The well-dressed, well-coiffed prospectors John Albrecht and Nan Morenus examining some of their mineral finds in their hotel room in Prince Albert, Saskatchewan on their way to Toronto. Prince Albert Daily Herald photo, March 21, 1950, courtesy of Rabeea Shhadeh.
In March of 1950, Nan Dorland and John Albrecht left their cabin on Selwyn Lake, Saskatchewan, passing through Prince Albert on their way to Toronto. Nan was four months pregnant. She was 38 years old.
John later told Bob Lee that they wanted the best doctors for Nan due to the many operations she had had for ulcers, so they went to Toronto for the birth of their child.
Nan and John got married in Toronto on April 29, 1950, their wedding officiated by Rev. J. Norrie Anderson, a United Church minister. The witnesses were the minister's wife Isobel C. Anderson, and LeRoy A. Tobey, John's former prospecting partner with whom he had made the Nisto uranium discovery. [Read the story HERE.]
In the months leading up to the birth of their son, John and Nan stayed at Musselman's Lake, located about 6 kilometres northwest of Stouffville. It is now part of the Greater Toronto area. In the mid-1900s, Musselman's Lake was considered to be the entertainment capital of southern Ontario. Source
A Son
John Ernest Albrecht was born on August 18, 1950 in Brierbush Hospital at Stouffville, Ontario. Brierbush Hospital (1932-1975) was a private nursing hospital that specialized in maternity cases. Source The attending physician was Dr. F. J. (John) Button of Stouffville.
Birth announcement, Stouffville Tribune, August 31, 1950.
Statement of Birth for Nan and John's son. Nan gave her occupation as "writer" and John gave his as "prospector." John signed the statement three days after Nan died, and their son's birth was officially registered on September 7, 1950.
Nan Dies Three Weeks Later
Nan Dorland passed away in Women's College Hospital at Toronto on September 3, 1950 from complications of childbirth. Dr. John Button, the same doctor who had delivered her son, signed her death certificate.
Specifically, Nan died of strangulation of the bowel as a result of obstruction due to adhesions from her previous abdominal surgeries. Nan had had two surgeries (that I know of) for a perforated bowel, once in New York City in 1939 [click HERE for story], and one at Sioux Lookout in 1947 [click HERE for story]. "Bowel obstruction may occur during the fourth or fifth months of pregnancy when the uterus rises into the abdomen but most often occurs in the third trimester or postpartum," explains Diane J. Angelini in the Journal of Midwifery & Women's Health["Obstetric Triage Revisited: Update on Non-Obstetric Surgical Conditions in Pregnancy," 2004, 48(2).] "When an obstruction occurs, there is significant risk for severe morbidity or mortality for both mother and fetus, and treatment needs to occur as soon as possible. ... Fluid and electrolyte losses can be significant, leading to hypovolemia, renal problems, shock, and death."
Nan's Remains Return to Saskatchewan
After their son was taken to California to live with Nan's parents, John brought her ashes to their home in northern Saskatchewan.
There is a sand esker on Selwyn Lake that was very beautiful, This was their favorite spot and was situated close to their cabin. Here they had spent many evenings together, watching the moon rise slowly over the vastness of the lake, listening to the soft breeze of evening playing among the pines, and here the loon would always call from the bay. And the beautiful life they had shared here at this very spot John had enjoyed the happiest time of his life. It was only fitting that here they should part ... forever. Some years ago I saw a self-timed photo of John standing behind a stone cross laid out on the sand at this beautiful spot - on which he had moments before scattered the cremated remains of his beloved wife. Pain and anguish clearly showed on his face. [Source: Bob Lee, The North Called Softly. Prince Albert, SK: Unpublished, 1977. Bill Smiley Archives, Prince Albert Historical Museum.]
"But John survived that terrible agony and did smile again," Bob Lee continues. "Although he had to force himself to walk the bush prospecting for years afterwards."
Modern-day couple in Nunavet hauling provisions by dogsled in springtime. Source
"In
the cold, still May air, the barking of sleigh dogs slowly died away as
John struggled to catch Nan's caribou parka hood before she slipped
beneath the ice into the cold, swirling waters." - Bob Lee's account of a life-or-death incident told to him by John Albrecht. [Source: Lee's unpublished
manuscript , "A Day in the Wilderness," 1966. Shared with me by Curtis Lee.]
Beginning in early 1949, Nan Dorland (nee Danke) Morenus and John Albrecht spent a year and a half together in northern Saskatchewan, dividing their time between Selwyn Lake and Stony Rapids. They were prospecting partners on the hunt for uranium.
“There’s danger in
prospecting," the unnamed reporter for the Prince Albert Daily Herald had written on March 21, 1950. He went on to relate the story about the close call the couple had experienced the previous spring while mushing their dog team into the heart of
Stony Rapids’ treacherous terrain, as told to him by Nan and John.
In May of 1949, Nan and John were on their way to their cabin at the south end of Selwyn Lake near the Saskatchewan-Northwest Territories border. They were anxious to begin a summer of prospecting. The couple took their dogsled out onto the
lakes and streams even though ice breakup was nearing. "We were on
crusted snow – the most dangerous and hardest to gauge of all ice," Nan explained to the reporter. Without warning, they found
themselves, the dogs and the sled slowly sinking through the ice.
They "swam" ashore – by crawling with a swimming motion
over the surface of the slushy snow. "We could hear water gurgling underneath," Nan said. But the dogs – and the precious supply sled – were stuck 100 feet
from safety. According to the Herald's reporter, John made two trips out over the deep-snow-coated waters
to pull the lead dog slowly, inch by inch, to shore.
Bob Lee's Version of the Story
Bob Lee's account of the accident, as told to him by John, provides more detail about the incident. John and Nan had left Stony Rapids three weeks before the accident but had spent those three weeks camping on the shores of Black Lake to hunt caribou and fatten up their team of nine part-wolf, part-husky sled dogs. The dogs would have to fend for themselves over the summer and Nan and John would not be taking their dogs with them on their prospecting excursions. [Sled dogs were often left on islands over the summer months.]
The night before they left for Selwyn Lake, Lee writes, John deliberately camped two miles from the dangerous narrows "so they could be crossed on the early morning frost," hoping that the ice had thickened overnight. The sled dogs were eager to start after gorging themselves on fat, barren-land caribou. As they approached the narrows, "John tried to keep [the dogs] to the obviously safe ice of the north shore," Lee continues. "But, as they ran almost uncontrolled down the dangerous central part he tried to steer them toward a bridge of older ice that looked safer." This is where the dogsled, loaded with groceries, tent, rifle, and all the necessities of life in the bush, broke through the ice.
The Site of the Accident
In order to determine the route taken by Nan and John in the spring of 1948 - and the approximate site of their dogsled accident - I decided to consult with John and Kate Rich, Canadians now living in Western Australia. In 2014, the Riches canoed from Black Lake to Baker Lake, retracing on the first part of their journey the route John and Nan would have taken from Black Lake to their cabin on Selwyn Lake. Source
John Rich was more than happy to help me out. After studying several maps and aerial photos, Rich theorized that John and Nan travelled close to the northwest shore of Black Lake "to avoid any risk of travelling well out on the lake where an accident would be disastrous." He notes that in order to head up the Chipman Portage, they would have had to get past the mouth of the Chipman River "either by skirting it well out on the ice of Black Lake, or by hugging the north shore of Black Lake and risking thin ice." To their peril, Rich concludes, John apparently chose the latter option.
Two maps generated from the National Topographical System, Natural Resources Canada, scale 1:50,000. Markings by John Rich. Nan and John would have camped two miles south of the mouth of the Chipman River in May 1948 in order to access the Chipman Portage. The portage shown by Rich is the approximate current route of the portage. Further to the right is the original, more north-south portage route which was probably the one in use in 1948.
John Albrecht once told his friend Klaus Lehnert-Thiel that in winter he could easily travel from Stony Rapids to his camp at Selwyn Lake in a day. John Rich calculates that it would be about 92 kilometres from Albrecht's cabin to Black Lake, and another 20km from there to Stony Rapids, "so over 100 kilometres in a day quite likely in -30° to -40° temperatures. They were tough guys!"
"Tough Guys"
Given what happened next, they were tough guys indeed! What follows is Bob Lee's account of the dogsledding accident. It may be embellished.
The sleigh, on top of which Nan was sitting ... slowly broke through the thin ice up to the creels (canvas sides) and half floated in the cold water as the nine dogs whined and swam in their harness.
John, after thirty years in the north, realized at once the grave danger of this setting. He knew at once that his dear wife Nan, himself, his dogs, and his complete outfit could easily slip beneath these waters and would probably never be found.
Nan broke through the ice as she jumped from the top of the load. With lightning speed [John] managed to grab the hood of the caribou parka she was wearing and drag her back upon the sleigh which was still stuck where the load had pushed out the creel. He instructed her to crawl, ever... so... lightly from the sleigh in a trough-like depression filled with water on the weak ice to the timbered shore and their only hope of safety.
When Nan was twenty yards from the sleigh, John also started a nerve-wrenching crawl over the soft, rubber ice, but not towards the shore and safety, but towards his beloved [dog team] leader, Jumbo. "Jumbo, come Jumbo," could be heard above the sounds of Nan trying to break off a dry, 40-foot tamarack that stood dead and dark against the forest. Jumbo whined in the harness and fought his way through broken ice towards his master.
John slipped his fingers under Jumbo's collar as soon as his head appeared over the edge of the ice and pulled the leader and himself towards the shore. Nan cried, "Grab this pole!" after John had only gone a few yards. Soon, Nan was pulling John, Jumbo and the other dogs, sleigh and provisions over the soft ice to the comforts of a pail of tea by a riverside fire. Yes, just one day in the wilderness."
Hmmm... I am Nan's biggest fan, but I have trouble believing that, after she fell into the freezing water, she was able to crawl to shore, cut down a tamarack, start a fire, make tea, and pull hundreds of pounds of man, dogs, sled, and provisions to safety with the tamarack pole! I am sure there is some truth to at least part of the story. What do you think?
NEXT: Nan and John: A Marriage, a Birth, and a Death - Click HERE
PREVIOUS: John Discovers a Uranium Deposit, 1948 -Click HERE
From "The Hunt for the Singing Atom," by C. Fred Bodsworth in Macleans, August 15, 1948.
By 1948, John Albrecht was living in Stony Rapids, trapping from a base camp on Selwyn Lake which straddles the Saskatchewan-Northwest Territories border. In June of that year John became the prospecting partner of Leroy (Roy) Tobey (1905-1985), a prospector and former civil service engineer from Meota, Saskatchewan.
StarPhoenix, Sept. 10, 1948.
"The year 1948 saw the lifting of the veil of secrecy from uranium and prospecting was thrown open to sourdoughs," the Regina Leader-Post reported on February 18, 1950. The United States government's desire to acquire as much uranium as possible from Canada drove the development of uranium mines in northern Saskatchewan. By 1948, Canada had entered into large contracts with the US Atomic Energy Commission. Eldorado Mining and Refining Limited, a federal crown corporation, the only legal purchaser of uranium ore and prior to 1948, had full control over the development of Saskatchewan's uranium deposits.
In March of 1948, Joe Phelps, Minister of Natural Resources for the Government of Saskatchewan announced that 40 individuals would be assisted in carrying out prospecting activities in the province's north. The Prospector's Assistance Plan (PAP) provided prospectors with free mining licenses, free air transportation from La Ronge or Flin Flon, the loan of supplies and equipment for two months in the bush (not including pack sacks and bedroll), cash awards for new finds, and assistance from qualified geologists in the assaying and recording of claims. (Source: Saskatoon StarPhoenix, March 11, 1948; Feb. 25, 1949.) The goal of the PAP was to open up the mineral potential of the north.
Tobey was working under the PAP when he and Albrecht became prospecting partners. In August of 1948, after about three months of fruitless prospecting for uranium - their clothes in rags, their food provisions almost gone - John decided to give up and head back to his cabin to look after his traplines. Before leaving Tobey, John suggested they pick up his bear trap at Black Lake. Within hours after making camp at Black Lake, Tobey's Geiger counter started acting up. The partners eagerly dug into the moss and discovered pitchblende (now known as uraninite), a radioactive, uranium-rich, iron-red rock veined in black.
Geiger counter, no date. Western Development Museum, WDM.-2012-S-28.
"We were [camped] about five miles away from Black River. And so, along the ridge I was going towards home," John recalls in an interview with Berry Richards. (Source: Provincial Archives of Saskatchewan, audio recording R-A873. Berry Richards' interview with John Albrecht, La Ronge, Saskatchewan, July 14, 1975.) "So I hear crashing. What the devil, I said, that must be Tobey. Hello! Hollering ,... By god, he got the first kicks [from the Geiger counter], you know. Excited! ... So by god, that's uranium. So, you know, by 11:00 o'clock in the night we had the whole Nisto shoal discovered." ("Nisto" is the Cree word for "three" but it is not clear why it was applied to the Nisto mine.)
The Nisto find received national media coverage. Ottawa Journal, Feb. 15, 1949.
The twosome traced out a 2,400-foot zone of radioactive activity before splitting up. Tobey, the only one of the two who was working under the PAP, headed to Regina to register their claim. Albrecht headed back up north to check his traps, taking Tobey's Geiger counter with him.
Tobey took out a concession over a 25-square-mile area for both himself and Albrecht to give their claim some protection. Initially, they received no offers for their claim, but eventually Tobey's and Albrecht's discovery of the Nisto uranium find "set the mining world right back on its heels." [Source: StarPhoenix, March 20, 1951.] It was followed by a rush for the government's adjacent concessions. Trans-Continental Resources (TR) from Toronto recognized the potential of the find and offered Tobey and Albrecht each $15,000 for their claim. Subsequently, TR created Nisto Mines Ltd. for the purpose of developing the property.
John Strikes It Rich
"My god, I was there, you know, in the cabin. I had some fox or something," Albrecht told Berry Richards (1975). "There comes a Hudson's Bay man, sends a wire with and Indian. ... Tobey had the contract already sent out, you know, for me to sign. So, we read with the Hudson's Bay man the contract. Sounded good. $30,000 - $15,000 for me, $15,000 for him. 300,000 shares. $3 million share company firm. $150,000 each. I thought, 'This is the first clear money.' I signed! No other way!"
Albrecht and Tobey signed an agreement with Transcontinental Resources transferring Nisto prospecting rights. Albrecht's partner Roy Tobey on right. Source: Regina Leader-Post, Dec. 2, 1948.
John and his partner Roy Tobey made a considerable amount of money on the Nisto find. However, Nisto Mines Ltd. was not large enough to be profitable. As for John's riches, he later chuckled when he told his friend Bob Lee, "I put most of the money back in the ground!" He was always searching for another mine.
Hints of Government Scandal
There were allegations made by members of the Liberal opposition that underhanded deals had been made by employees of the Saskatchewan CCF-NDP government in the development of uranium during the early 1950s. For example, it was suggested that Dr. M. C. Schumiatcher, while still serving as the executive assistant to Premier Tommy Douglas as well as legal advisor to the provincial cabinet, profited from the incorporation a company called Search Corporation shortly after Tobey and Albrecht discovered the Nisto find. The Search Corporation received some of the uranium concessions in the Black Lake area adjacent to Nisto before Schumiatcher resigned from government service.
The leader of the opposition, Walter Tucker, asserted that other former
civil servants had taken advantage of their positions in government to
obtain mineral claims for themselves. Alex Cameron, Liberal MLA for Maple Creek, called this a "scandalous undertaking" and demanded that the government conduct an investigation. [Source: Hansard, Legislative Assembly of Saskatchewan, Budget Debate, March 21, 1951.]
On March 13, 1952, Premier Tommy Douglas responded in the Saskatchewan legislature to the accusations about Schumiatcher, stating that Schumiatcher had indeed formed the Search Corporation and taken out uranium concessions in the area where Albrecht and Tobey discovered the Nisto find. "These concessions could have been procured by any other person willing to make application for them," Douglas asserted, not addressing the fact that Schumiatcher - while still employed by the government - had the inside scoop. He went on to say that, because Search Corporation had been unable to do the necessary exploration work, the company was "virtually insolvent." [Source: Hansard, Legislative Assembly of Saskatchewan, Budget Debate, March 13, 1952.]
Hubert Staines, a member of the Liberal opposition, declared at a public meeting in Kennedy, Saskatchewan, on May 31, 1952 that Schumiatcher and the Search Corporation "had no intention whatever of developing these concessions but merely obtained them to make a very quick cash profit." Staines went on to say that Schumiatcher had obtained blocks of shares entitling his corporation to further profits once the uranium concessions were developed by other companies. [Source: Regina Leader-Post, May 31, 1952.]
(I still have more research to do on this topic and will add any further findings to this post.).
Uranium in Popular Culture
"The Great Rush for Uranium" - prospecting for uranium in Saskatchewan. British Pathe, 1952.
Here's a recording by Warren Smith called "Uranium Rock" (1958).
"I got a big Geiger counter, it's a pretty good rig When the needle starts clickin' it's where I'm gonna dig Money-money honey, the kind you fold Money-money honey, rock 'n' roll
Rake it in, bale it up like hay
Have a rockin' good time and throw it all away."
Here's another called "Uranium Fever" by Elton Britt (1955):
"Uranium fever has done and got me down Uranium fever is spreadin' all around With a Geiger counter in my hand I'm a-goin' out to stake me some government land Uranium fever has done and got me down."
NEXT: Nan and John's Dogsledding Accident - Click HERE
PREVIOUS: John's Naturalization to Canada: Click HERE
"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.
