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

c;4 Two Idle~eksCaptain Cameron was not our onLY visitor at the convent and ifI havedwelt at undue length on his life story it is because he seemed to be a very clearcuttype. Certain men are attracted to the North and, once inside that country,are moulded by its stern, uncompromising spirit into a strength which theybetray in their beliefs and talk and actions; he was one of them. We had manyother visitors and heard many stories but none of these tales were so well andtruly seasoned as the tales of Captain Cameron, none had quite the same tang.We had visits from some inmates of the convent. There were six nuns, someIndian children whom they were teaching, and the doctor's wife with her newbornbaby. A priest was attached to the convent and two lay brothers lived in anearby cabin, coming in daily to feed and to pray. Several of the kindly nunscame up to see us and we made friends with one of them, Sister Firmin, whoworked in the kitchen and had hailed long ago from Ireland. Even these slightcontacts with the nuns made us feel we were anchored to the place, that we wereno longer mere spectators, travelling on from one picture show to another.When the boat steamed away on its southward journey Aklavik seemed toshrink, all the life and movement died away, the Eskimos returned to the shore,the Indians to their camps, the white men to their cabins. Silence settled downon the settlement, a curiously starved and empty silence, without echoes from thepast. Aklavik seemed to be a little colony wrapped up in itself, far from thesources of life, isolated in space like a fleck of thistledown drifting across asummer sky. Silence, loneliness, deprivation, monotony. When I try to describethis settlement I find myself adding one negative to another. I wonder what Lao-