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On Puzzling Wavelengths
nameless to help ensure this. The number of people actually in resi-
dence peaked seasonally at slightly more than a hundred Dene adults.
There were just over a dozen Euro-Canadians as well, including a gov-
ernment-appointed settlement manager, two rcmp officers, a nurse,
forestry staff, two teachers, a store manager, a Catholic priest, a Prot-
estant minister, and a few of their family members. Depending on the
time of year, a trickle of travelers came and went by boat, by sled, on
foot with pack dogs, or by bush plane.
It was a serene place, so far from the bustle of twentieth-century
Canada that, unless the radio was on or the mail had just arrived, we
gave the outside world scant thought. After all, the Northwest Terri-
tories in those days had thirty-one square miles per person. This hide-
away of ours was green with spruce, pine, tamarack, birch, aspen,
and balsam poplar as far as we could see. Our settlement lay just be-
low the confluence of two large rivers.
The smaller of the two flowed in lazily, between high bluffs, from
swampy lands to the east; the other was a wide, swift, cold, and tur-
bulent river that rose at the Continental Divide and drained a sizable
area in the northeastern Rockies. Low mountains were visible across
the big river, to the west. Behind us, forested lowlands dotted with
uncountable fishing lakes and scattered patches of muskeg stretched
on and on for hundreds of miles.
The community looked surprisingly dispersed to me. It was a mile-
and-a-half long, made up of several loose clusters of log cabins and
canvas tents broken up and spaced by groves of trees.
A couple of the most distant cabins were located in forest on the far
side of the river. I was unprepared to see tents in use right through the
winter, both in town and out on traplines. Eventually, I was to learn
myself what it felt like to sleep in tents and cabins at – 30 to – 35 de-
grees Fahrenheit while accompanying several men on their traplines in
midwinter. And, to my astonishment, the shelters were left unheated
except at mealtimes. Tough people!
The community had a small nucleus of public buildings that in-
cluded a Hudson Bay store, a school, police and nursing stations, for-
estry buildings, a log-built community hall, the settlement manager’s
office, and several government houses. Inland from the river, beyond
