Oliver's Twist (29 page)

In some places through the canyons, there was no passage on either side, only steep granite walls. We did not know it, but we were engaged in a hybrid sport called “canyoneering,” a combination of rock climbing and canoe lining. We crept along the walls, gripping whatever ledges and crevices our boots and free hands could find. Our other hands held lines to the bows or sterns of the loaded boats, pitching and tossing in the rapids five to ten feet below. In a balancing act worthy of the Cirque de Soleil, we teetered on narrow ledges while controlling the tension on the ropes that held the boats. Occasionally, an unexpected tug or a loss of balance meant one of the team had to throw
away his line rather than risk a fall. The lone hanger-on then had to manage the charging vessel single-handedly until his partner had recovered his balance. The thundering river was frigid and the possibility of rescue, should someone slip, frighteningly slim.

Two days of this was enough to convince us that the enterprise was madness. The volume of the river was immense, greatly increasing the danger of its rapids. The unrelieved tension of physical effort was exhausting. Hands and feet were cut, ribs bruised from falls, nerves frayed. My mind has done me the kindness of erasing from memory whether it was Tim or I who stumbled and dropped his lead line. The current bit into our canoe's stern like a ravenous animal and ripped the line from the other man, who could not hang on to what was now a two-ton torpedo. I watched sick and disbelieving as our canoe flew downstream fully loaded and upright with no one aboard. It disappeared into a cauldron of piled-up water and waves.

Even now, many years later, I search in frustration for a favourite item of clothing or equipment. Then I remember. Was it Proust who said the hours of our lives are embodied in material things? I grieved the loss of personal possessions lovingly collected and cared for over many years. On the other hand, Tim and I were not in the canoe; we were alive and the trip was over. Fortunately, the accident occurred near an ancient riverbed lined with hard sand. This was one of only a few times we used Ted Johnson's emergency radio transmitter to contact a passing pilot.

There was a postscript. As luck would have it, the spot where we ended our expedition marked the last significant drop in altitude on the Isortoq. Just past that point, the river flows into a series of calm lakes that lead all the way to Foxe Bay. The following year, a few of the group insisted on completing the
balance of the river. They found our canoe, its gunwales and guts ripped out. Nothing else surfaced except two bottles of our best wine, buried in the sand alongside the shell of the boat. Happily they were intact, and all of us enjoyed them in urban comfort at the club reunion a few months later.

Another opportunity for canoeing notoriety presented itself in 1992 when we made for Ellesmere Island and the Ruggles River. Ted Johnson had dreamed of this expedition for years, whereas Peter Stollery was game for anything; Eddie Goldenberg had probably never been so far away from Jean Chrétien; John Godfrey was supremely nonchalant, whatever the risks. We had invited two first-timers that year, perhaps hoping for fresh conversational material. Bill Fox filled the bill with his storytelling gifts, and Ross Howard, a
Globe and Mail
reporter and experienced outdoorsman, was stimulating company.

On Ellesmere, in a delightful reversal of roles for a television reporter, a dozen European tourists with video cameras captured our party's departure as we set off in canoes across Lake Hazen. In our remote locale, this was news: We were the first to attempt a descent of the Ruggles, the most northerly river in the world and the sole outlet for Lake Hazen.

The early signs were not encouraging. Though located in a rare thermal oasis that usually gives it some two months of frost-free days annually, the lake that year was a solid mass of white candle ice at the height of summer. Harnessed like beasts of burden, we had to drag our loaded boats nine miles across the lake to the narrow band of open water along the far shore. Behind us, some fifty snow-capped mountain peaks formed a phalanx from one end of the horizon to the other. Halfway across, I began to sink through the thin ice and I threw myself
into the canoe. Tim upbraided me for stepping on the tomatoes. Apparently the fresh vegetables held a higher priority than I did.

Our plan was to follow the Ruggles' course to Chandler and Conybeare fiords and Lady Franklin Bay and the Arctic Ocean beyond, then paddle a few days north to Fort Conger, the long-abandoned jumping-off spot for several doomed nineteenth- and twentieth-century expeditions to the North Pole, only a few hundred miles beyond.

But the objective was beyond our reach. We were only a few days down the rapid-filled but relatively shallow river when ice walls began to appear on both banks, making it difficult if not impossible to go ashore if a canoe were upset. Farther along, large chunks of ice that had broken off from the walls floated by, prompting thoughts of the
Titanic
. We pressed on until a helicopter from the Federal Parks Department swooped down on us with a warning that the river ahead was treacherous, full of ice bridges and deep holes. They advised us that even if we made it past these hurdles, the ocean itself was solid pack ice. Moreover, heavy winds were forecast. Did we have ice screws with which to anchor our tents and equipment?

Not wanting to relive the grim fates of other adventurers from Sir John Franklin to Robert Edwin Peary, we gave up on further advance, hunkered down in our tents, and awaited the helicopter we had summoned by emergency radio. The winds were as advertised: During the day we had to sit in the corners of our shelters with our backs against the walls to hold them down. We slept that way as well, with the tent walls constantly hammering our heads.

During that long wait for the chopper, Bill Fox and I decided to go for a hike to ease the boredom. We climbed up a long
traverse to the top of the river canyon and walked south for several hours. By then the cold was biting and we began the trek back to camp. We'd walked a long time until I told Bill I no longer recognized our trail. I had brought a map but no compass, and neither of us had a clue where we were. The map was of little help in this flat horizon, especially since we had become completely disoriented.

The issue was simple: Had we walked past our takeout point, or was it still ahead? We trudged on a few more kilometres and at intervals I fired distress gunshots but heard no reply. We found a high point from which we could gaze down on the river, but everything looked the same. Night was settling in and a decision had to be made: keep going or turn back. I elected to turn back and Bill accepted that decision, God bless him. I was just uncertain enough that had he disagreed strongly, I would have pushed us farther into the wilderness.

Finally Bill spied one of our companions standing at the top of the campsite's ridge. Another few seconds and he might have disappeared back down to camp. I will always wonder if Bill and I could have missed the takeout path for a second time. The headline
Lost in the Arctic
came to mind. But who would have won top billing? Bill Fox, the high-profile former Mulroney staffer, or Craig Oliver, an obscure reporter?

Taking the whole party out was not a rescue mission, of course. If anything, we were oversupplied and knew our exact whereabouts. But it was a few days before the winds died down, allowing the chopper to land. By then the supply of rum was falling dangerously low. I dared not tell anyone, but the disappointment at failing to reach Fort Conger was worth that scene of departure at the outset, surrounded as we were by lights and
cameras and exclamations of admiration. For a fleeting moment, I understood why Franklin and the others had done it.

Sometimes I felt that the greater risk to our lives was taken not on the rivers but on the chartered flights in and out. In the early days, we had to rope canoes to the struts of the aircrafts' pontoons. We tied them carefully because the burden on one or both sides of the plane affected its aerodynamics. If a canoe came loose, the results might be fatal. Today the Department of Transport forbids that practice and canoes are nested into one another inside larger planes, usually Twin Otters.

For the inexperienced, charter flights into the Arctic wilderness are still white-knuckle flying. There are no prepared landing strips. The aircraft, some of them fitted with oversized tundra tires, find a flat spot in the landscape or a hard-packed sandbar on which to land. If pilots are uncertain whether or not the landing surface can bear the weight of the loaded aircraft, they put it down under full power, then circle back to judge how deep the wheel tracks are.

Trying to fly from Yellowknife to Banks Island one summer, our canoe group turned back three times when ice buildup on the wings exceeded the capacity of the heaters. As we were finally approaching the island, the pilot had to fly at ocean level to escape a low ceiling. Breaking out of the fog, the plane was headed directly for a beautiful blue iceberg, which the pilot avoided only by a quick reaction. That particular flyer was the one who had dropped a metal canister containing a message of protest onto the deck of the American supertanker
Manhattan
when that ship sailed through the Northwest Passage in 1969, challenging Canada's claims to Arctic sovereignty.

On another occasion we flew through a narrow valley in the Brooks Range in Alaska with granite mountain peaks to either side of the wings. I became worried when heavy weather closed in, stealing visibility in front of us and behind. Should we try for more altitude? “Nope,” replied the pilot laconically. We would fly blind, supposedly reassured by the fact that the valley broke through the mountains straight ahead of us and it was simply a matter of maintaining the same compass course.

Venturing to some of the most remote places in the world frequently put us beyond the reach of ready help, at least until the invention of the satellite phone. Everyone was aware that a heart attack or a stroke that might easily be survived in a hospital would probably be fatal in the Barrens. On balance we regarded such risks as worth taking. More worrisome perhaps was what might happen to those back home when we were not there to help.

In 1998, we were dropped off in the east-central Barren Lands of Nunavut to paddle an isolated section of the Back River. We canoed for weeks with no sign of the outside world. The river lies below no major flight paths, nor did we pass any communities. From hilltops we could see the permanent pack ice shimmering in the sun, and eventually we reached Starvation Cove, a desolate island of shale and rock with nothing to sustain life. It was here that Inuit found the remains of the crew of the doomed Franklin Expedition. The desperate men had made their way south in a ship's whaler and their skeletons were discovered huddled together beneath it.

The sounds of the Arctic night and day had become so familiar to us that everyone was startled one afternoon to hear
the faint drone of an engine. As the distant speck grew into a Twin Otter, our resentment over the intrusion turned to anxiety when the aircraft flew past us and then circled back. Now it was losing altitude as if to land, except that the small point where we were camped could never provide a safe landing spot. Apparently the pilot was looking for us; a flight to this speck on the map would cost thousands of dollars and was no joyride.

We were all apprehensive. Allan Rock, then minister of Health, put his hand on my shoulder. “Someone has died,” he said. “There could be no other reason.” The group stood in a circle, each with his private thoughts. A tragedy seemed about to befall one of us, but whom?

“If it is one of my kids, I will never forgive myself for not being there,” said a voice.

“If it's for me,” replied another, “it has to be that serious because my wife and I agreed that if our parents died, she'd keep them on ice until I returned.”

A grisly discussion of death's pecking order followed. Would a brother or sister mean cancellation of the trip, or just that of a spouse? Should all of us fly out or only the canoe member involved? Was a violent death more urgent than a death from natural causes?

The noisy Otter made a run out to sea and then turned toward us, flying just above the waves. As the plane roared overhead, a hatch opened in the belly and a steel canister dropped out, plummeting a few yards from our camp. We scrambled to retrieve the message, which was greeted with nearincredulity. The aircraft was on its way to fight fires in the south and happened to see us. It belonged to the charter company due to pick us up a week hence, and the pilot merely wanted us to
know that a spit of hard sand about forty miles ahead would make an ideal pickup spot.

One paddler turned away and wept in relief. It took a moment for all of us to collect ourselves. The tension was broken with a laugh when we recalled what had happened many years before when our pickup plane arrived to retrieve us after three weeks on the Nahanni. The pilot was barely out of his cockpit before we asked for news of the outside world. What had transpired in our absence? “My God, you mean you don't know?” he gasped, clearly astonished that lost souls such as ourselves could be unaware of the news he possessed.