Ghosts of the Dubawnt River

Having just one short portage after Flett Lake, the upper Dubawnt is a paddler’s dream. Lynda and I enjoyed countless perky Class II rapids and gorgeous sandy campsites.

The only way faster than dogsled.

The first trapper’s homestead we encountered on the river belonged to Alec McAskill. It faces south, tucked into an esker surrounded by a copse of gnarled white birches. After trapping the area for several years, McAskill returned with his entire family—wife May, sons Neil and Ian, and daughter Margaret. I thought of their fully loaded freighter canoe lumbering through the rapids. In comparison, our Prospector canoe had a relatively light load and danced nimbly through the river’s many S-turn rapids as we approached the McAskill homestead.

Behind the now largely collapsed cabin, a flat-topped esker extends for miles. Walking atop it, we found the metal chassis of an old toy truck. We took the rusty toy, as well as the cabin’s doorknob, and gave them to Neil at the end of our trip. He grew quiet, flooded with memories, as he slowly picked up the doorknob and toy truck and turned them over in his hands. It was a powerful moment, both happy and sad, that reminded me of my first visit with ghosts of the Dubawnt.

On our first trip down the river, Lynda and I had found another crumbling cabin, another toy, and enough other memorabilia to reconstruct the forgotten lives of another trapper’s family. We knew that the cabin’s owner ran dogs because there was a row of snug kennels out back. We knew he enjoyed scotch from the mound of broken brown bottles beneath a scraggly spruce tree. We knew that the family had paddled to their homesite after we discovered the rotting ribs of their wood-and-canvas canoe. We knew they had a young daughter because we found the remains of a musical carousel.

I imagined the trapper in Stony Rapids, selling his furs and restocking with supplies before the 150-mile return home by dogsled. I pictured him spotting the carousel in a store window. To pay for it, perhaps he purchased a little less tobacco or scotch for himself. Four nights later, while approaching his cabin, he would smell the wood smoke as his dogs made their final sprint. His wife and little girl would laugh with joy when they heard the barking team draw near. As her father unpacked the load, the child’s eyes would have grown big as saucers. That young girl might still be alive today. If I could meet her, I would love to ask about her childhood home, and tell her that I had seen it myself. I would also tell her that I wished I could have trapped with her father and seen all that he had seen.

Portage fatigue

Two hours north of McAskill’s are the remains of the Tralnberg cabin, where brothers Emil and Otto lived. Then it’s another long day’s paddle to the next homesite, at Boyd Lake. The south end of the lake is a maze of parallel sandy islands, all pointing north like compass needles. Gravel beaches front perfect tabletop tundra camping. One of the best camp spots is on the east side of the lake, where I caught lake trout from shore.

Nearby is the old Brucie cabin. Dirk Brucie drowned when he fell through thin ice at freeze-up, leaving his wife, Rosie, and their two small children alone to face the coming winter. Rosie’s nightmares still linger in the cabin. It wasn’t until weeks later that Fred Riddle arrived to learn why he hadn’t seen his friend’s snowshoe tracks where their two traplines intersected. By then, Rosie was nearly out of her mind with dread. One of the Tralnberg brothers made the long trip to Stony Rapids by dog team while Fred stayed behind to comfort the family. Rosie and the children were flown out, never to return.

Journey's end was much easier than its beginning.

From Selwyn Lake, where Lynda and I began our trip, it’s nine days and 190 miles to the Brucie cabin. Yet another day and a half of paddling is required to reach Barlow Lake, where Jimmy and Adeline Chaffee lived. These two trapped to the very edge of the tree line along the south shore of Dubawnt Lake. Nearby Mary Lake is named for Adeline’s sister, who drowned there.

Though the nearest settlement was hundreds of miles away, the Dubawnt was far from a lonely land when the Chaffees lived there. Several families of trappers were scattered up and down the river, and newcomers arrived yearly, leapfrogging farther and farther north. They were sucked into the wild in the same way that wilderness paddlers are today.

If you decide to follow, pay your own respects to the ghosts of the Dubawnt. Stop at their cabins to share a cup of tea. Let them know that you love their land as much as they did. Dream your dreams for them, and pray that someday, others will dream theirs for you.