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Several men shared the communal living spaces in this particular trailer, where each had their own room as well. No kitchen there, as everybody was served three meals at the company mess hall, a fancy name for another Atco trailer with a kitchen and an adjacent space with Formica tables and chairs.

I spent a few days exploring the town, acclimatizing, while Hank was finishing his shifts. I met a few interesting people: most were employees imported from elsewhere and some were locals. We ate our meals in the mess hall: hearty, North American food, and plenty of it.

We made a few short rides in Hank’s boat on the enormous river, which must have been at least six kilometres in width at Norman Wells. A few drilling islands were located right in the middle of the river from where barges transported oil, extracted from below the river bed and its direct surroundings.

Hank announced that we were going to make a big trip on the river. Although I had a feeling of dread, I simply pushed that away as anticipation that belongs to a new adventure. Hank explained that the next settlement, Fort Good Hope, was having a big pow-wow of the Dene Nation this week; Hank was invited by a friend.

Although some Caucasian workers warned me not to go there, as I would not be safe in their view, I was not worried. I was very curious and trusted Hank’s judgement.

Hank’s friend was Daisy, a Dene woman from Fort Good Hope, really more a girl, of twenty. She had a baby with a Caucasian man, Pete, a former employee of one of the contracted services who got fired and had stayed in the area living with Daisy. Their little family was coming on the boat trip as well. We needed Daisy, as she knew the way, although she had never travelled home on the river herself.

Pete apparently suffered from some sort of a mental problem, according to Hank, and he was on medication. Hank thought Pete was harmless, so he had not objected to Daisy’s request to bring him. I hoped Hank was right.

Hank owned a large freight canoe, custom made from bent cedar and covered with oiled canvas. It was a beauty. Hank said that we needed to bring two oil barrels with gas for the small outboard motor, for the return trip. We would mostly coast downstream to The Fort, using only the paddles to keep us straight, but upstream would be a challenge with a boat full of people travelling without extra power. Hank would drop the barrels off at two strategic locations on the way north, so we would be able to find them on our return trip and fuel up.

When we were all loaded up, the boat was very full. We had some food for the three-day trip and Pete loaded up a flat of beer as well.

The baby was happy and entertained us during the long trip. Daisy provided excellent and responsive care to little George. Pete slept most of the time and only woke up occasionally to drink another beer. My Swiss army knife, purchased especially for my trip to Canada, came in handy for opening the beer. Although it was summer, the cold was seeping though the blanket Daisy brought, so we wore all our clothes, layered up.

Summer in the north means the sun never sinks below the horizon. It was exhilarating to experience never-ending daylight for the first time. The sun still hung in the sky at one o’clock in the early morning at an angle that compared to about seven o’clock in the evening in the British Columbia or Alberta south. It would stay there, until it rose to its highest position again at midday. This gave us endless hours to travel, until we got tired and needed a rest. Hank had a small tent we set up on a riverbank and crawled all into it, after our chilli dinner, cooked on an improvised fire. Lucky for us, it was too early in the season for flies and mosquitoes.

One day we saw a large, dark coloured animal swim cross the miles-wide river towards the other side, ahead of us. We thought it might be a moose, although there are known to be caribou in these parts, and black and grizzly bears as well. When close enough, we saw it was a large bear; it paid no attention to us.

We once saw an animal shuffling away in the taller grasses while we pushed ourselves on shore. Hank thought it was a badger. Nothing else moved.

This country was devoid of humans. No noise, no people, no traffic, no planes, just this wide, seemingly complacent river framed by its banks, a meter or two high and a several meters away from the water, with miniature, skinny evergreens growing on it. I realized that we could not rely on others finding us if something happened: no telephones, no traffic on the river whatsoever. The complete wildness of the place instilled a feeling of insignificance and humility. The word awesome took on new meaning for me.

Hank and Daisy knew some of the landmarks on the way to The Fort, such as where another river, the Mountain River, would join the Mackenzie and the two together become an even wider waterway. Just after that, the Sans Sault Rapids would appear, a hazard where many inexperienced travellers would dump their boats. Local boaters had instructed Hank to stay on the left side of the centre, the right side to be avoided at all cost, as it contains large rocks hidden by the water.

We were also warned of the Ramparts, solid steep banks of fifteen meters high along both sides of the river. Together with the high banks, the riverbed also narrows at that location to about less than a third its size. A large quantity of water must squeeze itself through the ramparts: nowhere else to go but up. Once we passed that hurdle, we would be very close to our destination, Fort Good Hope.

I assert that my story may be proof of a higher power that protected us. If not that, it was certainly not due to any skill or intelligence on our part that we survived the trip. After the fact, we acknowledged that we had been very unprepared of what came next on our last boating day.

The trip was 145 kilometres long on a river that is considered navigable. Outfitters that are well prepared and outfitted do indeed organize occasional canoe trips for adventurous travellers. We had planned to arrive in the early afternoon at Fort Good Hope, the rapids and the ramparts still ahead of us.

The Sans Sault Rapids (without drop) did indeed quicken the speed of the boat to at least double its usual speed. Although there was no drop in the level of the river, the pure size and the width of the river made the rapids scary enough. The baby and Daisy were sitting in the middle of the boat, the most stable spot. Luckily, we had already relieved the boat of the two barrels with gas before we hit the rapids. I stood in the front of the boat with a paddle at the ready, in case of rocks popping up. Hank sat in the back, steering, with the outboard motor on.

Pete was useless. He had been drinking the beer, mixed with his mental health medications. Because he was the only other male in the boat besides Hank, he apparently felt he had to do something when he woke up. It would have been better if he hadn’t. He raised himself from his seat, grabbed one of the two paddles lying in the boat, made an attempt to keep the boat straight with it and dropped it in the river.

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