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

XVIIITHE LADIES, THE GWICH'IN, AND THE RATTHE ROUTEThe women's transatlantic crossing aboard the SS Empress of Scotland brought themto Quebec City in nine days during the month of May 1926. There they boardedthe transcontinental railway for the trip west, stopping for four hours atMontreal and twenty-four at Winnipeg, and arriving in Edmonton on themorning of Friday, 28 May. Staying at the Macdonald Hotel for four nights, theywaited for the Tuesdays-only northbound train by completing the logistical andinitiating the psychological preparations for their canoe trip. Then, on the nrstof June , they boarded the train to Waterways, on the Athabasca River near FortMcMurray. At that point, and after some delay, they took to water again, aboardthe SS Athabasca River. This wood-burning sternwheeler conducted them downriverto Lake Athabasca, and down the Slave River as far as Fort Fitzgerald,Alberta. Steamers could go no farther north at that point: the rapids of the Slavewere unnavigable. So, the women covered the twenty-nve kilometres of theSmith Portage to Fort Smith, NWT by automobile (a few roadsters had been inservice on the portage for about nve years). They had to spend nearly a week atFort Smith while the next steamer was readied for the season and the frozen routeto the north thawed out. The women found the wait interminable, perhapsbecause they were still being treated as "ladies." In 1920, Jean Godsell had gonenorth on this route as the bride of a fur trade district manager. Her pithycomment is instructive: "A bride of a week, I was on my way into the Northland,in God's Wide Open Spaces where men were men and where, I soon learned,white women were placed on pedestals since they were few in number and farbetween" (2). The North did not know what else to do with them.On J4.June, the women boarded the SS Distributor. Over the next ten days, itwould steam them down the Slave River to Great Slave Lake and across to theMackenzie River for the long trip to the part-Gwich'in, part-Inuvialuit settlementof Aklavik, sitting in the mud on the west bank of the Mackenzie's greatDelta. The Distributor called at nine settlements before delivering them there.Then they made an unscheduled pause for two weeks, to allow time for thesprained tendons in Dorrien Smith's ankle, injured during a hike at FortProvidence, to heal.Departing Aklavik on 7 July, they turned back upriver in an HBC motor boat,following the Mackenzie's westernmost channel, the Husky, in order to gain thedeceptively languid mouth of the Rat River, which marked the start of their trip