Part 13 (1/2)

The fis.h.i.+ng itself proved disappointing. The famous speckled trout of Nipigon did not rise to the occasion, and the sport was fair, but not extraordinary. The best day brought in twenty-seven fish, the largest being three and a half pounds, not a good specimen of the lake's trout, which go to six and eight pounds in the ordinary course of things.

And the disappointment had an irony of its own. The man who caught the most fish was the man who couldn't fish at all. The official photographer, who had gone solely to take snapshots, also took the maximum of fish out of the river. Indeed, he was so much of an amateur that the first fish he caught placed him in such a predicament that he did not play it, but landed it with so vigorous a jerk that it flew over his head and caught high in a fir. An Indian guide had to climb the tree to ”land” it.

Nevertheless, he caught the most fish, and when he returned with his spoil, the Prince said to him:

”Look here, don't you realize I'm the one to do that? You're taking my place in the program.”

The reason for the indifferent sport was probably the lateness of the season--it was practically finished when the Prince arrived--and the fact that Nipigon had had a record summer, with large parties of sportsmen working its reaches steadily all the time. The fish were certainly shy, particularly, it seemed, of fly, and the best catches were made with a small fish, a sort of bull-headed minnow called cocatoose, that creeps about close to the rocks.

Of course, trout, even if famous, are naturally temperamental. They will rise in dozens at unexpected times, just as they will refuse all temptations for weeks on end. An Englishman, and no mean fisherman, once went to Nipigon to show the local inhabitants how fis.h.i.+ng should be done. A master in British waters, he considered the speckled monsters of the lakes fit victims for his rod and fly. He went out with his guides to catch fish, and after a few days among the big trout came back disgusted.

”Did you catch any trout?” he was asked by one of his party.

”Catch 'em,” he snapped. ”How can one catch 'em? The infernal things are anch.o.r.ed.”

Walking and duck shooting was also in the program, and there were other excitements.

The weather, delightful during the first two days, broke on Sunday, and there were bad winds, rainstorms and occasional hailstorms, when stones as big as small pebbles drummed on the tents and bombarded the camp.

So fierce was the wind that the Royal Standard on a high flagstaff was carried away. A pine tree was also uprooted, and fell with a crash between the Prince's tent and that of one of his suite. A yard either way and the tent would have been crushed. Fortunately the Prince was not in the tent at that moment, but the happening gave the camp its sense of adventure.

During this rest, too, the Prince suffered a little from his eyes, an irritation caused by grains of steel that had blown into them while viewing the works at ”Soo.” His right hand was also painful from the heartiness of Toronto, and the knuckles swollen. To set these matters right, the doctor went up from the train, and by the Indian canoe that carried the mail and the daily news bulletin, reached the camp.

When he returned on Monday, September 8th, the Prince was looking undeniably fit. He marched up the railway from the lake in footer-shorts and golf jacket, with an air of one who had thoroughly enjoyed ”roughing it.”

II

While the Prince and his party were camping, the train remained in Nipigon, a tiny village set in complete isolation on the edge of the river and in the heart of the woods.

It is a little germ-culture of humanity cut off from the world. The only way out is, apparently, the railway, though, perhaps, one could get away by the boats that come up to load pulp wood, or by the petrol launches that scurry out on to Lake Superior and its waterside towns.

But the roads out of it, there appear to be none. Follow any track, and it fades away gently into the primitive bush.

It is a nest of loneliness that has carried on after its old office as a big fur collecting post--you see the original offices of Revillon Freres and the Hudson Bay Company standing today--has gone. Now it lives on lumber and the fis.h.i.+ng, and one wonders what else.

Its tiny station, through which the Transcontinental trains thunder, is faced by a long, straggling green, and fringing the green is a row of wooden shops and houses equally straggling. They have a somnolent and spiritless air. Behind is a wedge of pretty dwellings stretching down to the river, tailing off into an Indian encampment by the stream, where, about dingy tepees, a dozen or so stoic children play.

There are three hundred souls in the village, mainly Finns and Indians become Canadians. They are not the Indians of Fenimore Cooper, but men who wear peaked caps, bright blouse s.h.i.+rts or sweaters, with broad yellow, blue and white stripes (a popular article of wear all over Canada), and women who wear the s.h.i.+n skirts and silks of civilization.

Only here and there one sees old squaw women, stout and brown and bent, with the plaid shawl of modernity making up for the moccasins of their ancient race.

Small though it is, or perhaps because it is so small and observable, Nipigon is an example of the amalgam from which the Canadian race is being fused. We went, for instance, to a dance given by the Finns in their varnished, brown-wood hall on the Sat.u.r.day night. It was an attractive and interesting evening. The whole of the village, without distinction, appeared to be there. And they mixed. Indian women in the silk stockings, high heels and glowing frocks of suburbia, danced (and danced well) with high cheek-boned, monosyllabic Finns in grey sweaters, workaday trousers and coats and bubble-toed boots. A vivid Canadian girl in semi-evening dress went round in the jazz with a guard of the Royal train. A policeman from the train danced with a Finnish girl, demure and well-dressed, who might have been anything from the leader of local Society to a clerk (i.e., a counter hand) in one of the shops. For all we knew, the plumber might have been dancing with the leading citizen's daughter, and the local Astor with the local dressmaker's a.s.sistant.

In any case, it didn't matter. In Canada they don't think about that sort of thing. They were all unconcerned and happy in the big, generous spirit of equality that makes Canada the home of one big family rather than the dwelling-place of different cla.s.ses and social grades. This fact was not new to us; naturally, we had seen and mixed with Canadians in hotels and on the street elsewhere. In those gathering-places of humanity, the hotels, we had lived with the big, jolly, homely crowds without social strata, who might very well have changed places with the waiters and the waiters with them without anybody noticing any difference. That would not have meant a loss of dignity to anybody. n.o.body has any use for social status in the Dominion, the only standard being whether a man is a ”mixer” or not.

By way of a footnote, I might say that waiters, even as waiters, are on the way to take seats as guests, since, apparently, waiting is only an occupation a man takes up until he finds something worth while. Not unexpectedly Canadian waiting suffers through this.

What we had seen in the large towns, and in the large gregarious life of cities, we saw ”close up” at Nipigon. The varied crowd, Finns, British, Canadian and Indian (one of the Indians, a young dandy, had served with distinction during the war, had married a white Canadian, and was one of the richest men present), danced without social distinctions in that pleasant hall to Finn folk-songs that had never been set down on paper played on an accordion. It was a delightful evening.

For the rest, those with the train fished (or, rather, went through all the ritual with little of the results), walked, bathed in the lake, watched the American ”movie” men in their endeavours to convert the British to baseball, or endeavoured, with as little success, to convert the baseball ”fans” to cricket. The recreations of Nipigon were not hectic, and we were glad to get on to towns and ma.s.sed life again.