called this river the “Ark-i-linik,” meaning “wooded river.” They travelled up it from Hudson Bay to gather driftwood to build kayaks and komatiks (sleds). The Indians who frequented its upper reaches referred to it as “Thelewezzeth” or Thelon. For our expedition team, the Thelon was simply a top wilderness-canoeing destination. Set in one of the world’s largest, least disturbed ecosystems, the Thelon has spectacular scenery, abundant wildlife and great fishing. The upper Thelon and the Hanbury, the two most commonly used approaches, require many portages. But the scenery is strikingly beautiful, particularly the canyons where these rivers tumble off the Canadian Shield into the sedimentary rock of the Hudson Bay lowlands. Below Dickson Canyon, it’s a portage-free paddle all the way to Baker lake, almost 600 kilometres. Days flow into days as the Thelon sweeps by spruce forests, barren ridges of frost-shattered rocks, sand beaches that look transplanted from tropical desert isles, red sandstone cliffs where rough-legged hawks and gyrfalcons swoop and soar. The current carries you past staring muskox, imperturbable moose, patrolling grizzlies, white wolves, and caribou beyond counting - through a land where time and light stand still. A Walk on the Tundra Look down at your feet. You are walking on the arctic forest. For most of its length, the Thelon River flows through the so-called Barrenlands. But the Barrenlands are anything but barren. The tundra is covered with a dense mat of lichens, mosses, herbs and shrubs. In July, sprinkled on the tundra-like constellations in the night sky, are wildflowers – white mountain avens, purple louseworts, pink dwarf fireweed, yellow Arnica. There are plenty of trees here – white spruce, dwarf birch and willow form dense mats in sheltered areas. The trees are just very small. I count the rings with a geologist’s loop on a twisted spruce just two inches across. It is 140 years old. A walk on the tundra is a breathtaking experience. The land, vast and empty, stretches unbroken under the circle of the sky. Not a single branching silhouette breaks the skyline; no leaves rustle in the arctic breeze. At each step, your boot crushes a thousand brittle, curled greyish-white lichens. The aromatic, spicy aroma of dwarf Labrador tea and arctic heather fills the air. Climbing now to the top of an esker where cushions of mountain avens, white and cheering, nestle in a small depression, eking out a tenuous existence on the scant soil. Over here is a patch of arnica, their sunshine yellow daisy-like flowers supported on spindly stems. A tuft of muskox wool clings to the willows; wolf tracks pattern damp earth; caribou bones scattered over a grassy slope ... A ptarmigan suddenly flies up in front of you. Listen. Can you hear her chicks peeping? Over there is an “inukshuk,” two stones stacked on a large lichen-encrusted boulder to mark the way to somewhere. We wonder how long ago it was built. Owl pellets are scattered on the ground around it. Ancient Campsites When David Hanbury descended the Thelon, he was greeted by Inuit camped upstream of Beverley Lake. Today these traditional campsites are easily spotted. Circles of boulders, once used to hold down skin tents, cover the highest bluffs (modern campers leave behind rectangles of boulders). The Inuit left many artifacts behind: the cracked long bones of caribou; flakes of quartzite used as scrapers and chisels; a piece of wood, carefully shaped into a smooth curve, once part of the framework of a kayak; a tiny wooden double-bladed paddle, perhaps a child’s toy; wooden stakes still embedded in the ground where they once pinned a caribou skin for scraping ... The Inuit came here in summer to hunt caribou. How long was this campsite used? When was the cycle of the seasons broken? As the caribou and muskox are part of this land, so too are the Inuit. In the short time since Europeans have travelled this land, they have also left their mark. In a grove of spruce trees are three weathered wooden crosses and the remains of a tiny log cabin. John Hornby, English gentleman and legendary northern traveller, and two friends wintered here in 1927. Hornby, who took pride in his ability to live off the land, normally took only tea and flour on his trips. But when the three travellers reached the Thelon in the fall of 1926, the annual caribou migration had already passed. All three starved to death before summer arrived. John Hornby, who had performed miracles of survival, made one fatal miscalculation in a land that gives no second chances. The Thelon Game Sanctuary On an earlier trip on the Thelon, one with a happier ending, John Hornby reported: “... there is a large uninhabited area where muskox are plentiful, swans and geese nest, and caribou have their young undisturbed by man ... if it is desired to protect the game in this part of the country it is essential to take measures to prevent traders from encouraging natives to hunt in this district. A few years, perhaps, and it will be too late.” David Hanbury had also advocated the protection of game in this area: “...on the Thelon there is a stretch of country into which no human being enters ... thus there still remains one spot in the Great Barren Northland which is sacred to the muskox. Here the animals remain in their primeval state, exhibiting no fear, only curiosity ...” J.W. Tyrrell, the famous Canadian explorer, paddled down the Thelon in 1900, surveying for a possible railway line to Hudson Bay. He reported: “For the preservation of the muskoxen – which may be so easily slaughtered – ... I would suggest that the territory between the Thelon and Back rivers be set apart by the government as a game preserve.” In 1927, the federal government proclaimed the Thelon Game Sanctuary. Ironically, it included the very spot where Hornby, the sanctuary’s proposer, was at that very moment starving to death. Today, the Sanctuary encompasses 56,000 square kilometres, an area larger than Nova Scotia. It is the only area in the Northwest Territories where hunting and trapping and mining exploration are prohibited. Close Encounters It is virtually impossible to paddle the Thelon without encountering wildlife. On the first morning of our trip, we awoke to see 10 muskox, black dots moving across the tundra. We scrambled to set up our spotting scope, not believing our good luck, certain that these would be the only muskox we would see during the entire trip. But by the end of the trip, the count was over 100 muskox. Once we saw a herd of 29, dozing beside the river like huge dark boulders. As our canoes drew close, a big bull, weighing at least 600 pounds, snorted and stood up. Soon the herd was galloping across the tundra, the sound of their hooves beating a staccato rhythm. It was a scene from the Ice Age. We would not have been surprised to see woolly mammoths appear on the horizon. “Umingmak” – the bearded ones in the Inuit language – personify this land. Tough, yet vulnerable, they are perfectly adapted to this harsh environment, and remain on the tundra all winter. Their woolly coats, made of extremely dense underfur covered by long coarse guard hairs, are such perfect insulation that muskox are impervious to the coldest arctic blizzard. In addition to muskox, we saw white arctic wolves, chippy “sics-sics” (ground squirrels), golden eagles, bald eagles, peregrine falcons, gyrfalcons, rough-legged hawks, parasitic jaegars, all four species of loons, blazing white tundra swans, flocks of moulting Canada geese, stately sandhill cranes. But the animals that will forever remain most deeply etched in our memories are the caribou. Each summer the Beverley caribou herd, over 300,000 strong, migrates up the Thelon Valley. The following days we paddled through a land alive with caribou. Caribou hair floated on the water, forming dense mats in the eddies, and in our soup. Caribou lined the beaches. Picket fences of antlers were silhouetted in the morning sun behind every ridgetop. We saw several large groups of caribou swimming across the Thelon. With their broad splayed hooves for paddles and hollow hair for flotation, caribou are excellent swimmers. When they reach the shore, they shake themselves like dogs, the spray forming a halo of sparkling diamonds suspended in the morning sunlight. Days flow into days as the Thelon carries us past red sandstone cliffs, Lookout Point, the larch forests of the Finney River, and the maze of the Ursus Islands. We stop to hike to Musk Ox Hill, a pingo (a hill with a core of ice thrust up through the permafrost) located about five kilometres from the river. It shimmers on the flat barrens like a distant snow-capped mountain. However, as we walk towards it, it begins to shrink in size to its true dimensions – a hill about 20 metres high. Past the turbulent waters of the Thelon Bluffs, we are swept down to Beverley Lake, the first of three vast tundra lakes on the route to Baker Lake and civilization, still hundreds of portage-free kilometres and weeks away. Perhaps the essence of the barrens was best expressed by Saltatha, an old Chipewyan Chief, when replying to a priest’s description of heaven: “Is it more beautiful than the country of the muskox in summer, when sometimes the mist blows over the lakes, and sometimes the water is blue, and the loons cry very often?” The tundra overpowers and empowers you with its vitality. There is peace here, and a beauty that penetrates beyond the mind and heart, right down to the soles of your feet.
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