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VOL. LXXXVI 
DECEMBER, 1916 
No. 11 
THE WINTER PACKET 
OVER SNOW DRIFTED DISTANCES HARDY COURIERS FIGHT 
THEIR WAY TO THE FAR FLUNG POSTS OF THE ARCTIC NORTH 
By R. J. Fraser. 
Rupert House, One of the Oldest and Most Celebrated Hudson Bay Posts. 
T OWARDS the middle 
of the month of De¬ 
cember there is un¬ 
usual bustle in the office 
of the Hudson’s Bay 
Company post at Coch¬ 
rane, Ontario; the winter 
mail packet for the north¬ 
ern posts is being made 
ready. Three long water¬ 
proof sacks are filled 
with letters and papers 
and tiny parcels. Three- 
quarters of them bear the 
old country postmarks. This is the yearly winter 
mail—the James bay district packet. 
The limited term “district” is a singularly in¬ 
appropriate one; it conveys little to the reader. 
For instance, from Cochrane it is 200 miles to 
Moose Factory, another hundred across the bay 
to Rupert’s House; from there 60 miles up the 
east coast of East Main Fort; no farther to 
Fort George; and a final 130 miles to Great 
Whale River Post. 
If one chose the west coast of the bay he 
would go 150 miles north to Forts Albany and 
Ottawapiscat. These distances are as a man 
can travel by dog train. With tributary out¬ 
posts the number of forts totals over fifteen. 
Yet all these and the intervening territories over 
which their respective factors have control lie 
within the limits of the James Bay District. 
And there are others much larger still. In the 
early seventies the mail for the district Yukon 
forts was assembled at Fort Garry—now the city 
of Winnipeg. From there, in the month of 
December, the dog trains started. They made 
their way down the Red River to Lake Winni¬ 
peg; in about nine day’s travel they crossed that 
lake to the shore at Norway House. From 
thence, lessened of its packets of letters for the 
Bay of Hudson and the distant Churchill, the 
parent packet journeyed in twenty days’ travel 
up the Great Saskatchewan River to Carlton 
House. Here came another lightening of the 
load; the Saskatchewan and Lesser Slave Lake 
letters were detached from it, and about the 
first of February it started on its long journey 
to the north. 
During the succeeding winter months it held 
steadily on its northern way, following winding 
frozen stream or wind-swept lake, across the 
great prairies that are now furrowed by the 
settlers’ plow. At long, long intervals branch 
packets were sent off to right and left to cheer 
hungering souls in the obscure posts away from 
the main line of travel. 
Finally, just as the sunshine of mid-May is 
beginning to carry a faint whisper of the coming 
spring to the valleys of the Upper Yukon, the 
dog train, last of many, dragged the packet, 
now but a tiny bundle, into the enclosure of 
La Pierre’s House. It had travelled nearly 3000 
miles; a score of different dog trains had hauled 
it, and its frost-tanned drivers had camped for 
more than a hundred nights under the Northern 
Lights on the great, long, lonesome trail. 
But to return to the James Bay packet. Just 
as the days are at their shortest it starts from 
“the line”; a man walks behind the laden sled 
and another some distance in advance, picking 
and breaking the trail. In this instance two were 
behind, for I was accompanying the winter mail 
to Fort George. 
The little train held its way down the Abittibi 
and Moose Rivers to Moose Factory on the bay; 
there the packet underwent a complete re-adjust¬ 
ment. Then, lightened of its consignment for 
the Albany forts, it jour¬ 
neyed around the deeply- 
indented shore line, out 
across Hannah and Ru¬ 
pert Bays and halted at 
the door of Rupert’s 
House—the pioneer post 
of the Great Company. 
Another lightening of the 
load, a change of dogs 
and drivers, and the train 
started northward up the 
coast. It skirted the shore 
in places, and took ad¬ 
vantage of short cuts through the frozen gutways 
behind the islands of Sherrick Mount. For 
stretches of many miles the indefinite way led 
out over the clear sea ice of the bay, far from 
sight of land. 
At last it reached East Main. A short rest; 
“Farewell!” and “Good-luck!” grasped from the 
hands of the news-enriched traders and the 
packet, now grown much lighter, sped on again, 
still northward. At Fort George I remained 
behind, but the little train kept on its way, to 
the last lone post at Great Whale River. 
Fort George! What is there in a name! The 
term “Fort” often conveys a wrong impression 
to the reader’s mind. An imposing array of 
rampart and bastion, a loop holed wall or for¬ 
midable redoubt may arise before his mind’s 
eye as he reads the oft-recurring word. Built 
generally on the lower bank of a large river 
stands the Hudson Bay fort. A square palisade, 
ten to twenty feet high formerly surrounded the 
buildings; in the prairie region this defence was 
stout and lofty, but in the wooded and hilly 
country it was frequently dispensed with alto¬ 
gether. 
Few of the old posts now have a stockade 
of any description; the time-worn timbers have 
been used for firewood. Inside the bounds 
marked by the old enclosure the buildings, num¬ 
bering from twenty to a hundred, according to 
the location and importance of the place, are 
grouped together. The house of the factor and 
