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

Notes to Pages 37-41 253CHAPTER 7: GREAT SLAVE LAKE (14-17 JUNE)The book expands the field notes' description of the women'safternoon on an island shore strewn with "boulders + piles ofdriftwood + soft r/2 mouldy fibre" (r5]une): a wider scopetakes in those piles of driftwood and wood fibre, tracing themback to their origins on the Peace River. The chapter alsoexpands the field notes' treatment of the "dreamjourneythrough Great Slave Lake" (17 June), creating characters, suchas the man from Arizona, from among her fellow-passengersin order to invoke the North's effect on them during thejourney across the lake and towards the northern wilderness.The chapter pays rather less attention than the field notes tothe lives and concerns of the many people Vyvyan and DorrienSmith met and the characteristics of the individual settlements.Gwen made a sunset sketch, which I still possessVyvyan does not mention the sketch in her field note for I4June,although the sunset is described in similar terms. It may havebeen the sketch now titled Mission [s (see above, 191).wife stayed aboard the Distributor. This was AlfredJames Vale(1876-1963), born in Waterloo, Ontario, who graduated fromWycliffe College, University of Toronto in 1906. In 1916, hewas appointed canon of Mackenzie River and, in 1920,founded St Peter's Indian Residential School, Hay River,where he served as principal through 1927. His canonry thenturned to the Indian Residential School at Chapleau, Ontarioin the Diocese of Moo so nee ("Vale").the Mother Superior of the Grey Nuns of the NorthRev Mere Zoe Chartier Girouard (1867-1935) held the officeof superieure provinciale du Grand Nord from 1920 to 1927.Before then, her career had included seven years at StBoniface, Manitoba and eleven at St Albert, Alberta. Shebecame rev mere locale at Fort Resolution in I91I, founded theGrey Nuns mission at Fort Simpson in 1916 (Annales [1936-37]577), and, with Rev Mere Generale Octavie Dugas, travelled toAklavik in 1924 to choose the site on which the hospital andmission were to be established the next year (see the notes toChpt 10).We touched at Fort Resolution in the Iniddle of the nightLocated on the southern shore of Great Slave Lake , Fort Resolution(Deninu Kue) dates from 1876, when NWC traders Cuthbert Grantand Laurent Leroux erected Slave Fort (Philip Godsell, Arctic I9In).The HBC established a post in 1815, but the name, FortResolution, was initiated only after the merger of the two companies,in 1821 (PooI2:822). A Roman Catholic mission wasestablished in r852, and it was joined in 1903 by a residential schoolrun by the Grey Nuns until 1957. When the Oblates and Grey Nunsbuilt a tuberculosis hospital in 1938-39, Fort Resolution becamean important medical and educational centre, but, after thehospital was transferred to Edmonton in 1956, the settlementdeclined in importance as a regional centre (Northwest 148).Two days later we caIne at dawn to Hay RiverHay River (Xatt'o Dehe) is situated in the homeland of the Slaveypeople. The HBC post was established in 1868, followed thenext year by a Roman Catholic mission. The post was abandonedin 1875, but an Anglican mission opened in 1893, andin 1925 an RCMP detachment was established, to be followedby a hospital and church (Northwest 162).Dorrien Smith's field note for 17 June reveals that thewomen went ashore in the company of "Canon Vale" while hisCHAPTER 8: IN AND OUT (17 JUNE)This chapter does not follow the chronological organization ofthe field notes, but rather combines characters and anecdotesfrom various points in the women's northward journey, withno context more specific than "one day" and no identificationother than "Mother Superior" or "one old-timer." Forinstance, the doctor described in the opening of the chapter isDr McDonald, who was encountered at Fort Smith on 9June:the discussion with the surveyor took place on 14June beforethe women reached Resolution: and the mother superior's taleof having her teeth pulled before entering the North does notappear in the field notes at all. (Sreur Fernande Champagne,Archivist of the Grey Nuns Regional Centre, Edmonton,suggests that this detail is Vyvyan's invention.) The surveyorand the race between Roman Catholics and Anglicans tobaptize native children are details presented in the field notes(13 and 14June, respectively). Otherwise, the picture sketchedby this chapter is of an undifferentiated North, a vast, sternwilderness full of picturesque, character types and adventurousor amusing anecdotes. The book, perhaps because of its retrospectivenature, is less interested in the specifics of person and