Grand River Trappers

Here is a passage about the old Grand River trappers in Labrador that I am frequently making reference to. It always struck me as an amazing story (and a good reason why not to get a haircut!!!) But just as amazing as surviving the disaster in the rapids is the nonchalance with which Goudie and Michelin pick-up and walk home whereas the rest of us would have been dead from hypothermia!

If the hunting is good they may stay out till after the thaw or they may strike up their traps in April and sledge out on the last of the ice. In either case it is a dangerous business. The old ice is worn by the current underneath as much as it is melted above by the sun, and often it gives no sign of its fragility until it gives way and deposits the unwary traveller in the swift flowing water beneath. Yet the first wild water after the break-up is more dangerous still. Quite suddenly the dams of snow and ice are broken and the river comes bounding down triumphant, sweeping with it tree trunks and pans of ice in an almost continuous rapid from the plateau to the sea. It is admittedly dangerous to navigate such waters especially with a valuable cargo of furs, but the good hunting is over and the trappers must get home quickly or waste their time in the woods. They know the river so well that, theoretically at least, they can get ashore in time and make a portage around the worst places; but sometimes their impatience overcomes their discretion. On one occasion Sam Goudie and John Michelin were racing home after a very long and successful season in the woods. They were both expert canoe men and could steer their way among the white eddies of the worst rapid, so they chose the river where most men would have gone ashore. They came round a corner and, just in front of them, the river swirled under a ledge of still unbroken ice. Goudie, who was kneeling in the bow, managed to jump on to the ice, but John Michelin had forced his legs under the tarpaulin which was lashed above the load and could not move in time. Goudie caught him by his long hair and jerked him to safety as the canoe disappeared beneath them with all their food and two thousand dollars’ worth of furs. They got home without much hardship, but they were poor men until the next season was over. pp.38-39
J. M. Scott (1933) The Land that God Gave Cain: an Account of H.G. Watkin’s Expedition to Labrador, 1928-1929. Chatto and Windus: London.