User:Iain G Cameron/sandbox/Ernest James "Scotty" Gall

Ernest James "Scotty" Gall (1 December 1903 - 25 June 1996) was an arctic navigator, traveller, survivor, trader, manager and elected North West Territory councillor. The most significant navigational achievement of Scotty Gall’s career was the first successful navigation of the Bellot Strait in 1937. As the navigation involved the transportation of fur and trade goods between the Western and Eastern Arctic, it also constituted the first commercial use of the North West Passage – an unrealized dream of the Hudson's Bay Company for hundreds of years.

Early Life:
An adventurous youth, probably a bit of a misfit, Scotty was unable to find satisfying employment in his native Scotland in 1923 where he worked for the Fraserburgh Coal Gas Company. He applied and was accepted as a fur trade apprentice with the Hudson’s Bay Company. Out of the 21 apprentices engaged in Scotland that year only he and a Donald Forbes Watt were sent to Western Canada. His first posting was to Canada’s western frontier at the old whaling settlement on Herschel Island. Herschel Island was an important destination at that time as most supplies for western arctic settlements arrived by ships rounding Alaska from Vancouver. It was the only safe harbour for many miles on the northern coast. The Western Arctic, unlike southern Canada was settled from West to East. Settlement at the time was occurring before air travel and two way radio communication had been established in the area.

He arrived at Herschel Island after assisting in the installation of an engine in the Company’s new 58 foot motor schooner the Aklavik at Fort Smith and helping with her navigation down the Mackenzie River system. The distance from Fort Smith was over 1,200 miles. He soon came into contact with many famous arctic characters of the time. The first was Pete Norberg who had come over the mountains to Fort Simpson from the Yukon to help pilot the Aklavik through the lower reaches of the Mackenzie. Norberg went east later that year to establish the first trading post on King William Island.

At Herschel Island Scotty met other personalities including the independent fur trader Charles Klinkenberg (later Klengenberg) and his sons and the Hudson's Bay Inspector Phillip Godsell. He also encountered and travelled with Knud Rasmussen, the famous Danish explorer and scientist, who Scotty reported had honed the art of high speed dog team travel and arctic anthropological research. Rasmussen used a retinue of paid assistants to set up camp sites and food caches and a native female interpreter companion to help gather information. Scotty’s eyes were further opened to the ‘wild west’ when he had to deal with a Company trader at an outpost near the Alaska border who was involved with home brewed liquor. After it was found that half the post’s trade goods could not be accounted for, it was determined that the missing goods along with the trader’s native interpreter had been bartered to the Alaskans.

Scotty’s early years in Arctic fur trade involved a lot of travel. In the short navigation season from July to October he was busy with motor schooners transporting supplies, trade goods, building materials and fuel to an expanding chain of fur trading settlements. He also helped setting up and constructing buildings. In the winter he travelled by dog sled with native companions visiting posts from the Alaskan border to King William Island, delivering mail and helping the post managers sort out their accounts and records. The Kitimeot Heritage Society’s website Angulalik - Kitimeot Fur Trader is an excellent source of information about the expansion of the Western Arctic fur trade. It has specific sections on the key players, one of which is Scotty Gall.

In the summer of 1924 the Western Arctic found itself in a desperate situation. The Hudson’s Bay Company’s supply ship Lady Kindersley was crushed in the ice and sank off Barrow, Alaska. Supplies, cash trading money, a radio transmitting and receiving set scheduled for installation at Herschel Island did not arrive. In consequence Scotty was sent by dog sled from Herschel Island across the mountains to Fairbanks, Alaska, where there was telegraphic service, banks, supply depots and a railroad connection to the south. His mission was to obtain emergency instructions, fur prices, radio receiver parts, replacement dogs and presumably cash. Their party on the outward journey included three Company employees who were escaping the Arctic by the Alaska Railroad and the Alaska Steamship Company’s service to Seattle. The return journey was made by Scotty and his companion Ambrose with the assistance of a Gwitchin guide whom they enlisted at Old Crow. Scotty’s winter travelling in 1924/25 including a subsequent trip to Bernard Harbour with a return to Kittigazuit, the wintering location of the Aklavik near the mouth of the Mackenzie River, totalled over 2,600 miles. A transcript of a diary kept by Gall of the trip from Herschel Island to Fairbanks Alaska plus a map showing the approximate route is found on Iain Cameron’s blog site. The original of Scotty’s copy of this diary was found recently by his niece, Patricia Gibson, in an English attic.Although the trip from Herschel Island over the mountains in the depths of winter was not unprecedented, even for Company employees, it was a remarkable achievement. Northerners who particularly understand the challenges and hazards of such travel hold those who accomplish such journeys in high regard. This is illustrated in remarks made in a speech by Alaskan Congressional Delegate Frank Waskey in a tribute after dinner speech to Amundsen in 1906 as reported by the Nome Nugget.


 * . . . what appealed to Alaska in Amundsen was not, perhaps his clever and lucky feat in taking the Gjoa through the northwest passage, nor even his determination of the position of the north magnetic pole, great as these performances would be in the eyes of the outside world, but the long and successful mush, he had made from Herschell’s (sic) Island to Eagle alongside the Porcupine River.

Waskey was referring to a trip, similar to Gall’s, that Amundsen and a partially incapacitated whaler Captain William (Billie) Mogg made over the 9,000 foot Ogilvie Mountains from Herschel Island. The trip was made with the assistance of several Inuit men who accompanied them as far as Fort Yukon on the Yukon River. They set out on October 24, 1905 and arrived at Eagle, Alaska, 500 miles distant having endured up to -60F temperatures. At Eagle there was a telegraph station from which Amundsen announced his successful transit of the North West Passage to the world.

In 1927, Scotty Gall was shipwrecked, along with a young Scottish sailor Ian ‘Jock’ Christie and the Inuit assistants Ovilook and Oviolook’s wife Canyiyuk. He was trying to find a route to deliver supplies to King William Island when their small vessel was wrecked. An account of their resourceful survival, as related by Scotty to former District Manager Dudley Copland, is contained in an article Copland’s "The Wreck of the Emma Jane" was published in the summer 1970 issue of The Beaver magazine.

Jock Christie was not so fortunate in 1929 when as employee of the Canalaska Company he froze to death after falling into a creek in a spring blizzard in Bathurst Inlet. Shortly afterwards Scotty saved himself from a similar fate by applying a technique he had learned from his native companions. While trapping in the same area, he too broke through thin ice. He rolled in the snow letting his soaked clothes freeze and then quickly knocked the ice off of them.

Scotty finished his apprenticeship in the fall of 1928 and returned to Scotland for a holiday but not without another survival adventure. While travelling south, he was nearly drowned helping to lay out a winching cable for the Distributor to ascend the rapids in the Ramparts section of the Mackenzie River in the low water conditions that prevailed that year. In 1929 he again sailed for Canada, this time arriving at Halifax in the S.S. Antonia on March 1st with a Canadian passport, to take employment with Northern Aerial Minerals Exploration Company of Toronto Ontario. This was a new firm which hoped to revolutionize mineral exploration by the use of aircraft. Scotty had dreams of a flying career and becoming a bush pilot. That summer he was sent back to the Arctic to prepare for the introduction of aircraft in the Coppermine area where a mineral staking boom was in progress. In addition to helping with servicing of the aircraft, he worked as field person assisting geological staff in claim staking and in winter transportation of personnel and supplies by dog team. Unfortunately his aviation dreams were dashed when he was discharged in the fall of 1930 after the stock market collapse and the onset of the Great Depression. He stayed in the area supporting himself by working at odd jobs and by trapping.

His fortunes were reversed in the Spring of 1931 when it was discovered that his old vessel the Aklavik had partially sunk at her wintering berth at Bernard Harbour. Richard Bonnycastle the Hudson’s Bay Company District Manager hired Scotty to recover the vessel. Scotty’s success with the venture not only salvaged the vessel, it salvaged his career with the Company and led to continued employment with it until his retirement in 1966.

When he was rehired an arrangement for the supply of a passage for Scotty from the Arctic to Vancouver on the Company’s supply ship the Baychimo was made. He wished to see the West Coast. The plan was that he would reside in Vancouver on retainer during the winter before rejoining the Aklavik the following summer. The voyage south proved to be another survival adventure for Scotty; surprisingly, it also resulted in his marriage. The vessel became trapped in the ice after rounding Cape Barrow and was eventually abandoned by her crew who moved to temporary quarters constructed ashore. Subsequently, with unobserved overnight ice movements, the ship disappeared. Afterwards she was seen from time to time, boarded on occasion, but never recovered. She became known as the ‘Ghost Ship of the Arctic’. Bonnycastle together with Scotty and several other passengers and Company officials were evacuated by air to Nome Alaska to take passage to Seattle on the Alaska Steamship Company’s steamer Victoria. While in Nome, Scotty was smitten by a beautiful young lady he met there, Anna Fagerstrom. It was fortuitous she was also travelling in the Victoria. Anna, born in the nearby Golovin Village, was the artistic and educated daughter of Charles Fagerstrom, a Swedish born miner and gas boat engineer, and his wife Susan Kowak. Scotty and Anna were married in Whatcom County in Washington State on January 6,1932.

In the spring of 1932, after working at odd jobs in Vancouver, Scotty returned to the Arctic with Anna to crew on the Aklavik. After repairs were completed under the supervision of a shipwright, he became her engineer, and later her master. He and Anna spent more than five happy years working and living in the Coronation Gulf area fur trading in the winters and running the Aklavik in the summer navigation season. During two winters of this period they lived aboard the vessel.

Navigation of the Bellot Strait
The most significant navigational achievement of Scotty Gall’s career was the first successful navigation of the Bellot Strait in 1937. As the navigation involved the transportation of fur and trade goods between the Western and Eastern Arctic, it also constituted the first commercial use of the North West Passage – an unrealized dream of the Hudson's Bay Company for hundreds of years.

A first attempt at navigation of Bellot Strait was made by Franklin-seeker Captain Leopold McClintock in 1858. On September 6, 1858 after six starts of pushing his vessel the Fox westward, he managed to reach the western entrance; but ice blocked the way and it was impossible to break through.

An opportunity for the navigation of the strait by a Hudson’s Bay Company vessel arose before 1937 but it was not part of their plans at that time. In 1928 their Eastern Arctic vessel the Fort James made an exploratory voyage from St. John’s Newfoundland to the West Boothia Peninsula and King William Island area. The Fort James followed the Amundsen route through Peel Sound into and out of the area. The vessel wintered at Oscar Bay on the Boothia Peninsula during its first year in the area. In 1929 after trying to reach its objective at Cambridge Bay, she turned back and attempted to return to the East but was not able to find passage through blocking ice conditions that existed near Oscar Bay, her first wintering location. As a consequence, the vessel wintered at Gjoa Haven on King William Island during its second year. Both the Hudson’s Bay and rival Canalaska Companies maintained fur trading posts at Gjoa Haven supplied by vessels from the west. For the Hudson’s Bay Company, the arrival of the Fort James at Gjoa Haven meant that Company vessels had finally navigated the full length of the long sought North West Passage. Although the Fort James passed the western entrance of Bellot Strait on her entry in 1928 and on her leaving in 1930, it is clear from records made by her on-board radio operator Henry Lyall Smyth and senior fur trader Cecil E. Bradbury that she never entered or navigated through Bellot Strait. Further, she did not carry any fur trade returns from the Western Arctic to the East other than those that had been trapped by her crew when wintering.

District Manager Dudley Copland paid a visit to the Gall's in the early spring of 1937 by dog sled when they were wintering on the Aklavik in Bathurst Inlet. The idea of a voyage through Bellot Strait was hatched between the Galls and Copland when he informed them of the pending establishment of Fort Ross near its eastern entrance. The plan sponsored by Copland and approved by Company management was to link up a trading voyage by the Aklavik, forwarding fur returns from King William Island from the West, to a rendezvous with the Company’s eastern supply vessel RMS Nascopie at Fort Ross. Nascopie was tasked to bring supplies and building materials for the establishment of the new post, which her crew would construct, as well as trade goods and supplies for Aklavik to take to the West. After five years in the Arctic, the couple looked forward to a furlough in Europe – even a trip to Paris. If the trip was successful, they would take passage on the Nascopie to Halifax for an Atlantic crossing while Patsy Klengenberg and his family would return west to Gjoa Haven with Aklavik bringing reserve trading outfits for the King William Island and Perry River Posts shipped from the East on the Nascopie from Montreal. Chief Inspector William ‘Paddy’ Gibson, who would arrive on the Nascopie, would travel with them taking over as post manager for the King William post from Lorenz Learmonth. In his book "Coplalook", Copland summed up the plans for the venture: "All of the Company men involved knew their arctic history: Scotty Gall, Paddy Gibson and Lorenzo Learmonth of King William Island. The undertaking could not be in better hands."

A principal advocate for Fort Ross, Learmonth was to become its first manager. He was supposed to travel on the Aklavik but had his own plans. He set out with apprentice D.G.Sturrock, some native helpers, a whale boat, an outboard motor and a canoe and completed his own remarkable journey to the new post. After completing a coastal passage up the Boothia Peninsula, he and Sturrock made an overland traverse across its tip and a frightening canoe crossing of the eastern entrance of Bellot Strait to Depot Bay where the new post was being constructed.

The Aklavik’s passage through Bellot Strait was an internationally celebrated success. After suffering and recovering from an near fatal engine failure in the rapid current of the passage, she linked up and exchanged cargo with the Nascopie on September 2, 1937. A detailed account by Richard Finnie of this historic event and the establishment of Fort Ross in his article "Trading into the North West Passage" is contained in the December 1937 issue of "The Beaver". The final paragraph of the article sums up the end of the endeavour with this historic wireless message: "Gjoa Haven, King William Island (Special to the Nascopie by private wireless) – The schooner Aklavik arrived here on the fourteenth of September, thus completing the successful freighting of goods via the North West Passage. Chief Inspector W. Gibson sends his regards to all passengers on board the Nascopie and wishes them the best of luck.". A photo essay in the March 1939 issue of "The Beaver" about Fort Ross by photographer Lorene Squire complements Finnie’s article. Squire visited the post while on assignment for the Company documenting Nascopie’s 1938 arctic voyage. new article content ...