Modern Canada reaches North

Inuvialuit Schooner at Herschel Island, early 1950s. PC, McFarland 006.

The Mounted Police presence at Herschel Island and at similar posts across the Arctic was an important symbol of Canada. In the early years, the police were more a presence of Canada than a force for change. Gradually however the Mounties asserted Canadian law and extended government services as the local population grew accustomed to the cultural and social changes taking place. This was especially true after the Second World War. In the early days, the Herschel Island detachment registered the traders coming into the region and investigated criminal acts. Hunting and trapping seasons were enforced with increasing rigour as time went on, and there was a short term in 1949 as Mining Recorder for the Firth River prospectors. Relief supplies were provided to the aged or sick as necessary. Perhaps the most important activity for Canada was the police attention to local trends and activities submitted in the annual report on the “Conditions of the Eskimo.” However, like the Inuvialuit around them, they appear to have spent most of their time working to stay where they were – catching fish for the dogs’ winter food supply, cutting ice for the summer water supply, keeping the buildings from collapsing (at least once spending several days looking for their outhouse when it had blown away in a gale), and spending huge amounts of time travelling, by dog or boat patrol, to see what was happening.

Jim Hickling preparing dinner. Bill McFarland recalled the RCMP rations at the Herschel detachment: “We kept all our beefsteak and onions and wieners and beans and canned ham and canned potatoes, everything canned in the ration warehouse. Let’ em freeze in the wintertime and thaw out in the summer. I remember I got up there and we had these cans of assorted Campbell’s soups, cases of them, and there was nothing there but asparagus soup. The guy before me had disliked asparagus soup and he’d eaten everything around the asparagus soup. And that was all that was left, asparagus soup. For years afterwards, I couldn’t handle asparagus soup.” McFarland #066, PC

The Bob Cockney family at RCMP detachment for Christmas, early 1950s. PC, Hickling 173.

The Canadian government introduced the first elements of the modern social security network in the late 1940s. Family Allowance and Old Age Pension programs were implemented and extended to the whole country. This had an unexpected effect in the western Arctic when Inuvialuit families, who settled at Barter Island, Alaska in the 1930s, decided to move east to join their relatives in Canada. The migration of these families prompted the reopening of the Mounted Police detachment at Herschel Island in 1948. The coincident collapse of both the value and number of white fox on the North Slope complicated police work there over the next fifteen years.

Traditionally the fur trade companies extended credit to trappers for the next year’s outfit. However with the poor business outlook for fur, the companies began refusing credit to trappers already deep in debt. These refusals included a large proportion of those Inuvialuit living along the North Slope. As recent returnees they had been left out of the allocation of registered trap lines in the delta and were not allowed to share trapping privileges there. Further, Aklavik had little room left for new residents and both the Catholic and Anglican schools were packed and unable to accept new students. Despite protests about the resulting hardships to these people by the Herschel Island detachment and RCMP headquarters, the trading companies argued the issue had nothing to do with credit but was one of relief and therefore a government responsibility. The Herschel Island detachment was instructed to keep these people on the land while alternatives were considered. As a temporary response, the police at Herschel Island were allowed to establish a trading store in 1950. With poor hunting conditions persisting through to 1953 many people became dependent upon the store. In 1951, eleven families (85 people) with 37 children collected family allowance as rations from the detachment. Relief rations distributed that year included flour, sugar, milk powder, matches, tea, baking powder, lard, ammunition (30/30 and .22), coal oil, macaroni, tinned tomatoes, rolled oats, prunes, rice, beans, and salt. In January 1951 the store obtained six white fox skins, two pairs of caribou mitts, a pair of caribou boots, a pair of seal skin slippers and two pairs of seal skin mitts.

Old Irish and Jim Hickling trading white fox. PC, Hickling 164.

Jim Hickling recalled the store during his posting at Herschel Island in the mid 1950s; “[W]e realized that there were enough people living on the coast, trapping, that we could handle a small store, so Northern Affairs put in a bunch of supplies at Herschel Island, staples…and then they caught fox or wolverine or whatever and brought it to Herschel. They would… trade for staples…. [In] 1956, we thought we’d increase things a little bit and we got some traps and all kinds of ammunition and I think we even got some clothing – some heavy wool shirts and … the big things – tea, sugar, flour, lard. I think we even got a case of butter… the butter was a real treat. [T]here would hardly be a week go by that somebody wouldn’t drop in, either one of the Allens or the Meyooks. The Meyooks used to come out and trap and then they’d catch a few fox and then bring them in and trade them to us for flour, tea, lard, so on. Oh, yeah, as the store grew, of course, and the price of fox was pretty good … it would bring more people out of the delta to the coast to trap.”

In the search for a permanent solution in 1951, Northern Affairs proposed that a large portion of the Inuvialuit population be relocated from the North Slope and the delta to Holman Island where game was reported to be plentiful. The Inuvialuit politely declined, confident in their abilities to make a living on familiar ground. However, when trapping and prices improved in 1954 the onset of a major storm in August the following year wiped out many of their outfits. Hickling, who sat out “a terrific storm” with northwest winds up to 75 mph and a great rise in water level near Shingle Point, reported that Gus Tardiff’s family nearby suffered a lot of damage, “losing their entire summer fish catch, meat cache, food stuffs and dog equipment.” The family moved their tent into the hills behind Shingle Point and were hunting the numerous caribou to get along until freeze-up. The schooner ”Red Mountain” was washed up on shore at King Point, and while it appeared undamaged the families of Alex Gordon and Daniel Kopuk were working hard to get it back into the water, many others lost fish nets and dog equipment. For many families the losses wiped out the last remains of the halcyon days of white fox wealth from the 1930s. Nevertheless there were alternatives. In 1949 a number of Inuvialuit replaced the cash from white fox by panning for gold during the short-lived Firth River gold rush. And by the mid 1950s many were employed as construction workers on the DEW (Distant Early Warning) Line across the whole of the Arctic.

Constables McFarland and Hickling intercept the first truck train to the DEW Line site near Herschel Island. PC McFarland 074.

The possibility of more jobs and the development of the town of Inuvik drew more of the Inuvialuit into the Mackenzie Delta and the North Slope gradually lost most of its already limited population. By the early 1960s, the Herschel Island detachment’s responsibilities had shrunk to occasional patrols to the DEW Line stations and the maintenance of a yard for sled dogs. With the onset of more reliable aircraft travel and the replacement of dogs with skidoos, even these functions disappeared and in 1964 the Herschel Island detachment was closed for the last time.

Further reading

Dobrowolsky, Helene, Law of the Yukon: A Pictorial History of the Mounted Police in the Yukon (Whitehorse: Lost Moose Publishers. 1995)

Nagy, Murielle, Yukon North Slope Inuvialuit Oral History. Occasional Papers in Yukon History, 1. (Whitehorse: Yukon Government. 1994)

Morrison, William, Showing the Flag: The Mounted Police and Canadian Sovereignty in the North, 1894-1925. (Vancouver: UBC Press. 1985)

Sundogs over Herschel detachment, early 1950s. PC, Hickling #065/066.