One such sick and dying wolf appeared in Churchill during the 1946 epidemic. It was first encountered by a Canadian Army corporal wending his way back to barracks after a session at the Churchill beer hall. According to the corporal’s account, a gigantic wolf leaped at him with murderous intent, and he barely escaped with his life by running a mile to the shelter of the guardhouse. He could exhibit no physical evidence of his ordeal, but his psychic scars were evidently deep. His warning sent the whole Army camp into a panic of near-hysterical proportions. American and Canadian contingents alike were mobilized, and squads of grim-faced men armed with rifles, carbines and spotlights were soon scouring the surrounding country intent on dealing with a menace which, in a matter of hours, had grown into several packs of starving wolves.

During the ensuing excitement eleven Husky dogs, one American Pfc, and a Chippewayan Indian coming home late became casualties—not of the wolf, but of the vigilantes.

For two days children and women stayed indoors. Foot soldiers all but vanished from the Army camp, and men on missions to distant buildings either went by jeep, well armed, or did not go at all.

A wolf was glimpsed on the second day by a light Army aircraft which had joined the hunt, and an intrepid detachment of Mounted Police sallied forth to deal with it. The wolf turned out to be a cocker spaniel belonging to the Hudson’s Bay Company manager.

Not until the third day did the panic ease. Late that afternoon the driver of a six-ton Army truck, returning to the camp from the airport, suddenly saw a bundle of fur on the road ahead of him. He jammed on the brakes but was unable to stop in time, and the wolf—by then so sick it could no longer move—was mercifully killed.

The aftermath was interesting. To this day there are residents of Churchill (and no doubt also a number of soldiers scattered over the continent) who will, at the drop of a hat, describe the invasion of Churchill by wolves in 1946. They will tell you of desperate personal encounters; of women and children savaged; of dog teams torn to ribbons; and of an entire human community living in a state of siege. All that is lacking is the final dramatic description of the North American equivalent of a Russian troika fleeing across the frozen plains, inevitably to be overwhelmed by a wave of wolves, while the polar night resounds to the crunching sound of human bones being cracked by wolfish jaws.

19

Naked to the Wolves

THE WEEKS which we spent cruising the tundra plains were idyllic. The weather was generally good, and the sensation of freedom which we derived from the limitless land was as invigorating as the wide-ranging life we led.

When we found ourselves in the territory of a new wolf family we would make camp and explore the surrounding plains for as long as was required in order to make the acquaintance of the group. We were never lonely, despite the immensity and solitude of the country, for the caribou were always with us. Together with their attendant flocks of herring gulls and ravens, they imparted a sense of animation to what might otherwise have seemed a stark enough landscape.

This country belonged to the deer, the wolves, the birds and the smaller beasts. We two were no more than casual and insignificant intruders. Man had never dominated the Barrens. Even the Eskimos, whose territory it had once been, had lived in harmony with it. Now these inland Eskimos had all but vanished. The little group of forty souls to which Ootek belonged was the last of the inland people, and they were all but swallowed up in this immensity of wilderness.

We encountered other human beings only on a single occasion. One morning, shortly after starting on our journey, we rounded a bend in a river and Ootek suddenly raised his paddle and gave a shout.

On the foreshore ahead of us was a squat skin tent. At the sound of Ootek’s cry, two men, a woman and three half-grown boys piled out of the tent and ran to the water’s edge to watch us approach.

We landed and Ootek introduced me to one of the families of his tribe. All that afternoon we sat about drinking tea, gossiping, laughing and singing, and eating mountains of boiled caribou meat. When we turned in for the night Ootek told me that the men of the family had pitched their camp at this spot so they could be in position to intercept the caribou who crossed the river at a narrows a few miles farther downstream. Paddling one-man kayaks and armed with short stabbing spears, these men hoped to be able to kill enough fat animals at the crossing to last them through the winter. Ootek was anxious to join in their hunt, and he hoped I would not mind remaining here for a few days so that he could help his friends.

I had no objection, and the next morning the three Eskimo men departed, leaving me to bask in a magnificent August day.

The fly season was over. It was hot and there was no wind. I decided to take advantage of the weather to have a swim and get some sun on my pallid skin, so I went off a few hundred yards from the Eskimo camp ( modesty is the last of the civilized vices which a man sheds in the wilds), stripped, swam; and then climbed a nearby ridge and lay down to sun-bathe.

Wolflike, I occasionally raised my head and glanced around me, and about noon I saw a group of wolves crossing the crest of the next ridge to the north.

There were three wolves, one of them white, but the other two were almost black—a rare color phase. All were adults, but one of the black ones was smaller and lighter than the rest, and was probably a female.

I was in a quandary. My clothes lay by the shore some distance away and I had only my rubber shoes and my binoculars with me on the ridge. If I went back for my clothes, I knew I might lose track of these wolves. But, I thought, who needed clothes on a day like this? The wolves had by now disappeared over the next crest, so I seized my binoculars and hared off in pursuit.

The countryside was a maze of low ridges separated by small valleys which were carpeted with grassy swales where small groups of caribou slowly grazed their way southward. It was an ideal terrain for me, since I was able to keep watch from the crests while the wolves crossed each of these valleys in turn. When they dropped from view beyond a ridge I had only to sprint after them, with no danger of being seen, until I reached another elevated position from which I could watch them traverse the succeeding valley.

Sweating with excitement and exertion I breasted the first ridge to the north, expecting to see some frenzied action as the three wolves came suddenly down upon the unsuspecting caribou below. But I was disconcerted to find myself looking out over a completely peaceful scene. There were about fifty bucks in view, scattered in groups of three to ten animals, and all were busy grazing. The wolves were sauntering across the valley as if they had no more interest in the deer than in the rocks. The caribou, on their part, seemed quite unaware of any threat. Three familiar dogs crossing a farm pasture would have produced as much of a reaction in a herd of domestic cattle as the wolves did among these caribou.

The scene was all wrong. Here was a band of wolves surrounded by numbers of deer; but although each species was obviously fully aware of the presence of the other, neither seemed perturbed, or even greatly interested.

Incredulously, I watched the three wolves trot by within fifty yards of a pair of young bucks who were lying down chewing their cuds. The bucks turned their heads to watch the wolves go by, but they did not rise to their feet, nor did their jaws stop working. Their disdain for the wolves seemed monumental.