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

Notes to Pages 99-100, 211-212 273Dawson for Klondikers, "discouraged men ... who wished theyhad stayed at home," and thereby earning cash for the first time(101); and feeling uncomfortable with her wilderness attireonce she reached settlements again (104). Her narrative isotherwise remarkable for the little attention it pays to the clearinequality of the division of labour in her party. The responsibilityfor all the cooking fell to her, the only woman in a partyof fourteen; her work began at the end of the day, after she hadtravelled as far as the men. The narrative seldom voices whatFrances Backhouse calls "a common complaint among womenon the trail['] that men did not recognize that temperamentalportable stoves, lack of ingredients, rain, and mosquitoes allmade even simple meal preparation an onerous task" (:22).We felt like Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego clad in "theirhosen, their tunics and their lllantles, and their othergarments," when, fully dressed, we crawled in under ourmosquito barsThe reference is to Daniel 4:21, and the attempt by KingN ebuchadnezzar of Babylon to burn the three Jews in a furnacefor refusing to worship his gods. Like them but rather lessmiraculously, the women survived their ordeal.Field Note for Mond'!J 5 JuJysaw the Whitakers set off in gas boatThe Whittakers were conducting Arthur Creighton McCullumby way of Peel River Portage to the Yukon in order to meetBishop Stringer. A graduate of Theology from WycliffeCollege, Toronto in 1925, McCullum was ordained deacon byBishop Lucas in the same year, and immediately took up thework of curate at Herschel Island with Shingle Point. Afterjourneying over the mountains with the Whittakers, he wasimmediately ordained priest by Bishop Stringer. Vyvyan'soblique field note for 23July suggests that McCullum's whereaboutswere unknown but that she expected to meet up withhim and the Whittakers on the other side of the mountains.Dorrien Smith's field note for 4 July is rather more explicitabout a few of the details: "He is going across the portage toOld Crow to meet Bishop Stringer and be ordained. We maymeet him again."In his oral history, John Ross Tizya states that when he metup with him on the Bell River, Bishop Stringer ordainedMcCullum on his raft (LaPierre 65). Then he appointedMcCullum missionary at Old Crow. Sherwood Platt's partymet him there on 25 August: "A new young minister,McCullum, recent graduate from Toronto and a peach of afellow, was putting up a log church and was very interesting totalk to. He had just come over from Herschel Island where hispowerful radio enabled him to amuse the Esquimos and alsohear the Boston hockey games" (Platt 29). In 1929, McCullummoved to Mayo and then, as the incumbent, to Dawson from1935 to 1940. Thereafter, his appointments were in Ontario,except during the Second World War, when he served as a militarychaplain and earned the Order of the British Empire(Crockford's) .Field Note for Tuesd'!J 6 JuJya meal at English Mission with Miss Catt + HackettEthel G. Catt went to Aklavik in 1926 from South America byway of a short stint at Fort Smith. At Aklavik, she served ashousekeeper and assistant nurse at the Church of EnglandMission (Kealey). In 1927, Jean Godsell considered Miss Catt"one of the grandest people I ever met in the North. A small,dumpy Englishwoman, who wore her hair in a bun at the backof her head and dressed rather severely, she had done considerablemissionary work in Lima, Peru, ere venturing into thefrozen North to reopen the small, long-since-abandonedAnglican church" at Fort Smith (161). Her time in the Northincluded a year at Fort Chipewyan (1928) and another stint atAklavik (1929-30).Minnie Hackett, RN, graduate of St Boniface Hospital,served several years at the Anglican mission in Aklavik beginningin 1926, facing her greatest challenge during theepidemic of influenza in 1927-28 when so many Gwich'in(including Edward Sittichinli, Lazarus' father) and Inuvialuitdied (Simon, qtd in Sax and Linklater 74; Fleming 288). (Aswell, care had been handicapped in 1927-28 by a lack of drugsand supplies; they had all been burned in a warehouse fire atEdmonton where they were being collected for shipment north[Dickerson 45].) Although she is not mentioned by name inthe field notes of either Vyvyan or Dorrien Smith until 6] uly,it seems almost certain that the women had made her acquaintancemuch earlier. Because it is known from an article in theEdmonton Bulletin that Hackett attended a tea given in her honourby Mrs Gray, wife of the bishop of Edmonton, on Monday, 31May ("Anglican Nurse" 6), her being in Aklavik likely resultedfrom her travelling by the same train and steamboats as Vyvyanand Dorrien Smith. She was at Hay River 1929-30 (Kealey).