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

256 Notes to Pages 47-49CHAPTER 9: FROM PROVIDENCE TO AKLAVIK(17-23 JUNE)The women's excursion into the forest behind Providence isnot referred to in the neld notes, which focus on a descriptionof the settlement and its people. Gwen sprained her ankle onthis excursion but Vyvyan did not learn of the sprain until thenext morning, thus, the details about the community wouldhave dominated the day's neld note entry, but the retrospectivereconstruction in the chapter focuses on Gwen's ankle, omittingsome of the description of Providence and its people, anddeferring other details to a generalized description of a typicalsteamer landing at a northern settlement.Providence in this case was the nune of our first port of callafter Great Slave LakeThe original Fort Providence was established on the northshore of Great Slave Lake. A Roman Catholic mission, calledNotre dame de la providence, was built at the present site(Zftahti Koe) by Monseigneur Grandin in 1861 (Northwest 146).The Grey Nuns established a boarding school for Dene childrenin 1867, and the HBC, the NWMP, and federalgovernment followed.Fort SiInpson, a beautifully sited place on a high bank at theInouth of the Liard RiverInitially called Fort of the Forks when constructed by the NWCin 1804, Fort Simpson (Liidli Koe) was renamed for GeorgeSimpson, the inland governor of the HBC after the merger ofthe two concerns in 1821. Located on an island at theconfluence of the Mackenzie and Liard rivers, it is the oldestcontinuously occupied post on the Mackenzie River and servedas the HBC's district headquarters for many years. TheAnglican mission was established in 1858, and the RomanCatholic mission came in 1894. When the HBC retired itsYork boat brigades in 1888 in favour of steamers, members ofthe brigades, who had often wintered over in the community,settled there. In 1910, the nrst Indian Agency was opened; aRNWMP detachment arrived in 1912, and a hospital in 1916.Until the Mackenzie Highway made possible regular deliveriesof fresh food from the south, the Fort Simpson area producedlivestock and vegetables for the North (Northwest 150).Not only its situation but also the views from the settlementare often remarked on. Charles Camsell, who spent part of hisboyhood there, considered "the view up stream ... magnincent... , perhaps the best on the whole river" (9). The post wasdistinguished for the only billiard table in the Mackenziedistrict prior to the twentieth century, and an impressivelending library (Camsell II-12). Eighteen months prior toVyvyan's trip, an issue of The Beaver featured quotations fromAgnes Deans Cameron's delighted description of the library,which she saw during her trip in 1908 ("Old Library"). Indianagent Flynn Harris had possession of it when Vyvyan met himthere in 1926, and she marvelled over it in her neld note for 18June: "a nne library ~ (for these parts) Greek-LatinRLS-Dickens-Thackeray +c." Jean Godsell offers anotherdescription of Fort Simpson's library, assembled by JulianCamsell while he was HBC factor there: "seven or eighthundred volumes, some of which dated back to 1790, amongstthem being Bohn's classics, sixteen volumes of The TravellersLibrary, Smithsonian Institute [sic] reports from 1858 to 1887;Grote's History of Greece; Plutarch's Lives, Barth's Central Africa , theworks of Goethe, Chaucer and similar volumes of poetry, traveland philosophy, together with antiquated works of nction"(II4).Dorden Smith's neld note for 18June clarifies that FlynnHarris (Vyvyan's "old Murphy of Fort Simpson") embarked fora journey, not just a visit, while the Distributor moored at FortSimpson. She did not record his destination.the stark siInplicity of this wooden buildingVyvyan's observation about the "strange contrast" between the"stark simplicity" of the wooden church at Fort Simpson andthe great Gothic cathedrals of France and Italy (Chpt 9) isconsiderably more negative in the field note for 18June, whichsees the church as "pathetically out of place" in the wilderness.At noon we caIne to Fort WrigleyAt least for part of each year, Slavey Dene dwelt on the site ofpresent-day Wrigley (Tthed;:,eh Koe) prior to European contact.The NWC had a post there, called Fort Alexander, from 1817to 182I; after it closed, the Slavey settled on Old Fort Island,near the present site of Wrigley. An HBC post was establishedthere in 1870, but, following the 1900-05 famine and tuberculosisepidemic, the whole community moved forty-eightkilometres down the Mackenzie River to a site near WrigleyRock, known as "Rocher qui trempe a I' eau." An airstrip wasbuilt in 1944, and the community acquired a church and one-