27 - John Albrecht: Guide for P. G. Downes

 Journey to Sleeping Island

 

John Albrecht in 1939. Source: Sleeping Island by P. G. Downes, 1943.

John Albrecht made countless, wide-ranging trips throughout northern Saskatchewan from the 1930s to the 1970s, but perhaps the most remarkable is the trip he took with P. G. Downes in the summer of 1939. John served as Downe's guide for an arduous, 22-day canoe expedition from Brochet, Manitoba at the northeast end of Reindeer Lake to the Hudson Bay Company's post at Nueltin Lake on the Windy River, Northwest Territories.

P. G. Downes

Prentice G. Downes was a teacher at a private boy's school on the outskirts of Boston, Massachusetts. An avid outdoorsman, Downes had made the first of his summer trips to northern Canada in 1935. By 1939, he was anxious to travel to a huge lake on the edge of the Barren Lands called Nu-thel-tin-tu-eh or Nueltin Lake, the mystical "Sleeping Island Lake" of the Chipewyans in present-day Nunavut. At the time it was one of Canada's largest unmapped and least known lakes. The first white man to see Neultin Lake was the great explorer Samuel Hearne in 1770. After that, few non-Indigenous people visited the area.

P. G. Downes on a portage in 1940, Source: Sleeping Island, 1943.

Downes was fascinated by the ways and traditions of Canada's Indigenous peoples and travelled with them whenever possible. When he arrived at Brochet, however, he was dismayed to discover that there were very few Indians at the post. John Albrecht, a white trapper from Wollaston Lake, stepped up and offered to go with Downes. "This presented a new problem," Downes writes in his book, Sleeping Island [New York: Coward-McCann Inc., 1943; Ottawa: McGahern Stewart Publishing, 2011 (edited by R. H. Cockburn)]. "John did not know a foot of the way, and indeed had never been north of Brochet in that direction: it would be a case of us both finding the route. ... He could not speak Chipewyan or Cree. ... Furthermore, particularly vexatious, was the matter of an intangible mutual responsibility which I did not relish."  I'm not sure how to interpret this last line, but I think it has to do with the competitive male spirit which did rear its head during the journey.

"A Seasoned and Experienced Man in the North"

Downes acknowledges that there were a number of factors in John's favor as a guide. "His reputation as a canoeman, particularly with a pole, was very well established, not an insignificant thing in a country where criticism is great and judgement is stern and reserved," he writes. "He was known as a good and a tough traveler. He was a seasoned and experienced man in the North. He seemed enthusiastic about the trip."

Downes decided to hire Albrecht as his guide, paying him $300 for the journey. [Source: Bob Lee, The North Called Softly. Unpublished, 1977. Bill Smiley Archives, Prince Albert Historical Society.] He did so under the rather brutal condition that if something bad happened to either of them such as getting lost, the other would make no attempt to look for or save him. Each man had to get back to his main occupation before autumn - Downes to his teaching job in Boston and John to his trapline.

Downes gives us a good description of John's physical appearance. "He was a small man, about my own height, five-feet-seven, with disproportionately long arms, a small head, a very broad chest and back. I never saw him with his cap off, but I believe his hair was dark. His eyes were small and extraordinarily deep-set and divided by a beak-like nose." John wore a black sweater with a thick roll collar, dark patched pants, and moccasins for the trip. 

In a seventeen-foot freighting canoe secured from the Hudson Bay Company, Downes and Albrecht pushed off from the shore at Brochet on July 7, 1939. John paddled stern and Downes paddled bow. "I could feel John digging in with the big, deep strokes you use when you start. Neither of us looked back." 

Downes' map from Sleeping Island, 1943. Note that he labeled the west side of Wollaston Lake as "John's Country." This was the area where John Albrecht had his trapline in the 1930s.

Competition

"As we glided along, we were each, I am sure, making judgement upon the paddling abilities of the other," Downes writes. "A silent acknowledgement passed between us that neither would prove a burden in the canoe." Downes was relieved to note during the first hour of the trip that "John did not display any of the small mannerisms which can make a long association with a fellow paddler torture."

Fred Darbyshire and unknown trapper poling a canoe, likely on the Foster River north of Lac La Ronge, Saskatchewan. The canoe used by Downes and Albrecht did not have a motor on the back. Source

John, having learned to pole a boat as a child in East Prussia, proved to be a master at poling the freighting canoe. The two men had cut tamarack poles sixteen feet long which they used to maneuver up river rapids. Standing up in the canoe, Downes and Albrecht set their poles and thrust the canoe forward. "It is imperative that the thrust with the pole is not with the arms but with the whole body and particularly that the impetus is directed so that the canoe is not forced away from the pole," Downes explains. "The entire procedure is a combination of balance, timing within the face of the swirling, plucking current, the boulders bottom, the ledges and reefs, the submerged rocks, and the instability of a canoe is a great art." At one point near Chipewyan Falls the men were unable to find the bottom with their poles. Downes struggled, but John, "standing firm and immovable in the stern, kept the canoe headed into the current with a silent and intense ferocity."

Here's a video showing the technique for poling a canoe upstream. Source: Youtube, canoepoler, 2019.

Another activity which revealed the competition between Downes and Albrecht was portaging. When encountering an obstacle such as rapids or waterfalls, or in order to get from one waterway to another, canoeists must carry, or portage, their canoe and gear overland. In Sleeping Island, Downes acknowledges that he was competing with Albrecht on their portages. "There is an odd, savage, masochistic joy in finding yourself able to pile on more and more until you can stagger to your feet," he declares. A few trips back and forth were required to complete a portage. "With a savage exultation you dogtrot back over the trail with feverish impatience for the next load and the secret anticipation that if you hurry you can, maybe, catch up with and pass your companion." I wonder if John felt the same compulsion? Perhaps he did, for as Downes concludes, "There are no sweeter words to the man of the North than: 'By God, there is a man that can pack!"

Philip Goodwin's artwork provides a romanticized portrayal of portaging. The man in the front is using a tumpline on his head to carry his gear.

The tense nature of the competition between Downes and Albrecht is further revealed in this description of John's stubbornness. "In his years of solitary trapping and living, he had developed a degree of independence which at times was very amusing," Downes recounts.

The frame and mold of his own judgements was so hardened that he could not bring himself to agree without reservation to anyone else's opinion. If I was sure a certain bay was the correct one to take, I could absolutely count on John's conviction that it was not. The only thing for me to do was to suggest what I thought was the wrong way to go, and John would then stoutly maintain that we should go in the direction I secretly approved. Several times John was quite aware of my subterfuge and yet even then could not bring himself to admit or change his ingrained habit.

I wonder what John would have said about Downes.

John's Eye Injury

One night early in the journey, something lodged itself in John's eye, causing him considerable pain. Both men tried unsuccessfully to remove whatever it was, and John had to resort to tying a handkerchief around his head. "He made a pocket in it and filled it with steeped tea leaves, which thus plastered against the eye seemed to bring some relief," Downes writes. "His piratical-looking bandage did not seem to do any good and he began to have trouble with the other eye." 

John wearing his tea-bag eye patch while preparing lunch. Source: P. G. Downes, Sleeping Island.

Downes began to think that John should go back to Brochet with any Indigenous people they might encounter in order to seek medical attention. "To his great credit, John would not agree to give up yet. He had unshakeable confidence in the tea leaves," continues Downes. "In the meantime we rested, as John found the glare of the water on his good eye coupled with the pain of the bad one almost unbearable."

Discouragement

After a particularly difficult portage in the pouring rain, John suggested to Downes that they stop for a smoke and talk about the trip. "The fear flashed through my mind that if we stopped to talk this trip over we might not go on," Downes recalls, "there was something so weary and so discouraged in his comment." As Downes completed the last run of the portage, he looked back at John. "He was sitting in the canoe, his head bowed in his hands, a thin wisp of smoke trailing above his head," Downes continues. "Even from a distance I could see blood trickling down his face from the blackflies." In a footnote, Downes confirms that John was indeed discouraged. "John had no real stake in the venture; also he was drawn very thin," he writes.

John, who Downes characterized as a rational man (in contrast to himself, a romantic man), was ready to quit the trek more than once. As they approached their destination on Nueltin Lake in the Northwest Territories, for example, they encountered a confusing maze of lakes, islands, bays, and channels. "I dunno," Downes quotes John, "A man get himself caught up in that mess of islands and bays, he could spend a lifetime trying to get out. I dunno if we should try it; you can go on forever, but how about finding your way back?"

End of the Journey

Together, through trial and error, foul weather, and plagues of blackflies and mosquitoes, Downes and Albrecht found their way to Nueltin Lake, the lake of Sleeping Island.

"We were both thin," Downes recalls. "John's naturally deep sunken eyes had retreated further and his cheekbones stuck out in mosquito-scarred bumps." While the twosome remained strong for the rest of their journey, their stock of flour and oatmeal was long gone. "We still had sufficient tea," Downes continues. "The real worry was that the tobacco supply was getting pretty thin."

It was time to return home. Downes went out by plane to Churchill, Manitoba and from there by train to Winnipeg via Flin Flon. John, on the other hand, headed back to Brochet at the north end of Reindeer Lake by canoe, retracing their route over the same rapids and portages. Downes writes that he had agonized over the "ethics of the matter" of John traveling back alone. John - despite his apparent earlier reservations of finding their way back - assured Downes that, after trapping and traveling in the Wollaston Lake country by himself for nine years, there was no reason to worry about him. 

Nevertheless, Downes loaned John the canoe, some maps, and his Mannlicher rifle, all of which John left for Downes to pick up at Brochet.

When John arrived back a Brochet, he learned that Canada was at war with Germany. "He made no comment but packed his outfit, took our faithful canoe which I had managed for him to have and that is the last record we have of him," Downes writes in the epilogue to his book. 

Cover illustration by Roderick MacIvor for Sleeping Island, Heron Dance Press, 2006.

During the war years, John disappeared into Saskatchewan's far north. He had been granted a certificate of naturalization by the Government of Canada on September 9, 1937, but unfortunately it did not reach him. Read what happened HERE. Without the necessary papers, John kept out of sight. He feared being imprisoned again. (Read story of John as a POW here.)

"Oh! - John - I think of him often," Downes wrote. "He was the magnificent traveler of the trip. I will never forget his remark, 'I will never go behind barbed wire again'."

 

NEXT: John's Naturalization to Canada: Click HERE

PREVIOUS: John's Years as a Trapper: Click HERE

INDEX TO BLOG POSTS:  Click HERE

 

©Joan Champ, 2021. All rights reserved.

 

26 - John's Years as a Trapper

"I Was Not So Bad!"

John Albrecht arrived in Regina, Saskatchewan on June 1, 1929. As he could not speak English, he went to work for a German farmer near Bulyea, about 70 kilometres north of the Queen City. He worked there until the fall, helping with the harvest. When the threshing was over, the farmer said, "John, you know the wheat is going down in price. If I was in your shoes I would go north. North there is lumber, sawmills, there's fishing, and if you're really tough, go trapping." [As quoted in Berry Richards. Interview with John E. Albrecht, La Ronge, SK, July 14, 1975. Provincial Archives of Saskatchewan, audio recording R-A873.] The farmer must have had a crystal ball. With the crash of the stock market in October of that year, wheat prices plummeted.

Laura and Adolph Studer, 1938. Source

John left the farm at Bulyea in mid-September and moved to the St. Walburg area. He worked for a year on the homestead of Adolph Studer, a farmer and trapper who spoke a little German. It was there that John first tried his hand at trapping. Studer encouraged John to trap and offered him a loan. "No," replied John. "I got enough money." He bought himself 100 to 120 small traps and, on Studer's advice, went trapping for weasels. 

 

Life as a Trapper

John left the St. Walburg area on October 1, 1930 to become a trapper in the Big River area (Dore River); he stayed there for four years. "I was not so bad," John told Berry Richards in a 1975 interview. "I made quite a few dollars with weasels; in the spring, rats [muskrats]."

It was while he was at Big River that John began to learn English. He ordered at least 20 books from mining people in Big River, receiving books on minerals and geology. These books not only helped him learn English, they also sparked his interest in prospecting. [Source: Berry Richard's interview with John, 1975.]

While at Big River, a trapper named Ragnar Jonsson from Wollaston Lake talked John into heading further north and west to Wollaston. In June of 1934, John headed to the Snake Lake-Souris River country. There he bought a canoe, more traps, and five sled-dog puppies from local Dene people at Pinehouse Lake. "The puppies were small, but they could run behind me," John recalled. "And there I went on a trip - I tell you!" John trekked through hundreds of kilometres of wilderness to Wollaston Lake, walking or portaging 50 kilometres (30 miles) along the way with close to 800 pounds on his back, including a canoe. 

This Google map shows the distance from Big River to Wollaston Lake via Pinehouse Lake using present-day roads. John got there by canoe and on foot.

He reached Wollaston Lake by the end of September 1934, only to discover that his friend Ragnar Jonsson had just left for Reindeer Lake and then further north to Nueltin Lake. "So I was alone there. Alone on Wollaston," John lamented to Richards. Clearly, it was a lonely time for him. 

The Chipewyan had a rough year and even they didn't come. So I was just clean alone there. There was nothing. That's the damnedest north, you know? It's one hell of a long stretch. And I tell you, no maps! I didn't even figure out where I could get maps. No maps, nothing!

John trapped in the Wollaston Lake region for three or four years. According to John's friend Dr. Klaus Lehnert-Thiel, John's cabin was located on what is now the site of the Rabbit Lake Mine near the western shore of Wollaston Lake. [Source: Author interview with Klaus Lehnert-Thiel, January 15, 2018.] He later moved his camp to Fiddler Bay on the east side of the lake.

Les Oystryk, a historian and retired conservation officer from Creighton, Saskatchewan, has done considerable research into the life and work of Jim Cumines, a fish and game warden stationed at Brochet on Reindeer Lake. Les and I have been emailing for several years, and he has generously shared information that he has culled from Cumines' reports relating to John Albrecht. 

Jim Cumines, game warden, on winter patrol by bombardier in 1942. Source

Cumines first met John in May of 1936 during a patrol of Wollaston Lake. John had been trapping under a license issued at Souris River using the name "John Gilbert." John told the warden that the license issuer had misspelled his name. Seven months later when Cumines encountered John again, he was still using the same license issued in the name of Gilbert. [Source: Email to author from Les Oystryk, March 28, 2018.]

Was John hiding his German ancestry? He had applied for, but not yet obtained his naturalization papers from the Canadian government and was considered an "alien." Trouble was brewing in Germany. According to Oystryk, Cumines eventually issued a non-resident trapping license to John so he could sell his furs.

In 1937, John moved up to Brochet on the northern end of Reindeer Lake. That summer, he served as the guide for P. G. Downes on a journey to Neultin Lake.

Hand-drawn map by RCMP Constable Marcel Chappuis in 1937-1938 of the Wollaston Lake/Reindeer Lake area that he covered by dogsled during his 1937-1938 winter patrol. John Albrecht's cabin on Fiddler Bay, Wollaston Lake is identified at top centre. Thanks to Les Oystryk for bringing this map to my attention.

By March of 1938, Cumines wrote that John was trapping out of his main camp at the narrows going into Fiddler Bay on Wollaston Lake. John had "a good cabin and seems to keep everything in order," Oystryk quotes Cumines."but complained that this winter he made no hunt at all." Foxes, wolves, caribou - all game was scarce. Cumines also reported that John had put up quite a lot of fish for his sled dogs, "but he claims the Indians helped themselves to his fish cache and now is very short of dog feed."

Illustration from "Memories of Deep River." Source

Two years later Cumines reported that he had seen John at the Swan River fur trading post on Reindeer Lake. He had 20 fox pelts of poor quality and a few mink and otter. By June of 1940, Cumines determined that John had gone by plane with two Swedish trappers to Stony Rapids, Saskatchewan. John had apparently left some debts behind at the HBC post at Swan River on Reindeer Lake. [Source: Email from Les Oystryk, March 28, 2018.] John formed a trapping partnership with one of the Swedes, Oscar Johnson, a man in his 70s. The two of them lived in a cabin at Selwyn Lake north of Stony Rapids and split their fur proceeds 50/50. The two also did some prospecting, finding some gold, nickel and copper, but the prospecting didn't work out. The trapping supplied the money for prospecting. "We made more than we needed," John told Berry Richards. "We had always money,"

Oscar Johnson decided to quit the north in 1945. After a few years trapping out of Selwyn Lake, the 75-year-old told John, "I can't take it anymore." So he "went out." (According to Klaus Lehnert-Theil, when a trapper, who spends most of the year in the bush, says he "went out" it means out into civilization.)

Three years later, John's life changed dramatically. He co-discovered a major uranium source and got a new partner - Nan Dorland - who shared the same cabin at Selwyn Lake that he had previously shared with Oscar Johnson.

NEXT: John Albrecht: Guide for P. G. Downes: Click HERE

PREVIOUS: John Albrecht's Early Life: Click HERE

INDEX TO BLOG POSTS: Click HERE

©Joan Champ. All rights reserved.

PART TWO: 24. Nan and John - Partners in Prospecting

"An Enormous Amount of Fun"

"I see no reason why girls can't take their places beside the men in the field. Mind you, they must expect to pull their weight and not be crybabies when things don't go too well - when it rains and the fire goes out, or when the black flies make life miserable." - Viola MacMillan, President of the Prospectors and Developers Association, radio broadcast, 1948. Source

 

John and Nan prospecting for uranium at Robins Lake in northern Saskatchewan, 1949. Nan - identified as "Nan Di Leo" in this government photo - is holding a Geiger counter. Photo: Provincial Archives of Saskatchewan, R-A9325

 

 

 

 

"Uranium was the cause of the Morenus-Albrecht partnership," the reporter for the Prince Albert Daily Herald wrote in March 1950. Nan had likely heard about John's important uranium discovery, along with Leroy (Roy) Tobey, on Black Lake near Stony Rapids, Saskatchewan in August 1948. Because of her interest in prospecting, I think she decided to track him down in the fall of 1948 to ask him to help her stake claims in the same area that he had found uranium earlier that year. 

Another possible reason that Nan Dorland came to northern Saskatchewan is provided by John Albrecht's friend, Bob Lee. "She had just come from Squamish [British Columbia] when she arrived in Stony Rapids in 1948, seeking an interview with a trapper which would be the basis of her next story," Lee writes in his unpublished memoirs, The North Called Softly (1977). "The Hudson Bay Company manager was quick to suggest John Albrecht as a suitable candidate." [I have not been able to verify that Nan had been in Squamish, BC.]

Nan Arrives in La Ronge

In late summer of 1948, Nan Dorland Morenus arrived in La Ronge, Saskatchewan, reportedly to take a prospector’s course. She may have stayed with a couple named De Lea (or De Leo or Di Lea or Di Leo]. Nan eventually took the surname De Lea. Natalie Thompson, an employee at the La Ronge Precambrian Geological Laboratory, informed me that Nan's first year of claims and prospecting work were submitted to the provincial government under the name De Lea. Thompson's theory is that Nan's hostess in La Ronge, a Mrs. De Lea, had taken the prospector's course which was a requirement for getting financial assistance under the Prospectors' Assistance Plan. Nan had applied for assistance under that plan, but because she had not yet taken the prospector's course the government gave her a time limit to get it done. Instead, according to Thompson, she took the name of the woman who had already taken the course. [Due to COVID-19 restrictions I have not been able to verify this. I plan to visit both La Ronge facility and the Provincial Archives of Saskatchewan once things open up.]

At some point that fall, Floyd Glass, a Prince Albert pilot, flew Nan and an unknown man up to an area west of Stony Rapids. The mystery man may have been "Joe" - the man Nan had gone prospecting with in northern Ontario in the summer of 1947 (see story HERE). He was not her former husband, Richard Morenus; they were divorced in 1947. I am guessing that Glass flew the couple either to Goldfields or to Fond du Lac. Goldfields, a gold-mining town during the 1930s, saw new life in 1948, serving as a base for the exploration of the new gold: uranium. Goldfields' population surged as hundreds of prospectors, almost entirely male, poured in looking to discover their own finds. Source. Fond du Lac, one of the oldest, most northern remote communities in Saskatchewan, is the home of the Denesuliné First Nation.

Source: Google Maps

Glass provides an account of Nan’s time in Saskatchewan in “A Northern Romance,” his contribution to the book, Gold and Other Stories [W. O. Kupsch and Stan Hanson, eds. Regina: Saskatchewan Mining Association, 1986]. He recalls that when he flew in a few months later to see if the couple was ready to come out, Nan's mystery man ran down to the plane. “He was going out,” Glass recounts. “He said as far as he was concerned he didn’t know what she was going to do, but he thought she was staying.” When Glass went up to talk to Nan, he discovered that “there was no way she was going out. She was up there to find a uranium mine. That’s all there was to it.”

Nan gave Glass some money to pick up a dog team and sleigh for her. He brought her six dogs as well as a net so she could catch fish for the dogs. He thought Nan didn’t know what she was in for, but “she thought everything was fine.” Glass had no way of knowing it, but Nan was by then an accomplished dogsledder. See story HERE.

Nan arrived at Stony Rapids in the first week of December 1948 by dog team. "They [the dogs] were tired. And she was tired," Glass writes. "They had come over thin ice in places where the RCMP told me they didn't know how she ever stayed on top." If she had come from Goldfields, she had traveled about 150 kilometres (100 miles); if she had started out from Fond du Lac, she had traveled 77 kilometres (48 miles). 

It was at Stony Rapids that 37-year-old Nan met 50-year-old John Albrecht. Within a short time, Floyd Glass flew the two of them up to John's camp on Selwyn Lake near the border of the Northwest Territories and was told to come back in the spring. 

John Albrecht outside the cabin he shared with Nan at the south end of Selwyn Lake, SK. Dog houses in the background, with dogsled harnesses hanging from the eaves on the left. The box above the cabin's window is a "northern ice box." According to Dr. Klaus Lehnert-Theil, in addition to keeping things cold, the box kept things out of reach of the dogs. "When John returned from his trapping rounds he most likely stored the catch (mink, fox, fisher, marten, etc.) in this box until he felt like taking it into the cabin to unthaw and skin it." Source: Dr. Klaus Lehnert-Thiel.

Prospecting

The couple spent a year and a half together in northern Saskatchewan dividing their time between Selwyn Lake and Stony Rapids. In May of 1948, the Government of Saskatchewan lifted the ban on private uranium prospecting. Uranium was the essential ingredient in the development of the atomic bomb. With that in mind, six parties were selected to participate in the province's Prospector Assistance Plan for the 1949 season, including John Albrecht and Nan "Di Lea." All six parties elected to prospect in the Black Lake area where John and his former partner, Roy Tobey, had discovered uranium in 1948.

According to a document titled "Prospectors Assistant Plan, Season 1949" (see above) sent to me by Natalie Thompson of the La Ronge Precambrian Geological Laboratory, Nan "Di Lea" and John "Albricht" were Party #4 of the six parties. The text states that PAP No. 4 "made several uranium bearing discoveries in biotite and biotite-hornblende gneiss of granitized texture" at Robins Lake, 50 miles from John's Nisto find of 1948. According to the table on page 3, however, Party No. 4 did not make any claims in 1949. I have not yet discovered whether, during the course of their partnership, Nan and John staked any of claims together. 

Nan told the Herald she “finds Northern Saskatchewan a ‘wonderful place’ and her chosen work ‘just an enormous amount of fun’.” In response to the reporter’s question about who did the housework, Albrecht replied tersely, “Whoever gets back first gets supper ready.”

 

NEXT: John Albrecht's Early Life: Click HERE

PREVIOUS: Richard Writes a Book, Part 3: Click HERE  

INDEX TO BLOG SERIES: Click HERE

 

©Joan Champ. All rights reserved.

15. Nan Buys More Land

 Lakeshore Property

 

Nan's property was on the shore of Abram Lake directly across from the island (now Winoga Island) she shared with Richard Morenus. Google Earth, 2020.

For some reason Nan decided to buy more land in northern Ontario. Perhaps she bought it as an investment. Perhaps she wanted a place of her own, separate from the cabin she shared with her husband Richard Morenus, where she could write. Whatever her reasons, on July 7, 1943, Nan took possession of a four-acre piece of land on the shore of Abram Lake near Sioux Lookout, Ontario, directly across from the island she shared with Richard. At the time, there was no road into the property; it was only accessible from the lake. She paid $100 to Reverend Peter Gordon McPherson and his wife Nettie for the land, Parcel 10836, Lot 11, Concession 1. The transfer of this parcel of land was registered September 13, 1943.

Plan showing Nan's shoreline property, Crown Patent PA7842, April 23, 1932. Source: Ontario Land Titles, Kenora District.

The McPhersons had acquired the property in 1932 as the site for their summer home. They had lived in Sioux Lookout for decades, raising four children - a daughter and three sons - in the small Ontario town. Rev. McPherson, a United Church minister, had arrived in Sioux Lookout in 1916 and moved with his family to Leduc, Alberta in 1928. [The Lookout Post, May 22, 1952, p. 2.] 

 

Nan's Land Changes Hands

If Nan saw this land as an investment, she did not live to see the fruits of her purchase. When she died on September 3, 1950 from complications after giving birth to her only child, she did not have a will. As a result, the dispersal of her estate took years. The administration of Nan's estate, and ownership of her land, was turned over to the Crown Trust Company. It took Nan's second husband John Albrecht more than five years of negotiations to have the land transferred to him, "made in consideration of $200." 

Apparently there was some confusion on the part of the Crown Trust Company's Estates Officer Cyril Melville Corneil about Nan's name and marital status. He needed to ensure that Evangeline [Nan] Albrecht was the same person as Nan D. Morenus - the name on the land title. Also, because her divorce from Richard Morenus took place outside Canada, more paperwork was required. 

Cyril Melville Corneil's affidavit, October 3, 1955, Page 1 of 3. Source: Office of Land Titles, Kenora, Ontario.

During the course of these investigations, mistakes were made. In his Statement of Oath, October 3, 1955, Corneil wrote, "Due to an oversight, the property was not conveyed to the said John Erdmann Albrecht nor was a Caution registered under the provisions of Section 12 of the Devolution of Estates Act within three years after the death of the said deceased." An Administrator's Caution was not issued until November 5, 1955. It was not until January 31, 1956 that Land Transfer 53987 was issued, allowing Albrecht to buy his deceased wife's property for $200 before the disposition of the rest of Nan's estate. 

Disclosure document from John Albrecht's probate records. Source: British Columbia Archives, Royal BC Museum.

John Albrecht held onto Parcel 10836 near Sioux Lookout until his death on September 10, 1991 at age 92. In his last will and testament he bequeathed all his property to his niece, Margret Johanna Gumbolt of Maple Ridge, BC. By then, the land was valued at $5000. I have attempted several times to contact Margret Gumbolt without success, so I have no idea whether or not she ever visited the land she owned in northern Ontario - thanks to Nan and John.

John and Nan’s son John A. Danke, who lived in California, was the rightful heir of his father’s estate but the will was never contested.

Margret Gumbolt sold the lakeshore property in about 2010. The current owners Mat and Bev Lelonde built a home on the property and live there year 'round. Before they bought the land, it was only accessible by water or by ice road in the winter. A number of years ago, a one-lane road was constructed to provide access to the Lelonde property and about 18 other properties on Abram Lake. [Source: Email message from Dick MacKenzie, Sioux Lookout.]

 

NEXT: Nan the Writer, Part 1 - "Jim Chief" - Click HERE

PREVIOUS: Getting Around in Winter - Click HERE

INDEX TO BLOG SERIES: Click HERE

  

©Joan Champ, 2021. All rights reserved.

 

1. Introduction

My First Discovery of Nan in the Back Pages

The well-dressed, well-coiffed prospectors John Albrecht and Nan Morenus examining some of their mineral finds in their hotel room in Prince Albert. Prince Albert Daily Herald, March 21, 1950.

 

 

"I have become a collector of shards. Shards of memory, things passed down: told to me at the end of this long line of telling. I want to catch these shards, these half-lit, often, paste jewels. I don't know how authentic they are, does it even matter? For me it doesn't matter. I am making anew, building something from the remains. Wanting to honour the fleeting: the fragment, fractured histories and stories. Not passed down, but dredged up."

    - Terri-Ann White (2004) [Source: Theodore and Brina: An Exploration of the Myths and 

    Secrets of Family Life, 1851-1998", Journal of Historical Geography 30 (2004).]

 

"Prospecting May Be Tough But To Nan It's All Just Fun." As I perused back issues of the Prince Albert Daily Herald in search of content for my newspaper column called PAssages back in 2018, that headline - and the accompanying photograph - caught my attention. I read on and discovered that in March of 1950 an unnamed reporter from the same newspaper had a fortuitous encounter with Nan - Evangeline Annette Danke/Dorland/Morenus - and her partner John Erdmann Albrecht as the couple was passing through Prince Albert. I say “fortuitous” because Nan was not only a former radio star from New York City, she was Saskatchewan’s only active woman prospector at the time. 

 

Nan, or Mrs. Morenus as she was called, was the primary focus of the Herald reporter's story. "Prospecting in the rugged Northland of Saskatchewan is tough," the reporter writes, "but it's doubly tough when the prospector is a woman. Despite the drawbacks of being a female in the all-male land of jagged rock, bushes and jackpine, Nan Morenus, an attractive redhead, finds that prospecting is an exciting - and often profitable - way to earn a living." The reporter was clearly enchanted by Nan's red hair - it is mentioned three times in the short article. The former actress was indeed one of the more glamorous figures to have turned up in northern Saskatchewan in the late 1940s.

 

Nan and John told the Herald that they were flying to Regina and Toronto to check out their find of base metal from their northern stake. Their journey had a more urgent purpose, however. As I reveal in my PAssages blog, I soon discovered that, unbeknownst to the reporter, Nan was four months pregnant.

 

My Project Begins

Why pursue Nan Dorland? After all, she was not famous - although she came close. Nan is actually a fairly obscure figure. But her life was unusual and intriguing, so even 70 years after her death, I believe she deserves to be remembered.

 

Have you wanted to learn more about strangers that you see in a photograph? It happens to me all the time, but I found the Herald photo shown above particularly captivating. I began to investigate and quickly learned that both Nan and John have fascinating life stories that intersect for an all-too-brief period of time. Nan's life story, or as much as I can learn of it, is the subject of this blog.

Portrait of Nan Dorland, c1935. Photo courtesy Rabeea Shhadeh.

 

Who was Nan – or Mrs. Morenus – the actress-turned-writer-turned-prospector from New York City via northern Ontario? How did she end up in northern Saskatchewan? Where was Mr. Morenus and what was the nature of Nan's relationship with John Albrecht? Where in northern Saskatchewan did they call home? I have found out the answers to some of these questions and am still trying to find the answers to others.

I embarked on this investigative journey knowing full well that the outcome would be unpredictable. Unsure that what I might learn about Nan would fill a book, I decided to tell her story in this series of blog posts. In the end, all I may achieve may be nothing more than providing what I hope will be an interesting online account of this woman's life.

I have posted a Table of Contents which will allow readers to go back and forth between posts. I will update it every time a new post goes up. You can find that index HERE

 

Stitching Together Fragments of Nan's Life

Hindsight being 20/20, I now know it would have been much smarter to choose a subject who a) did not die 70 years ago, b) has some living relatives, and c) left a lot of evidence of their life behind. With the passing of time, so much of Nan’s life story has gone missing. I jumped into my “Nan project” with both feet, however, so I was left with no choice but to turn my attention to what IS present and what CAN be found. My journey in writing Nan’s life story ended up being a complex stitching together of fragments of her life, attempting to construct a portrait both from what remains and what is missing.

Research, Research, Research

Being a fairly decent researcher, I started by scouring the Internet for all things "Nan." I searched archival databases, genealogical sites, high school yearbooks, and newspaper collections. From there, I developed a list of possible contacts, including Nan's family members. As she was an only child, and as her only son, John Danke Albrecht, passed away in 2015, the list of family contacts was short.

Letters and emails to potential contacts followed. It is with much gratitude that I share my most fruitful contacts to date: 

• Martin Beerman, one of Nan's distant cousins, provided me with a number of useful documents. 
• Tim Brody, editor of the Sioux Lookout Bulletin, published my letter to the editor requesting information about Nan and her first husband Richard Morenus.
  
• Kim Clark and Richard Mansfield, current owners of Winoga Lodge on the island that Nan and Richard Morenus lived on near Sioux Lookout, Ontario. After reading my letter to the editor in the Sioux Lookout newspaper, The Bulletin, Kim and Richard sent me a box containing hundreds of photographs of Richard Morenus. They had received this box from Randolph Trumbull. 
  
• Curtis Lee of Prince Albert, Saskatchewan, sent me a copy of his father's memoirs. Bob Lee was a close friend of Nan's second husband John Albrecht and his memoirs contain a number of useful pieces of information about Nan, including her final resting place.
• Dr. Klaus Lehnert-Thiel of Saskatoon, Saskatchewan. During the 1970s while working as a geologist for Uranerz Exploration and Mining Limited based in La Ronge, Klaus became close friends with John Albrecht, calling him the adopted grandfather of his two teenaged sons. I have met and interviewed Klaus, and we have maintained an email correspondence over the years.
  
• Dick MacKenzie, former newspaper editor in Sioux Lookout, Ontario, linked me to numerous contacts and provided me with much useful information about the area. In addition, Dick very kindly agreed to proofread all my blog posts!
• Dorothy Maskerine of Dryden, Ontario. Dorothy, 94 years old in 2021, met Nan and Richard Morenus is Sioux Lookout during the 1940s. Dorothy, a teenager at the time, remembers Nan coming to her parents' house for dinner every Thursday while Richard attended Rotary Club meetings. Dorothy shared her memories of Nan with me during several telephone calls.
  
• Dr. Cynthia B. Meyers, Professor of Communications at the College of Mount Saint Vincent, Riverdale, New York, with a special interest in the history of radio. Not only did I read Dr. Meyers works, but she also sent me links to other resources on the history of radio in the 1930s and '40s, especially as they relate to performers and writers.
• Les Oystryk of Creighton, Saskatchewan with his in-depth knowledge of the history of northern Saskatchewan, has been an invaluable resource for my project especially as it relates to trapper and prospector John Albrecht. For example, Les connected me with Darlene Studor in La Ronge (see below). 
• John and Kate Rich of Western Australia who knew John Albrecht in La Ronge, and who travelled by canoe to Selwyn Lake near the Saskatchewan-Northwest Territories border and searched for John and Nan's cabin in 2014. Click HERE for their story. We have corresponded since then and shared what we know about the cabin site.
  
• Rabeea (Robert) Shhadeh, a good friend of Nan and John's late son, John A. Danke, shared stories about John and sent me Danke family photos.
  
• Darlene Studor of La Ronge, Saskatchewan found letters to Nan from author Kathrene Pinkerton tucked inside a copy of Pinkerton's book Wilderness Wife. This got me excited! I am grateful to Darlene for sharing scanned copies of the two letters with me. I then contacted the University of Oregon Archives where Pinkerton's papers are housed, but, to my great dismay, there were no letters from Nan to Kathrene in that collection.
• Natalie Thompson of La Ronge Precambrian Geological Laboratory provided me with documents about Nan and John's prospecting activity in northern Saskatchewan, and helped me solve the mystery of Nan's "De Leo" name. 
  
• Randolph Trumbull of Suttons Bay, Michigan, his sister Martha (Trumbull) Halloran, and her husband Terry Halloran, both of Rancho Santa Fe, California. The Trumbulls' mother was Richard Morenus' first cousin, and they have some distant memories of him visiting their home.
• Heidi Walczuch in Germany, John Albrecht's niece, who provided me with family photos.
  
• Numerous archival institutions and government agencies, including: the Provincial Archives of Saskatchewan (documents and photos); the Wisconsin Historical Society (collection National Broadcasting Company Records, 1921-1976); University of North Dakota, Department of Special Collections (some of Richard Morenus' correspondence); Ontario Title Search (records of Nan and Richard's land in northern Ontario); Sioux Lookout Meno Ya Win Health Centre, Health Records Department (Nan's admission record to the Sioux Lookout hospital in 1947); Immigration, Refugees, and Citizenship Canada (Nan and Richards' immigration records); the Clerk of the Circuit Court of Cook County, Illinois (Nan and Richard's divorce records).
  

Despite these efforts, I have to date uncovered relatively little in the way of records of Nan's life. She did not leave much behind, due, in part, to her travels to remote locations, and also in part to her premature death immediately following the birth of her son in 1950. 

"Many biographical 'facts', subject of course to interpretation, do often exist and lie around quietly in archives of all forms waiting to be turned into stories."
    - Terri-Ann White (2004)

To complicate things further, I was not able to visit any archives due to the COVID-19 pandemic, so I have not uncovered any diaries, manuscripts, letters, photographs, or other memorabilia that may still be waiting to be discovered. With the assistance of online finding aids and several terrific archivists, however, I have found some useful material.

Nan published two magazine articles listed below. Any of her other writings have disappeared or remain to be uncovered. I am not going to include a complete bibliography here. References are included in each blog post as appropriate. Here is a list of some of my most useful sources:

• Dorland Morenus, Nan. “Jim Chief,” in MacLean’s, October 15, 1946, pp. 9, 51-56.
  
• ---------. “The Woman’s Bushed,” in MacLean’s, August 15, 1947, pp. 23-26. 
• Downes, P. G. Sleeping Island: The Narrative of a Summer’s Travel in Northern Manitoba and the Northwest Territories. Ottawa: McGahern Stewart Publishing, 2011. (First published in 1943.)
• Gold and Other Stories as told to Berry Richards, W. O. Kupsch and S. D. Hanson, eds. Regina, SK: Saskatchewan Mining Association, 1986.
• Lee, S. E. (Bob). The North Called Softly. Prince Albert, SK: Self-published, 1977. 
• Morenus, Richard. Crazy White Man. Chicago: Rand McNally & Company, 1952.
• ---------. “Dogs on Ice,” in MacLean's, September 15, 1948. 
• ---------. “From Broadway to Bush,” in MacLean’s, September 1, 1946. 
• Pinkerton, Kathrene. A Home in the Wilds [formerly Wilderness Wife]. New York: Taplinger Publishing Co., [1939], 1967.
• ---------. Woodcraft for Women. Sportsman’s Vintage Press, [1916], 2014.

 

 

SPECIAL THANKS TO DICK MACKENZIE FOR REVIEWING THE DRAFTS OF EACH BLOG POST.

 

NEXT: Nan's Family Background: CLICK HERE

 

INDEX TO BLOG SERIES: Click HERE

©Joan Champ, 2021. All rights reserved.