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| Bill Stupack was my hero |
Chapter 12
Growing up at Bow Narrows Camp was, literally, a unique experience. Not only was I usually the only child in camp, I was also the only kid at the west end of the entire lake. I was adopted by the camp's fishermen, hunters and Ojibwe guides as well as area geologists, trappers and prospectors. Each had something to teach me. Chief among them was Bill Stupack, the camp's former owner and still a prospector and trapper.
Bill had no children of his own and in me found a willing student. I, in turn, idolized him, even as I realized his racism about Indians was wrong.
Bill was one of the North's many larger-than-life characters. He had come to the Red Lake Gold Rush in 1926 as a 16-year-old wide-eyed Ukrainian kid from Manitoba. His only possessions were his immense strength and steel resolve. He learned everything on the job at the area's many fledgling gold mines. He shoveled ore, cut firewood for steam boilers and learned carpentry skills as he helped build bunkhouses, kitchens and headframes -- the tall structures with pulleys that stood over every mine shaft. In boom times, there were a couple dozen mines around Red Lake. Only a few would produce substantial amounts of gold.
Like 10,000 others in those first years of the gold rush, Bill staked claims everywhere there seemed some chance of locating the treasured metal. He concentrated on the west end of the lake in the vicinity of what would become Bow Narrows Camp. A couple of his claims would be bought by the West Red Lake mine and Bill used that money to buy land and build his home just a half-mile downstream, where the camp is today.
Before long Bill realized he worked best alone and outdoors. He became a market hunter for the mines. Year-round shooting of big game was allowed in Red Lake in those days because there was no road to the community and no other way to feed the thousands of hungry miners. He also obtained a registered trapline, 20 miles to the west of camp, and built a cabin at Prairie Lake, approximately the center of his trapping area. As winter approached each year, he would paddle a canoe and make a dozen portages to reach his trapping cabin, then stay there alone until Christmas when he would snowshoe the 20 miles back to his home at the camp in one day and to Red Lake the next to sell his furs. He would spend Christmas Day with the Art Carlson family in town, then load up his toboggan with supplies and make the return journey back to Prairie Lake until spring.
In the summers Bill didn't take much time off from his prospecting and claim-staking but when he did he would often take me fishing for lake trout, his favourite fish. Perhaps at one time many of the hundreds of miners and their families who lived at the west end of the lake knew where and how to catch the big trout, but by the 1960s there was only one person with that knowledge: Bill.
He used short trolling rods with ocean-size Penn reels that had no level wind. The reels could store a couple of hundred yards of 60-pound, lead-core, trolling line that was marked in a different colour every 10 yards. At the end of this line was a 2-ounce lead sinker, a three-foot piece of heavy monofilament and a large snap. Bill's favourite trolling lures were 8-inch canoe spoons, Doctor spoons and Williams wablers. With the outboard idling as slow as possible, six or seven colours of line (60-70 yards) was let out and the boat steered along a precise route, often a very large figure 8 that covered miles. The knowledge of where those trolling patterns were became my early ticket to a guiding career.
Bill had told some friends of one of his old guests that he would take them trout fishing but then was too busy.
"Take Danny," said Bill. "He knows where to go."
We started out with one of the guests driving the outboard but when I kept telling him that he was too close to shore or should swing wide around some coves that were so shallow we would get snagged, he turned over the tiller to me. Within a couple of hours we had boated a 29-pound and a 19-pound lake trout and my reputation as a fishing guide had begun. I was 9. From that point forward I would spend the majority of my summer days at the stern of a fishing boat.
Bill would also take me fishing to portage lakes. He had a line cabin on Crystal Lake 16 miles to the west that was excellent for small lakers. We would leave camp at daylight in Bill's 14-foot Crestliner with a Johnson 10 and tie up at Douglas Creek, the falls at the end of Trout Bay. Bill had a canoe waiting at the other end of the portage, on Douglas Lake. It was the first of eight portages we would make, with Bill carrying the canoe and a packsack, to reach Crystal. We would start fishing on the lake about 11 a.m. and after only a couple of hours and a lunch, made the reverse trip. All told we would travel 32 miles and cross 16 portages. We would get home about supper time. My arms would be so tired from paddling that I could barely lift them the next day.
On one of those portages Bill instructed me to go ahead and clear as many branches from the trail as I could. I ran because Bill was a fast walker and I didn't want to be overtaken. The only things in my hands were the two fishing rods. I sprinted over a small hill before I noticed that just a few feet to the side of me were two tiny bear cubs. About 10 yards away on the other side of the trail was the mother bear. I was standing between them, exactly what you are never supposed to do. In a flash I reversed direction and sped as fast as I could toward Bill. When I got to him I realized I was no longer carrying the rods. Bill swung the canoe off his shoulders, the only time I ever saw him do so before the trail's end. We walked up to the little knoll and found the rods where I dropped them. The bears had fled.
"You know, Danny, I was chased by a bear over a portage one time," said Bill. "I thought I was a pretty fast runner but that bear kept gaining on me. I looked over my shoulder just as he made a big leap. I instantly fell to the ground and the bear passed right overhead. By the time he got turned around I was gone. A day later I went back over the portage and saw that bear again and do you know what he was doing"
I didn't know.
"Practising short jumps! HAHAHA!"
Bill paddled a canoe exactly like the Ojibwe guides. He took short strokes and barred the paddle against the gunwale on what would be the rear of the J-stroke. The craft would shoot along at 4-5 mph.
I also went trapping for 10 days with Bill on Prairie Lake in January when I was 12. Each day we would walk about 10 miles on snowshoes, five out and five back from the cabin. Bill showed me how to "read" the lake ice to avoid slushy sections. We were both wearing moccasins and had we plunged through the snow into the slush, our wet feet would have frozen in the 20-below F temperature.
One day we encountered the tracks of about 30 woodland caribou right in the middle of a lake. Bill gazed at a hillside in the distance and made a prediction: "Caribou are very curious. I bet they are laying over there on that hillside wondering what kind of animals we are. Let's go over to the portage and see if they come down to sniff our tracks."
We walked about a mile away and ate our lunch while we watched. Sure enough, a half-hour later, the herd of caribou came right to where we had been walking.
Bill would usually stop to boil a billy can of snow for tea every few hours. On one occasion we had just reached the far side of Prairie Lake when he did so. We could have walked to the cabin in 30 more minutes. I realized he called the time out because he felt we needed some hydration. It was a bit of wisdom that he had learned trapping alone for decades in the deep bush. There just was no room for mistakes.
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| Uncle Ervie, left, and my great-uncle Charlie Carpenter. My Brownie camera is at right. |
While Bill had taught me how to lake trout fish, my uncles Ervie Kitzel and Charlie Carpenter, both from Ohio, helped me perfect my skills at northern pike and walleye. They would come for a week's fishing trip each summer and always took me with them, letting me drive the motor. Mostly we would paddle or drift along the weedy shorelines, casting for northern pike which we caught by the hundreds each day. Before long I figured out how to paddle our 14-foot wooden Nipissing fishing boats, using the wind to my advantage, and we would silently move along all the bays and shorelines, spotting moose, bear and all sorts of aquatic creatures around every turn. We were so successful using this system that after Ervie and Charlie would return home, other guests asked if I could guide them as well. At first I just worked for tips, then $5 a day and finally $12 a day, just like the big guides. My dad said it was only right since I worked just as hard, cleaned all of my guests' fish and cooked them shore lunch each day.
While I paddled the fishing boat I always kept an eye peeled for shore creatures and watched my guests' lures as they returned to the boat, often spotting "follow-ups" -- fish trailing behind the spoons and spinners. I overheard one of my guests, a woman, say to my dad, "We always like going with Dan because we see so much more with him. I don't think we go for more than a couple of minutes before he says 'there's one,' (a follow-up).
Once or twice a summer we would spot a bald eagle or an osprey, that is how few there were back when DDT was the pesticide of choice. But then Rachel Carson wrote her book Silent Spring and spawned the environmental movement. Today there are eagles in virtually every bay on Red Lake. Curiously, ospreys are still a rare sight.
... to be continued
Others in this series
Animals
1 comment:
Awesome memories, Dan, thanks for sharing.
Stupack had some shortcomings, but don’t we all. He was certainly a consummate bushman.
I didn’t know he originally staked the WRL claims, cool.
Cheers, Tom
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