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254 NotestoPagesfl-f4:community than in types. Even the excerpt from Vyvyan's"diary" at the end of the chapter is a cobbled-together series offragments taken out of context from various points in thejourney. This style occurs in several chapters of the book. Hereit contributes to the book's sense of timelessness at a point inthe trip when neither their route nor their schedule lie underthe women's control, and they are only passengers watching theNorth drift by.we IIlet a doctor who had been "in" for 15 yearsA.L. McDonald (also MacDonald) was the doctor, appointedby the Department of Indian Mfairs, who arrived in the Northin 1913 (Fumoleau Il4). Jean Godsell identifies him as "akindly but rabid Scot from Glengarry, Ontario" (68). He was awitness to the signing of Treaty II at Fort Wrigley on 13July1921 (Fumoleau 177). This treaty did not make provision forDene within the treaty boundaries to access regular medicalattention, but McDonald's appointment represented anearnest attempt by federal authorities to make free andongoing medical attention available. He travelled widely in theMackenzie basin, but, as the remark quoted by Vyvyan clarifies,he had no pretensions to ubiquity. McDonald stayed in his jobuntil 1931 (Fumoleau 331). Kenneth Conibear remembershim as follows:he lived in the Roman Catholic monastery, was reputed tospend most of his time playing solitaire with himself, otherwisekept busy bringing babies into the world in the nearbyRoman Catholic hospital, and for all other ailments wasreputed to keep a supply of pills in one of his pockets whichhe would pull out after hearing of your ailment, blow thefluff off them, pick one out and hand it to you with ahopeful "See how this works." Such was his reputation, butfor my part I remember that he delivered my wife of herfirst child without any complications. (Conibear)hence her completion of thirty-two years' service by 1926.During her leave, she returned home to Napierville, Quebec tofind that her parents and ten of her thirteen siblings had diedsince her departure. She had considered her first trip northtoo difficult to repeat immediately, and she found "life in theNorth, at least in those days, very favourable to one's unionwith God, in spite of and perhaps because of privation and theexhausting work that there was no choice about accepting"(Annales [1958] 493; translated from the French). She retired atthe age of seventy-two , in 1938.Lac la BieheThe literal translation of this name is "lake of the red doe."The name was given by fur traders, who encountered the lakeon a route from the North Saskatchewan to Athabasca riversthat enjoyed greatest prominence in the late eighteenth andearly nineteenth centuries (Betke; Holmgren and Holmgren17). The first trading post established in the area was built byNWC explorer David Thompson in 1798. The railway beganserving the community in 1915 (Hatcher, Northern Alberta I),"bringing many settlers, the majority of whom were CatholicFrench Canadians" (Harrison 139).Wonderful stillnessThe content ofVyvyan's field note for IJune is the same butthe order of the words differs. None of the passages strungtogether in this quotation are exactly the same as the held notesfrom which they are allegedly quoted.long chat with Canadian NW PoliceIllanCompare Vyvyan's field note for 4June.Never before IIlet anyone who lives so near the North Pole,but he takes it as a IIlatter of courseNo field note offers a basis for this sentence.One of the Grey Nuns with whoIll we travelledDescribed pejoratively in Vyvyan's field note for UJune as"one wizened little Nut," the Grey Nun in question, accordingto historical records, is likely Sister Delphine Giroux­Pinsonneault (1865-1954), twenty years Vyvyan' s senior. Thetwo met at Fort Smith. Sister Pinsonneault served in missionsat Fort Chipewyan 1892-96, Fort Resolution 1906-18, andFort Smith 1919-38. Her year's rest had occurred in 1918;These trappers talk as if they had nearly lost the power oflinking one word to the nextA similar point of view is expressed in different words inVyvyan's field note for 7 June.Saw wax-wing and three-toed AInerican Woodpecker withyellow crestCompare Vyvyan's field note for 8 June.