25 - John Albrecht's Early Life

 Idyllic Childhood, Hellish Youth

Cover of "Guide Through Memel and the Surrounding Area," 1913. Source

John Erdmann Albrecht was born in Szieszkrand, East Prussia on December 7, 1898 and raised on the Baltic Sea where his father, a Prussian civil servant, was in charge of a lighthouse on the northeastern end of the Curonian Spit. "There between the Memel River and the long narrow sandspit, with the Baltic Sea to the west and the Curonian Lagoon to the east, John spent his youth in an unspoiled environment of unmatched beauty," writes Dr. Klaus Lehnert-Thiel. "Fishing, hunting, trapping, skating, and sailing were activities the young John Albrecht enjoyed from a very young age." [Source: "John Albrecht: Dead at 93," in The Northerner, La Ronge, SK, Oct. 16, 1991.]

Memel, East Prussia, 1918. Source

John's family lived in or near the town of Memel (now Klaipeda). His father Johann Albrecht commuted between their residence and the lighthouse. To facilitate travel during the winter, Johann invented a sailing boat on skids. "In doing so," Lehnert-Thiel writes, "he became the forerunner and acknowledged inventor of a new sport which 50 years later became widely accepted." 

The Curonian Spit, a peninsula between Russia and Lithuania, as been called the "Northern Sahara," "the gem of the kingdom of dunes, a wonder of nature." [Source: Vasilijus Safronovas, "Migrants and Refugees on the Curonian Spit, Vilnius: Vilnius Academy of Arts, 2019. Full article here.] It became part of the German empire after 1871. 

There are a number of lighthouses on the Curonian Spit, but after doing some research, I believe that the lighthouse looked after by John's father was the White Lighthouse build in 1884 on a 2150-metre quay. At a height of about 9 metres (30 feet), it had a fixed red light at the top. Narrow-gauge rails were built into the lighthouse to transport coal and to facilitate maintenance. It was blown up by the Nazis in January 1945.

The White Lighthouse outside Memel, c1900. Source

This could be John's father Johann Albrecht, keeper of the White Lighthouse near Memel. Source

The White Lighthouse, nd. Source

World War I

In August 1914, just weeks before the outbreak of the First World War, Russia invaded East Prussia, forcing thousands, including the Albrecht family, to flee. The Germans fought back, and by the end of the Battle of Tannenberg (August 27-September 13) over 90,000 were captured and 70,000 were killed or wounded - a devastating defeat for Russia. [Source] "I remember John telling me that [he] and his family were living in a refugee camp with nothing to do," Dr. Lehnert-Thiel told me. "As a bored 16-year-old he volunteered to serve in the [German] army."

A team of German soldiers using the Maschinengewehr 08 (MG 08), the standard German weapon during WWI. John Albrecht would have used this machine gun. Click here to see a 3D animation of the operation of the MG 08.

As a teenager, John saw continuous front-line action as a machine-gunner in the Schwarze Division ("Black Berets") for over two years. He was captured by the British on June 7, 1917 at the Battle of Messines (aka the Capture of Wytschaete) at Flanders, Belgium near Ypres. 

John was captured at the Battle of Messines on July 7, 1917. Source

(As part of its battle plan, the British forces detonated deep land mines that had been laid under the German front position since 1915. This is reported to be the largest planned explosion in history prior to the Trinity atomic weapon test in July 1945 and the deadliest non-nuclear man-made explosion. The shock wave from the explosion could be heard as far away as London and Dublin.)

Prisoner of War 

Fragment of list No. 148, A 9105, POWs Interned in Europe. Erdmann (John) Albrecht appears second from top. His rank is cited as Msk. (Ert.) which means Musketier (Eratzrekrut) - or replacement recruit gunner. His service information shows as Luf. 44, 10 cie. N1122. His place of internment is Co. 85. I have not yet determined where this POW camp was in England. Source (Scroll up to "Albrecht, D")

John spent two and a half years in a standard British prisoner-of-war camp. Prison - while not a happy place to be - must nevertheless have been an immense relief for him after the extreme violence and danger he had experienced on the battlefield. He later told interviewer Berry Richards (1975) that he met a Canadian of Scottish descent while in the POW camp. John learned about Canada from their conversations. "Why stay in Germany?" the Canadian apparently asked John. "Get into Canada." [Berry Richards. Interview with John E. Albrecht, La Ronge, SK, July 14, 1975. Provincial Archives of Saskatchewan, audio recording R-A873.] 

John may have been incarcerated at the Dorchester POW camp at Dorset, UK. Source

Return Home to Post-War Chaos

German prisoners were repatriated by the British in the spring of 1920. After his release, John returned to his home in Memel which had by then been placed under the protection of France under the Treaty of Versailles. His plan, according to Lehnert-Thiel, was to look after farm property owned or managed by his father.

In 1923, the Treaty of Versailles was broken when Lithuania rose up against French occupation. An ethnic struggle ensued when most people in Memel region opted to emigrate to Germany rather than stay under Lithuanian rule. (Less than 600 of 150,000 opted for Lithuania.) Source.

"Either the heavy handed Lithuanian administration or John's nationalistic feelings made it difficult for him to remain in his home country," Lehnert-Thiel explains, "and precipitated his emigration to Canada in 1929." He applied in 1925 and by 1929 he had his visa and passport. 

John came to Canada aboard the SS Polonia in 1929. Source

On April 24, 1929, 30-year-old John waved goodbye to his sisters and brother on the pier at the Port of Danzig (now Gdansk, Poland) and sailed for Canada on the Baltic America Line's ship named SS Polonia. He arrived at Halifax, Nova Scotia on May 5 and took the Canadian National Railway west to Regina, Saskatchewan. It wasn't long before he headed north where he spent the next four decades as a trapper and prospector.

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

PREVIOUS: Nan and John - Partners in Prospecting: Click HERE

INDEX TO BLOG SERIES: 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.

23. Richard Writes a Book - Part 3

What is Missing

 

Illustration by William Lackey in Crazy White Man showing Richard standing alone in front of the island cabin he shared with Nan, with two Ojibway people in the canoe.

“Every individual’s story has its enthralling aspect, though the essential pivot is usually omitted or obscured by most autobiographers.” 

- Anthony Powell, Books Do Furnish A Room

 

“No one can tell the whole truth about himself.”

             - Somerset Maugham

 

“They all said I was crazy," Richard Morenus begins in his 1952 book, Crazy White Man (Sha-g-na-she Wa-du-kee). "When I finally began to agree with them, it was then too late for me to do anything about it. I was seated in a canoe, well past the last outpost of civilization, headed northward toward the bit of insular real estate I had bought, sight unseen, deep in the Canadian bush country. ... I was on my own." 

But of course, Richard was not on his own. When he arrived on what is now Winoga Island near Sioux Lookout, Ontario in early May of 1941 he was accompanied by his wife Nan. Together, the couple lived on the island for about six years, with Nan proving herself more than capable of surviving in the remote outdoors. There must have been severe strains on the Morenus marriage during these years, for they were divorced in 1947. 

 

In Crazy White Man, published by Rand McNally, Richard omits Nan completely from his book. He may have felt, some would say correctly, that a story of a man surviving alone in northern Ontario for six years made for a more entertaining story, benefiting his book sales, his career, and his reputation. Details like his wife did not fit with his carefully constructed man-against-nature account. It is possible that, even though Nan had died two years earlier, Richard decided to expunge his former wife from his narrative due to lingering animosity after their divorce. Perhaps he did not want to upset his new, sixth wife Nora by writing anything about his fifth wife Nan. Or, who knows, maybe he and Nan had made a deal years earlier that she would not be included in any future book he might write about their time on the island. After all, they were both writers competing to cover the same material. Richard won in the end.

 

No Photographs

 

There are no photos in Crazy White Man, just illustrations by William Lackey. Richard and Nan had taken a camera with them into the bush and they used it. For example, Nan mentions in her 1946 Maclean’s article that they gave old Jim Chief a photograph. “It was a snap of him we had taken on his last canoe trip before freeze-up,” she wrote. “For once Jim was overcome. He stared in wordless fascination at the first picture of himself he had ever seen.” 

 

Richard writes in his book, somewhat tongue-in-cheek, that he found two reasons why taking pictures in the bush was extremely difficult. “One was that, when I had the camera along, there was never anything to take a picture of,” he explains. “The other was that, when there were things I wanted to take pictures of, I had no camera with me.” He adds that he “deplored the usual planned and posed photography that might give what I write the unpleasant flavor of a publicity article.”

 

So, if they had a camera with them, why are there no photos in Richard’s book?  First, it would have destroyed the illusion (which it was) that he was alone in the bush. Nan would have either been in the photos or she would have been the photographer. Second, I think Richard destroyed all the photos of their time on the island. 

 

Through a series of events, I now possess all the photographs that Richard left behind. Kim Clark and Richard Mansfield, owners of Winoga Lodge Island near Sioux Lookout, Ontario – once Nan and Richard’s island - sent me a box containing of hundred of photos of Richard from his infancy to his sixth marriage to Nora Smith. There is not a single photo of Nan (or any of Richard’s other five wives before Nora) in the box, nor is there a single photo of the island. The closest I found were photos of Richard re-enacting his time on the island, taken – likely in Michigan – for book promotion purposes.

 

Reworking of Previously Published Material 

 

Crazy White Man had the working title From Broadway to Bush, the same title as Richard’s Maclean's magazine article of 1946. In the book, he reworked material from his article, eliminating any references to Nan in the process. For example, while it had been Nan’s illness that prompted the couple’s move to northern Ontario, Richard writes in Crazy White Man that it was he who had been ill. Here’s a comparison of the text from each piece:

 

• “From Broadway to Bush:” “I looked at my watch again—that badge of my profession I wore on my wrist. It was a stop watch, a cruelly clever instrument of inexorable time. My wife and I had been stop-watch slaves in New York for more than 10 years, I as writer-director of network programs, she as one of the more popular actresses who suffer daily in serials before the microphones. The big red hand of the studio clock had bound us until we were accountable to it for every one of its measured minutes. Its gifts were liberal, but the cost was great in ruined digestions, tired bodies, and nerves as taut as piano wires. Something had to snap. It had been Nan.”
• Crazy White Man: “The glance at my watch, the badge of my profession that I constantly wore on my wrist, had been thoroughly unconscious. It was a stop watch, a cruelly clever instrument of inexorable time. I had been a slave to it in New York for more than ten years as a writer-director of network radio programs. The watch, like its oversized prototype on the studio wall, had a second hand, and I was accountable to it for every one of its measured minutes. The resultant cost was great in ruined digestion, a tired body, and nerves as taut as piano wires. Something had to stop.”

There are many more examples of Richard’s reworking material from his two Maclean’s article into his book. Here are a couple of short examples from his article “Dogs on Ice” (September 15 1948) which four years later transformed into a chapter in his book called “Hot Dogs on Ice.” (For more examples, see blog post “Getting Around in Winter.”)

 

• First line of the article: “Streetcars, elevated trains, and subways—that is what transportation meant to me until my wife and I decided to leave New York and make our home in the Canadian bush.”
• First line of the book chapter: “Up to the time I moved to the north, streetcars, elevated trains, buses, and subways had been about all that transportation meant to me.”

And another:

 

• From the article: “In New York it had been a very simple matter to buy a dog, or any number of dogs, of any size, shape or breed. You merely went to a pet shop, picked out your dog, and led it away on a leash.”
• From the book: “In New York it had been a very simple matter to buy a dog or any number of dogs of any size, shape, or breed. A visit to a conveniently located pet shop, the selection of the dog, and it could be led away on a leash.”

These can be considered examples of self-plagiarism, a term that, according to Miguel Roig (2015), refers to authors who reuse their previously disseminated content and pass it off as new product without letting their reader know that this material has appeared previously. [Source: Roig, Miguel. “Avoiding Plagiarism, Self-Plagiarism, and Other Questionable Writing Practices: A Guide to Ethical Writing.” United States Department of Health and Human Services, Office of Research Integrity, 2003, 2015. www.ori.hhs.gov ] (Note: The US Office of Research Integrity states that self-plagiarism is NOT considered research misconduct.)

 

Richard did not exactly conceal from his readers his previously published articles in Maclean’s – he mentions them about halfway through his book, stating that “Scott Young [musician Neil Young’s father], then nonfiction editor, had given me considerable encouragement toward continuing with a series.” But he does not reveal that those articles were about his experiences in the wilderness with his wife Nan. Of course, disclosing that fact would have destroyed the tenderfoot-alone-in-the-bush narrative he presented in Crazy White Man.

 

Illustration by William Lackey

While I have no evidence to prove it, it is possible that Richard consulted Nan’s published articles in Maclean’s magazine during the writing of Crazy White Man. It is interesting to compare their differing accounts of their encounters with Jim Chief, or as Richard calls him, Wa-she-ga, which he says means “the old bent one.” For example, here are excerpts from their respective writing about their visit to the old chief’s wigwam:

 

• In Nan’s article October 1946 article “Jim Chief” for Maclean’s, she implies that she and Richard arrived unannounced at the wigwam of the old Ojibway chief and his wife, “We moored the dogs and toboggan a discreet distance from his grounds and climbed the low rise on which the wigwam squatted in a stand of balsam. … Smoke tumbled from the apex of the wigwam, and we heard a steady stream of chatter from within as we stood before the tightly closed flap. We waited five minutes . . . ten. No one appeared. It was impossible that Jim and his squaw had neither seen nor heard our dogs’ noisy arrival. The conversation from within had disintegrated into giggles and prolonged laughter. Dick looked as mad as I felt. ‘Enough of this,’ he said, and giving the flap doorway a vigorous shake, he called sharply, ‘Jim!’ The flap fell away and Dick stepped in, pulling me after him.”
• Richard writes in the chapter of his book entitled “Nichies” (an abbreviation for nichi-nabi meaning Indians) that he received a much different welcome to the wigwam than the one described by Nan. “It was March of the second winter before I had the opportunity to call upon Wa-she-ga. It was a beautiful clear day and cold. I had informed him well ahead of the time that I might pay him a visit, and he was eagerly anticipating it. When I arrived at his camp, it was undoubtedly the first time in his life that he had received a social call from a white man. When he heard me, he came out of the wigwam to greet me. I stooped over and pushed back the entry flap and followed him inside.” 

I cannot help but conclude that Nan’s is the more accurate account, and that, for reasons of his own, Richard did not want to convey the awkwardness of their unexpected visit to Jim Chief’s wigwam.

Crafting his Reputation 

 

At the end of Crazy White Man, Richard declares that he never became used to living in the bush. 

I didn’t get used to the cold, the storms, the blizzards, or the rains. I didn’t get used to the unending struggle against the elements. I didn’t get used to hard physical work. I endured them all, but I didn’t get used to any of them. And notwithstanding all these and more things which I never got used to, I still love the bush. I love its grandeur, its majesty, its dignity; its virginal primitiveness, its insidious and fabulous charm; the greatness of it; its challenge. I knew its strength and had felt the immensity of its power. I respected it. And I was no longer afraid of it. The bush had taught me many things. But I never got used to it.

With a memoirist’s focus on self, Richard wanted to demonstrate to his readers the struggle and achievement of his six years on what is now Winoga Island. He had suffered and he had overcome, he tells us. He had persevered through numerous challenges and in the end reached a personal triumph. As a source of historical truth, however, Richard’s book must be read not for its accuracy but for its many insights into life in the Canadian wilderness during the 1940s. I for one, however, cannot forget that Nan Dorland was there with him.

Nan and Richard Morenus, c. 1943. Source

 

NEXT: PART TWO: Nan and John - Partners in Prospecting: Click HERE

 

PREVIOUS: Richard Writes a Book - Part 2: Click HERE

INDEX TO BLOG SERIES: Click HERE

 

 

©Joan Champ. All rights reserved.