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The Coming of Saska a big double bed up in front over the driving cab (one stood on a seat to get into it) and more cupboards than we could possibly use. Towels, crockery, cutlery, pillows, sleeping bags and sheets... everything was there; all new and sealed in polythene bags, Canadians being particular. One entered the camper up folding iron steps at the rear, like an old-fashioned gypsy caravan, and there was a hatchway at the front end for communication through to the driving cabin.
Looking at our home for the next six weeks, visualising it out on the prairie, by the rivers, in the great Canadian forests, we knew that this, after all, was what we’d come for. City life may be fine for a while but, at any rate for us, there is nothing like the great outdoors. With a vehicle like this... self-contained, independent... like a couple of Columbuses we could go anywhere.
The first place these Columbuses had to go, however, was back to the Château Lacombe to collect our luggage and, seeing that it meant driving through crowded down-town Edmonton at lunch-time on the (to us) wrong side of the road, in a vehicle the size of a small removal van, with left-hand drive, Charles, I thought, did superbly.
Modestly he said it was easy. Anyone could handle a camper like this. True, at one stage we went three times round the block on Jasper Avenue... in that traffic build-up anyone might do it twice but the policeman on point duty didn’t half look surprised when, having waved us accommodatingly round on two occasions, back we came a few minutes later still signalling right. True, having eventually left Edmonton behind us... travelling westwards, as we thought, on the Yellowhead Highway towards Jasper...
we discovered we were in fact heading directly northwards, straight for the Arctic Circle... but those were my faults. I 56
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was doing the navigating. And eventually, having gone back once again to Edmonton (there are no interconnecting roads round cities in the Canadian West and North; one exits from them on highways built on the old fur-traders’
trails... North, South, East or West and never do any of them meet), there we were, with a week’s supply of food aboard, driving determinedly towards the Rockies.
We camped that first night in a forest clearing – designated as a Highways campsite but as unlike the English idea of a camping ground as one could possibly imagine. No euphemistic ‘toilet block’; merely two log-built chemical closets in the trees beyond the clearing with bear warnings tacked up on the doors. No water tap: just a pump which spouted well-water in a corner. No site-shop selling the milk and bread so essential to English campers, and in consequence no huddling together of caravans for the night, either.
Only one other vehicle pulled in later into the furthest corner of the clearing, the occupants emerging to light a campfire and cook steaks and brew coffee on it, and while to a degree we regretted even that... nobody around for miles is our idea of camping... I must admit to a certain relief in the thought that if a bear did happen along while I was in that little log hut among the trees (with my aptitude for encounters, if there was one within a mile he certainly would)... there were other people around if I had to shout for rescue.
Not that Charles wouldn’t have tackled it on his own, and unless the bear was angry it would have been simple. Black bear, the only type likely to be round there, normally take to their heels if anyone shouts at them. Don’t antagonise them. Don’t ever get between a female bear and her cubs.
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The Coming of Saska If you are holding food, throw it down and back away if they come towards you. These – and keeping an eye open for a handy tree – are the salient points to remember in bear country. I knew all this from our previous visit and nobody had been more full of aplomb than I in talking about bears in England. It was a different matter, though, our first night out from civilisation. Out there in that lonely log privy, shining a tremulous torch on the bear warning and listening to odd crackling noises outside in the forest, I wasn’t half glad that Charles stood on guard outside the door and that over in the clearing, their campfire reflecting comfortingly through the privy latch-hole, was a Canadian family no doubt used to dealing with bears.
Within a few days we were back to being used to them ourselves. By this time we were ensconced in the Wapiti campground in Jasper National Park and if that scarcely sounds like adventurous camping I should point out that the Park is 4,200 square miles in area, a large part of this is wilderness country where only naturalists and the more intrepid go, and that ‘park’ merely means that it is patrolled by rangers and that within its boundaries all animal, bird and plant life is protected. Much of it is dense natural forest and as a safeguard against starting fires, all vehicles must be parked at night in one of the official campgrounds.
We had hoped that, being on a semi-official trip, we might be permitted to camp out of laager. It wasn’t allowed, said the warden If one did it everybody would want to and they’d have dozens of forest fires to deal with every morning. So we were allotted a site from the chart in the warden’s office – a small clearing fringed with saskatoon bushes, wild raspberries and cottonwood trees, on the edge of the Athabasca River. The clearing contained the 58
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rough-hewn log table and fireplace which are features of most Canadian campsites… the table for the camper’s convenience, the fireplace – a large iron box with a grille standing a few inches off the ground – compulsory for the lighting of fires so as to keep them under control.
We lit our fire, we cooked our supper, we ate it at our log table by the Athabasca River. Owls hooted in the forest.
In from of us the river rushed and gurgled. Through the trees we could see the glow of other campfires. Barring the refinements of the table and fireplace, we reflected, the early explorers might have camped in such a place as this, listening to the roaring of the river and wondering what lay out there in the darkness.
How right we were we learned next morning when a passing ranger, stopping for a chat while we were cooking breakfast, asked if we knew we were on La Grande Traverse.
That’s it, right there in front of you,’ he said, indicating the narrow track that ran along the river bank a few feet from our camper door. We stared, scarcely able to believe it. The most famous of all the old Hudson Bay Company’s trade routes. ‘Shades of the Boy’s Own Paper’, said Charles. To think we’re actually on it!’
I was raised on The Magnet myself, but I knew just how he was feeling. This way, in their time, had come explorers, fur-traders, prospectors... on foot or with plodding pack-horse train along this very path. Up-river, through the Athabasca Pass in the mountains, by canoe down the Columbia River to the coast. A journey that took weeks, sometimes months, to accomplish. Some of those travellers must have camped on this very spot.
That, and the fact that the warden told us we were within twenty miles of wolf country... he’d arrange for us to go up 59
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The Coming of Saska there with a naturalist if we liked... sold Wapiti to us. We camped there for a week. We saw several bears and we heard the wolves. The reason we didn’t see them was that they are afraid of human beings.
It is a fact. Those hair-raising adventure stories in which wolves attack the hero... being held off by his waving a firebrand at them or chasing a racing sleigh from which, with his last remaining shot, he valiantly downs the leader...