After 14 days and 115km of paddling, lining, wading, rapids, portages and a 40km trackless hike, Saku and I, in a surreal series of events, came to Hubbard Rock – the scene of the tragic death from exhaustion on October 18th, 1903, of Leonidas Hubbard, deep in the Labrador wild. 100km as the crow flies from the nearest community.
Here was his last camp. He lay in the tent with doors open where my camera sits, a big fire blazed near my feet, and the heat reflected off the Rock back into their tent. The other two members, Dillon Wallace and Cree guide George Elson, left for help. Shortly after, the 31-year-old Hubbard, with his wife Mina back in New York City, closed the tent doors and went to sleep forever. They had been on their journey gone wrong for over 90 days, as told in the thrilling, well-known book “The Lure of the Labrador Wild”. Written by Hubbard’s friend Wallace, who survived by the skin of his teeth.
Ten years later, in 1913, the lawyer Wallace was lured back for another harrowing journey to erect the plaque. With an American friend and his skilled Labrador indigenous guide, Gilbert Blake, they flipped their canoe in the rapids and lost the bronze tablet. Determined as he was to remember his companion who lived the real wilderness life with him, he kept going. Once reaching the site, he scoured the Rock clean of moss, utilized white lead intended for canoe repairs and mixed it with bacon fat over the campfire to create a paint. Then from 5am till sunset, with hammer and chisel, he tediously cut the inscription which was on the lost plaque into the Rock. They snipped a lock of Gilbert’s coarse black hair, tied it to a branch with fishing line, trimmed it to a point and had a paintbrush to fill in the letters. Shortly after, at midnight, with candles lit, they held a service in the vast, dark, silent wilderness and felt that Hubbard was with them. They began their retreat to civilization the next morning.
All that remains of the paint today is the L you see in my picture. But the carved letters are still clear as day. Long and hard I sat around the Rock considering it all. It was mind-bending. And Hubbard was with us too.
In 1977, Dillon Wallace III (Wallace’s son), with the help of Newfoundland and Labrador’s government, travelled to the site by chopper. He drilled a replica of the plaque lost in the rapids in 1913 to the Rock.
Since 1977, just over 40 people have visited and left a note in the waterproofed military ammo tin. And just over a dozen have gotten there by human power like Saku and I. All paddlers were in groups with a variety of approaches to reach it, but generally leaving from North West River. I was the first to come in through the trail they lost to Lake Michikamau at “Lost Trail Lake”/Hope Lake. There was one other solo individual who took a shorter path than ours (also leaving from North West River). After weather mishaps, illnesses, injuries, Bear problems and periods of weakness on the tough trip in during his first 4 tries, he finally got there in 2003 with a never give up attitude on attempt #5. The bulk came by helicopter. Cheers to the few people who have reached this unique little piece of heaven. As sad as it is, it truly is God’s country. Nature gives, and nature takes.
The day after we arrived, Saku and I retraced our steps straight west into the face of the stormy fall winds, 155km back to Orma Lake woods road. We followed a nice bit of the Hubbard expedition’s original route. A route said to be haunted and unlucky by the indigenous people of North West River. Dozens of their own people (a full band) had died from starvation on it only a few years prior to Hubbard, in the late 1800s. They never travelled that way again. On my first attempt in 2020 to fly into these headwaters and paddle down to the Rock, our bush plane crashed in the ocean on take-off. The pilot, Saku and I narrowly escaped.
This 2nd attempt took 23 difficult and interesting days. 310km. Saku, worn and weary, had some snooze when we reached the plaque. I filmed it all. More to come.
CBC Radio Interview: https://www.cbc.ca/listen/live-radio/1-47-on-the-go/clip/16240133-the-lure-labrador-wild
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