all his traps, he was ready. “Everything’s ready ta go,” he said with a satisfied look on his face. He then retired to his settle for the evening.
“Can ya play us a song, Daddy?” I asked, tugging on his pant leg.
He picked up his accordion and began playing a tune. I danced happily around the floor.
“Time ta go ta bed now, maids,” Mommy piped up after a time.
Oh, why did she have to spoil everything? I thought. But I knew there was no arguing with her. I climbed the ladder to the half-loft and crawled into my feather bed. As I snuggled under the weight of Mommy’s homemade quilts, I felt sad. I didn’t want Daddy to go away. I listened to him play for a while and then everything became quiet and very, very dark. It was too dark to see the printed catalogue paper that covered the rafters just above my head.
The next morning it was still dark when I awoke to the delicious smell of freshly steeped tea and homemade toast. I heard the crackling of the splits as they quickly burned away, and felt warmth filtering into my loft. Daddy had already lit the fire, boiled the kettle, and made his breakfast of tea and toast. My parents were talking softly.
I felt so scared about my daddy going away. The smell of toast made me hungry, so I crawled down the ladder and stood on the orange crate beside the stove. I watched Mommy bustle about, getting everything ready for Daddy. I wanted to see him off. Mommy had made pork buns for him, his favourite.
Daddy took his ninny bag from the nail beside the stove and laid it on the table. Into his bag he put a tiny homemade stove, a blackened kettle, a small cooking pot, some snare wire, a small ball of line, ammunition, fish hooks, and a skinning knife. Into an old shaving kit bag he placed his chewing tobacco and matches. Before he left he used a whetstone to sharpen his axe and all his knives.
“Whass ya doin now, Daddy?” I asked as he spit on the stone to wet it.
“I’m sharpnin me knife, Jimmy,” he said, swirling the blade around and around in a circular motion and making a soft, grinding sound.
“Wha fer?”
“So it’ll cut better.”
My father worked efficiently and effortlessly, almost as if in slow motion, very focused and methodical. He picked up his axe and braced it between his knees to check the sharpness of the blade. Then he pinned the handle on his thigh with his elbow, held the heel of the axe in his left hand for stability, took his sharpening stone, and pushed it across the blade. He started from the inside corner and pushed outward, making that soft, grinding noise. Spit and grind, spit and grind. I could see the tip of the steel blade start to gleam.
“Looks sharp now, Daddy,” I said, my face close to the blade, studying it.
“Yeh, Jimmy, tis,” he said, wiping it clean and leaning it against the wall. “Don’t touch it,” he added, looking at me with a warning grin.
Daddy then double-checked his supplies. He was ready. With quiet anticipation he hung his ninny bag and his traps on his gun barrel, slung the gun over his shoulder, and set out. Swoosh, swoosh went his rackets, rubbing together as he limped through the snow. I could hear the traps jingling, and a tear trickled down my cheek as I watched him disappear into the woods.
Everything became silent as we wondered if he would be safe. He might travel several miles in a day, setting his traps as he went. It was a time-consuming job, and finding the right place to set each trap was critical.
Courtesy Them Days magazine and the artist Gerald W. Mitchell.
Loading up a komatik for a trapping trip in Labrador.
For fox and mink a trapper would usually set traps along the shoreline under a large tree or in the mouth of a burrow. Mink traps could be set in a river in air pockets where the animals travelled in and out for food. A trapper had to know the habits of the animal. The better he was at predicting the animal’s behaviour the better chance he had of trapping it. Lynx preferred heavily wooded areas. Mink and weasels were the easiest to trap. Weasels were plentiful, and since they weren’t suspicious, the trapper didn’t have to conceal the traps, which was a difficult process. However, traps for fox and lynx had to be hidden because they were such crafty animals. For fox and lynx a trapper had to be sure to leave as few clues as possible. After the traps were set on the initial run of the line, the trapper had to wait overnight and hope he would get something. Exhausted and weary, he would put up his little canvas tent, cover the floor with boughs, and set up his tiny stove. All these items he carried with him. There were no sleeping bags then and none of the warm synthetic clothing we have today. In order not to freeze to death the trapper had to keep the stove going all night.
First thing in the morning the trapper made the rounds, checking each trap, emptying and resetting them as he went. The animals were frozen solid and remained that way until he got them home.
Daddy hung the frozen animals near the stove to thaw out before they were skinned. The few animals not yet frozen were skinned right away. The skin was turned inside out and pulled and stretched over special boards carved in the shape of the animal. Little nails tacked the skins to the end of the board to keep them from shrinking while drying. They were then placed high on the cabin beams to dry. Once thoroughly dried, they were turned right side out and kneaded until they were soft and supple. The pelts had to be cleaned thoroughly. Not doing so would leave an odour and reduce the quality of the fur. Traders wanted only clean, odourless, well-cured pelts.
Getting to the trading post was another feat because the closest one was a two-day trip to Cartwright, 60 miles away. Winter storms were brutal and could come without warning. During a major storm or a cold spell, we were trapped for days inside the cabin. With the temperatures at minus 50 degrees and winds up to 100 miles per hour, nothing moved. A mound of snow was all we could see of the dogs as they were completely buried.
The silence was deafening after a storm. It was dark, but not like the darkness of night. This was different, like a grey hue everywhere. Many times I heard Daddy get up from his quilts, limp to the window, blow a peephole through the frost to check the weather, and see nothing but a wall of snow.
“Der’ll be no wood cuttin or huntin taday, Mammy,” he’d say with a sigh.
“Is we buried again, Tom?” she’d ask Daddy from her bed in the darkness.
“Yeh, Mammy, and tis too starmy ta go anywhere.”
“My, oh, my, whass we gonna do I wonder? We got nuttin fer de youngsters ta eat.”
“We needs ta get sometin soon or we’ll starve,” Daddy would answer, concern evident in his voice. The possibility of starvation was very real.
To go hunting for big game involved several men in the settlement as a group, and they could be gone for a week or more. Daddy used all his dogs to hunt big game, and any spare dogs he could borrow, especially if they went inland for caribou.
The hourglass was the only way to monitor the weather. So if it looked favourable for several days, the men geared up. To prepare for such a trip, Daddy cleaned his guns and loaded them and checked his harnesses and any other supplies he might need. Mommy packed his grub bag with flour, molasses, salt, fatback pork, and tea. She made sure he had a change of clothes in case he got wet.
Daddy was up well before dawn to harness
