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Pursuing this lead, I eventually found myself constituting half of something called the Keewatin Zoological Expedition. The other half was Dr. Francis Harper, a scientist of my father’s generation, later described to me by one of his peers as having ”a strong antipathy toward socialism, labour unions, and civil rights.” He hardly sounded like my cup of tea, nor was I thrilled to learn that his expenses would
be covered by the U.S. Office of Naval Research, whereas I would be expected to pay half the expedition’s costs out of my own pocket. Nevertheless, I concluded that if I was to get to the Barrens at all that summer I had better take what was available.

We planned to fly into central Keewatin in a ski-equipped plane before the spring thaw began, then establish a base camp at some suitably remote place where Harper and I could spend the summer collecting animals and plants.

This, at any rate, was Harper’s plan. I, however, had no real desire to devote my time to enlarging collections of bird and mammal mummies.
I
wanted to find and travel with the caribou; hoping to meet any remaining people of the deer and to learn what I could about the lives of both.

On May 17, 1947, Francis Harper and I boarded the northbound Muskeg Special to Churchill. There I arranged with a bush pilot to fly us some 250 miles north and west to a little-known lake Samuel Hearne had visited almost two centuries earlier, called
Nuelthin-tua
– Sleeping Island Lake – by the Chipewyans. Here we hoped to find the cabin of a white trapper who was reputededly in touch with survivors of the so-called Caribou Eskimos.

Luck was with us. Against heavy odds, we located the cabin and managed to land on a still-frozen arm of Nueltin Lake, as it is now called. The cabin, at the mouth of Windy River, was then inhabited by three half-Cree, half-German brothers, the oldest of whom was twenty-one-year-old Charles Schweder. The brothers were very surprised to see us but, like all northern people, they made us welcome.

Thereafter, while Harper busied himself shooting and trapping whatever wild creatures came within reach, Charles and I embarked on an epic canoe journey of more than a thousand miles that took us north to the country of the inland Eskimos; then south to the trading post at Brochet, on Reindeer Lake; then back to Nueltin; and finally east to Hudson Bay, and so eventually to Churchill.

We encountered many caribou during our travels but also grim evidence that their numbers were in steep decline. For years white trappers had been slaughtering them for human and dog food, and using them as bait for traps and sets. We also met most of the few remaining Inuit people of the deer (
Ihalmiut
– People from Beyond – they called themselves) and visited some of the surviving
Idthen Eldeli
, the Chipewyan people of the deer.

That summer was a transcendental experience during which I developed a consuming desire to learn more about the peoples of the deer and, if I was lucky, about their inner world. I also became deeply perturbed and angry at the way the indigenous peoples and the other natural denizens of tundra and taiga were being savaged by my kind – by the interlopers.

By summer’s end I was seriously considering dropping out of university in order to spend the coming winter roaming the tundra by dog team with Charles and his brothers. Then, when summer returned, I could canoe the countless lakes and rivers getting to know the deer and the deer people with a view to – perhaps – championing their cause.

Although this was no more than a half-formed notion, the idea of becoming a defender rather than a destroyer was irresistibly attractive. But if I intended to become a
self-appointed champion of the Barren Lands, I had better have some allies.

Returning to Toronto in mid-September I resumed sporadic attendance at university, while spending much of my time trying to organize a new expedition to the Barren Lands – one that would include a photographer and a trained biologist.

I persuaded Andy Lawrie to come along as the ”expert biologist,” at least through the summer of 1948; Bill Carrick, another pal from the Toronto Ornithological Field Group, agreed to bring and man the cameras.

Against the odds (for I was without standing in the scientific world), I managed to persuade the prestigious Arctic Institute of North America to provide a grant-in-aid of a thousand dollars, a formidable sum in those days and one that would go a long way toward covering outfitting and transportation costs.

All in all, things were looking rosy. They became even rosier after I met a classmate in Botany 2
A
who was unable to see anything through a microscope and was effusively grateful when I described for her the things she could not see for herself.

Frances Thornhill was a blond, blue-eyed, twenty-three-year-old veteran of the Wrens (Women’s Royal Canadian Naval Service) recently demobbed and, like me, now enrolled in a pass arts course to, as she wryly put it, ”pass the time away” until something better appeared. She too was ill at ease in the university milieu. Not surprisingly, we drifted together, and I soon found myself in courting mode.

She did not respond with any marked enthusiasm until one warm and sunny October day I took her birdwatching
in the wooded glades of High Park, where she joined me in ”making angels” in the windrows of fallen leaves. We wound up making love under a blanket of them.

Since we were fully clothed this was a fumbling and unsatisfactory encounter, but we made up for that a few days later when we visited
Scotch Bonnet
, cosily moored for the winter in a lagoon on Toronto Island.

Things moved rapidly after that. On a day late in October, after I had known Fran for little more than a month, I was with her in one of the Royal Ontario Museum’s specimen storage vaults proudly showing her examples of my previous (and perhaps future) scientific endeavours when she turned suddenly on me, white-faced and tense, and demanded:

”
You’ve got to marry me!
”

In the language of the times, this meant she was pregnant.

Once my panicky first reaction had simmered down, the prospect was surprisingly easy to accept. Marriage would mean escape from the vale of loneliness, would ensure ongoing sex, and (so I assumed) would bring me all the rest of the promised rewards of married life. Even when it turned out (as it soon did) that the pregnancy was a false alarm, I made no attempt to avoid a commitment that was already in train.

Before enlisting in the armed forces, Fran had been a student at Bishop Strachan School, one of Toronto’s most prestigious private schools for girls. She was now determined to be married in
BSS
’s impressive chapel and as soon as possible.

Her parents, Reuben and Florence Thornhill, had migrated to Toronto in the 1920s from a disintegrating rural community in western Ontario. A young couple without money or resources, they had been hoping to find
the proverbial better life in the big city. In classic style, Rube worked his way up from the shop floor of a factory to become a successful salesman able to buy a heavily mortgaged semi-detached house and a new Ford car.

Rube was satisfied with these achievements, and so was Florence – up to a point. The ”point” was her daughter’s future and Florence’s aspirations for her. Even though the Depression was by then draining the economic lifeblood from people in the Thornhills’ circumstances, they some how managed to put their only daughter into Bishop Strachan School and maintain her there for several years. Had the war not intervened, Fran would doubtless have graduated from
BSS
and, if her mother’s dreams had been realized, would have married well above her station to live in affluence ever after.

BSS
took its time replying to Fran’s request for us to be married in the chapel. The reply, when it came, was a singularly curt refusal. Fran was devastated and I was angry. I demanded explanations and eventually we were granted an audience with the head mistress. This regal lady (I have forgotten her name) coolly informed us that being married in the school chapel was a privilege reserved for graduates only, and there could and would be no exceptions.

My response was roughly this:

Leading Seaman Thornhill and I are both veterans of the recent war. Both of us left school to
volunteer
for action in the armed forces, in which we served a total of seven years helping to defend this country and its institutions – of which Bishop Strachan School is a prime example. We think we’ve done
our
bit. How come you won’t do yours and give us dispensation from your damn fool regulation?

Frances Thornhill and I were married by a former army chaplain on December 19 in a Toronto church at some distance from
BSS
.

We spent our honeymoon at a summer cottage in northern Ontario where the temperature fell to thirty-five degrees below freezing and the only really warm place was in bed. On December 23 we took up married life in two rooms of my parents’ house in Richmond Hill.

A few weeks later the axe fell.

As a matter of form, the Arctic Institute had sent a copy of my proposal and the institute’s offer of support to the federal Minister of Mines and Resources, whose department administered the Northwest Territories. This material ended up in the hands of a recent graduate in zoology whom the Department of Mines and Resources had just hired.

He was Frank Banfield, of the Dodge sedan and one of my companions on the 1939 Faunal Survey of Saskatchewan.

Frank scrutinized my proposal, then, having elaborated on it somewhat, took it to his chief and convinced him that, not only was a study of the Barren Land caribou an urgent matter, it was too important to be entrusted to a pair of undergraduates and a freelance photographer. Frank strongly recommended the job be done by the department and volunteered to take charge of it himself.

Andy and I knew nothing of this when, early in the new year, we were invited to Ottawa for an interview with the deputy minister of Mines and Resources, who was also deputy commissioner of the Northwest Territories and the effective monarch of that vast region. Greatly excited, for we thought we had been summoned in order to receive the imprimatur on our plans, we travelled to Ottawa, where
with due ceremony we were escorted into the sanctum of a portly Colonel Blimp-type who was deferentially introduced to us as Commissioner Gibson.

R.A. Gibson did most of the talking. Having informed us that ”his” department was undertaking a comprehensive survey of the status of
Rangifer arcticus
(the scientific name for the Barren Land caribou) and of the ”native tribes associated with the animal,” he delivered our
coup de grâce
.

”You understand, of course, that a proposal such as yours is now redundant and cannot be supported by the department. We have so informed the Arctic Institute of North America who might otherwise have sponsored you. Furthermore, I must advise you that an Explorer’s and Scientist’s Permit to undertake field studies in the Northwest Territories on your own cannot be issued to you.”

He paused to let all this sink in, then added: ”However, Captain Banfield, who is in charge of the survey, believes he might be able to find employment for you.”

Captain Banfield (the use of military titles was
de rigueur
in Ottawa) was waiting for us as we slunk out of the commissioner’s imposing office.

Frank took us to the cafeteria of the Lord Elgin Hotel for lunch and attempted to cheer us up.

”Sorry about all this, you chaps, but it ain’t necessarily so bad. Bill Carrick’s out but I have the authority to hire both of you. You’d sign on as student biologists in training – at a pretty small salary I’m afraid, but you’d get the chance to do a lot of things you wanted to do. Your base camp could still be the Schweder cabin at Nueltin Lake. The department would provide everything you’ll need, including a canoe, outboard motor, air transport … even a short-wave radio.

And you could hire your young half-breed friend as a guide and general factotum.”

He paused for a long moment. ”I don’t want to push you, but time is short. I have to have your answer by tomorrow morning.”

Andy and I spent the rest of that dismal day in a cheap hotel room trying to come to terms with the bitter reality that we really had little choice but to accept Banfield’s offer.

Our train for Toronto was due to leave at eleven the next morning. By then we had formally submitted ourselves to servitude as part-time government employees. This was especially hard for me to swallow because I had sworn that, having freed myself from the morass of bureaucratic imbecilities in which the army had immersed me, I would never again subject myself to such a fate.

As the train trundled us homeward, the only solace I could find lay in the private thought that, having avoided becoming a zombie in the army, I might be able to avoid the same fate as a government employee.

S
pring had come to Ontario. Birds were streaming northward and soon I would be too. Frances and I felt it might make the coming separation easier if we had a second honeymoon before I departed. On my twenty-seventh birthday we drove Lulu Belle back to the place we thought of as Icy Cottage and spent five glorious May days soaking up the essence of spring while making love and making plans.

Surprisingly the university had agreed to let Andy and me do most of our next year’s course work extramurally, requiring only that we return to Toronto in the spring of 1949 to write formal examinations. In consequence, he and I planned to spend the coming year attempting to follow the Keewatin caribou herds by canoe and on foot wherever they might lead.

We would try to live with the deer on the tundra until the autumn of 1948, then follow them to their wintering grounds in the vicinity of Reindeer Lake. Frances would join
me there and we would set up housekeeping (if we could find a house or cabin) in the tiny settlement of Brochet at the north end of the lake. In the spring of 1949 all three of us would return to Toronto.

Fran and I had very little idea of what we might do after that. The uncomfortable truth was that I had nothing substantial in view for the future. The abandonment of my
Birds of Saskatchewan
project followed by my disillusioning experiences as a neophyte zoologist under Dr. Harper’s tutelage had combined to kill any remaining inclination to become a professional biologist.