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

264 Notes to Pages 63-67, :109Fannie Puniovaluk. She and Stefansson "had only one child,my father, who now lives at Aklavik, where he owns a freighterand hunts and traps in his spare time. My grandmother diedmany years ago. Since then my grandfather moved to theUnited States ..,. Although I have never met him I have alwaysbeen proud of him, and feel that I do know him because of thestories my dad has told me about him" (Georgina Stefansson25). The explorer never did acknowledge his native offspring(Hunt 120), although in My Life with the Eskimo he mentioned thathe travelled with "an elderly country-woman ... namedPannigabluk, whose husband had died the year before" (n7).Field Note for Wednesd'9' 23JuneNot surprisingly, the first entry in Dorrien Smith's field notefor this date reports on the doctor's house call to her aboardthe steamer, as well as his verdict: "My foot keeps us here for afortnight. "shupacks of fur or skin: babies tightly bound on backs inhoodsThe latter are the women's amaut, the former are theirfootwear, which Vyvyan spelled phonetically, and which also isspelled "shoepak." This footwear consists ofinsulated rubberlowers and uppers of canvas or leather, or, as Vyvyan observedin Aklavik, caribou fur or seal skin. It is possible that a bootmade entirely of rubber was introduced by the Americanwhalers at Herschel Island and was modified for local use with acomplement of warmer materials than rubber, leather, or felt.CHAPTER 11: HARBOUR OF WRECKED MENWhile the field notes mention "city of the dead" (26june) and"wrecked" men and women of the North (njune), thischapter's extensive sketches are Vyvyan's later creations.Similar ruined figures appear in early adventure novels set inthe North by writers such as Americans Rex Beach and DillonWallace and Canadian Gilbert Parker. Vyvyan's celebration ofthe RCMP as the exception to this pattern is typical of not onlythe anecdotes she records in the field notes about theirexploits, but also the conventions of a long tradition of adventurenovels featuring mounties, which portrayed the North asthe proving ground of young manhood."The steamer brought in drink," he said. "The nrst liquorin nine months. They are all under the covers today. Deaddrunk."In her letter of20june to her mother, Vyvyan noted that "thedrunkenness up here is something awful-among white men."As for communications by wireless and airplane, both ofthem were, at the time of our journey, in their early stages ofdevelopment in northern CanadaThe situation was, indeed, about to change rapidly. The firstairplanes were seen on the Mackenzie River in the winter of1928-29, and thirty-year-old C.H. "Punch" Dickins, a veteranof the Royal Flying Corps in the First World War, reachedAklavik by air for the first time on Dominion Day 1929(Bonnycastle, Gentleman 105). Reliable postal service quicklybecame the first regular cargo aboard northern flights, RichardBonnycastle reported reading Winnipeg newspapers only threedays old when in Fort Good Hope.That Vyvyan mentions visits to the wireless stations atseveral posts might suggest that she was half-expecting acommunication to be awaiting her. However, her apparentlyinordinate interest might also be attributable to their novelty.The NWT and Yukon Radio System had just come into being.Sheer distances had dissuaded the Department of the Interiorfrom plans to erect and maintain a telegraph line. but radiotelegraphcould function through air waves along a system ofrelay stations. The Royal Canadian Corps of Signals wasaSSigned the task of erecting that system of stations. Led byMajor W.A. Steel, a party of the RCCS installed stations atMayo and Dawson, Yukon. With these, the System opened on20 October 1923. In 1924, the terminal system at Edmontonand the control station at Fort Simpson were opened. In 1925,the equipment deSignated for the station at Fort Smith wasseconded for the summer to the SS Distributor so that GovernorGeneral Byng could be supplied with continuous service. It wasoperational at Fort Smith once his return trip downriver wascompleted. After near-disaster delayed the installation atHerschel Island in 1924, Lt H.A. Young made his way fromthere to Aklavik in April 1925. Asjim Koe's memoir confirms,the system was installed and running there in October of thatyear, thus making possible Cunliffe's reservation, by way ofBrabant in Edmonton and Parsons at Aklavik, of a canoe forthe women, while the summer-only station at Herschel Islandopened in 1926 (Moir 276-79). Young, who would go on to