C Ihe Ladies c cu. V'VVAN - History and Classics, Department of

23(5 Lure 0the NorthDuring the journey from Edmonton to Waterways all our fellowtravellersseemed to belong to a world hitherto unknown. Their talk was either ofpeople who had gone "in" to the North or of people who had come "out." Wasthis country a prison or a paradise, we wondered. There was the French­Canadian judge, going to Aklavik to preside at an Eskimo murder trial. "Don'twait for an introduction," he said, as he invited us to his stateroom on the trainto have a chat and a cigarette. There were N orth -West Mounted Police, returningto their Arctic outposts, magnificent types like so many of the men in this force.There was a rough -looking young man whom we took for a gold prospector butwe discovered later that he was going to Aklavik as counsel for the defence,knowing no word of Eskimo and nothing of his client. He told us highlycoloured stories of the Eskimo attitude to murder, marriage and old age. "Theykill their old folk," he assured us, "it's a case of 'Dear old Ma, she's 90, go fetchyour gun.'" We listened to his fantastic tales, prick-eared, silent and dubious,just as we listened to those other tales of grizzly bears and ice and starvation.Some of the Eskimo stories were, no doubt, already out of date and others wereexaggerated but some were true and we soon discovered that, in the northcountry, truth can indeed be stranger than fiction. We were fair game to thosemen of the North who love to spin a yarn to the ignorant and the innocent, forwe always listened eagerly.We reached Waterways in Q4 hours; the place was nothing but an enormousnew shed, beside which were some slides for baggage, and a scow, and a bargelying in the river. All the 40 passengers, including nine women, sat about on