"Once a German - Always a German." A British anti-German propaganda poster in the collection of the Canadian War Museum, c1940. Source
John's Naturalization Application
John's Oath of Allegiance to King George the 6th, July 12, 1937. Source: Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC).
Immediately after the outbreak of the Second World War, John Erdmann Albrecht, a German immigrant, 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. The
certificate had been mailed to him at Wollaston Lake via Brochet, Manitoba at the north end of Reindeer Lake. A letter from
Canada's Naturalization Branch to the Royal Canadian Mounted Police
dated October 27, 1941 states that the certificate had been returned to
the department by the Post Office.
Letter to John at Wollaston Lake enclosing his naturalization certificate, Sept. 9, 1937. This letter never reached him. Source: IRCC.
I do not know when John received his naturalization papers. Without the necessary papers, however,
John - considered an "enemy alien" during the Second World War years - had little recourse but to keep out of sight from 1939 to 1945 in the Selwyn Lake area north of Stony Rapids, Saskatchewan. He had spent over two years in a British prisoner-of-war camp during the First World War and he feared being imprisoned again. "I will never go behind barbed wire again," he had told P. G. Downes in 1939.(Read story HERE)
In order to apply for citizenship in the 1930s, a person had to have lived in Canada for five years. Under the Naturalization Act of 1914, aliens could petition for naturalization. If
successful, they would swear allegiance to the British sovereign and
would be granted the rights of someone born within the British Empire. Source
John first applied for Canadian citizenship in 1934 - five years after his arrival from Germany. At that time, he was trapping out of Dore River in the Big River region. By the time of his naturalization hearing at the Prince Albert District Court in the summer of 1937, he had moved to the Wollaston Lake area of Saskatchewan; he gave his address as Brochet, Manitoba.
The Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) conducted an investigation of Albrecht in 1937 as part of his naturalization process. They noted that because John had spent the past several years trapping in the north, he was not very well known. The RCMP interviewed three people as character witnesses for John's application: Thomas Thibeault, liquor store vendor at Big River; Ivor Newton, trapper in the Big River area; and Jim Cumines, Game Guardian at Brochet. Each witness declared that John had resided in Canada continually for a period of five years and that he had conducted himself in such a manner to be worthy of Canadian citizenship. The RCMP concluded that John was "not in any way connected with the Communistic movement or with any other radical organization." [Source: IRCC.]
"Enemy Alien"
Anti-German sentiment was widespread in Saskatchewan during the Second World War. Source: Saskatoon Star-Phoenix, May 15, 1940.
With the outbreak of the Second World War in 1939, German immigrants who had arrived in Canada after 1922 were forced to register with the authorities. 16,000 registered but I have found no evidence that Albrecht did.
Source: Regina Leader-Post, May 25, 1940.
The Canadian government also invoked the War Measures Act on August 25, 1939, giving the Minister of Justice the power to detain both enemy nationals and Canadian citizens suspected of spying and subversion. Internment camps were established in Alberta, Ontario, Quebec, and New Brunswick. Source Although I have found no evidence that he was a Nazi sympathizer, and I doubt very much that he was, John Albrecht kept out of sight at his remote cabin at Selwyn Lake until the war was over.
NEXT: John Discovers a Uranium Deposit, 1948 Click HERE
PREVIOUS: John Albrecht - Guide for P. G. Downes: Click HERE
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'."
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.
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
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.]
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.
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.
"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.]
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.”
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 Manthat 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.
