Return to the Peel - Day 15 - RCGS Expedition 2018

Ernest Vittrekwa with the fish he pulled from his net in the Peel River.

July 30th, 2018. Cool but sunny.

From Camsell’s memoir, “Son of the North":

“The night before I reached Fort McPherson, returning from the Delta, I camped at a place called Nelson’s Fishery at the mouth of a small creek which drains some of the muskeg lake country back of the fort. Here I found an Indian by the name of Peter Ross who with his family was engaged in netting and drying whitefish caught in the main river... (Ross) was a full blooded Loucheux (Gwich’in) Indian who had been born and lived his whole life in the vicinity of the delta. I visited him after supper in a small teepee in which he was sitting alone by a small bit of fire making a fish net.” Ross went on to tell Camsell many Gwich’in legends that evening, creation stories that Camsell would go on to tell his own Grandchildren, including my mother, Lynne. He would also publish these stories in The Journal of American Folklore.

Ernest bring his catch up from the Peel River.

We too spent several hours at a Gwich’in fish camp. We returned to the one belonging to our hosts the night before, Ernest and Alice Vitrekawa, 11 km upstream from Fort McPherson. Ernest has spent summers here his whole life. Alice was raised at a similar fish camp at Road River.

I went out with Ernest to check for Whitefish in their net in the Peel River. He checks it several times a day throughout the summer, generally catching several fish each time. This has been the routine for Gwich’in people dating back generations.

Alice cleans and prepares the fish for smoking.

Alice takes the Whitefish to clean and fillet, using special cuts to prepare it for smoking. Alice says none of the preparations “are to make it fancy. It’s to make it last a long time.” She uses moss to clean the table, “Gwich’in paper towel,” she says with a smile, “It works!” The fish are left to smoke overnight. Alice uses different wood, depending on the taste she is after, sometimes driftwood, sometimes willow. “We all have our own secrets to smoking,” she says. She is passing down those secrets to her children and grandchildren, who visit often.

Alice hangs the fish in the outdoor smoke-house.

Like many in this community, Alice and Ernest live on the fish they catch through much of the summer. We are offered smoked fish everywhere we go up here. “The food in stores is so expensive in the north,” Ernest says. “This is much cheaper and healthier.”

Ernest credits this fish camp, and the clean waters of the Peel, to his recovery from cancer seven years ago. When he arrived back from chemo he couldn’t walk, his prospects weren’t good. Being out here, clean air, clean water and plenty of things that needed doing, made him determined to get better.

David, Alice Vittrekwa, Ernest Vittrekwa and Terry by the smokehouse.

And at 75 and 69 Ernest and Alice have become biologists of sorts. Twice a week this season they send in samples of fish they catch to a Canadian government lab to test for pathogens like mercury. So far results are clean. They want it to stay that way for future generations.

An old school prospectors tent (with zippers!) made by the Ft McPherson Tent and Canvas Co.

Also, we visited the Ft McPherson Tent and Canvas Company, which makes prospector style Canvas tents, just like the kind Charles Camsell’s expedition would have used in 1905. The current model has some big improvements though, like zippers on the doors!

Graham and Terry outside a recreation of the Mad Trapper's cabin.

And after a visit to the great little museum in town, complete with a recreation of the cabin belonging to the Mad Trapper of Rat River, we hitched a ride to the town’s only restaurant, LJ’s. It’s surprising location is in the yard of a heavy machinery company. It’s an employee canteen that expanded it’s clientele base. They make a good burger.