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The Berger Inquiry

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Northern Journal, November 5, 2013

Whit Fraser said if I valued my family jewels, I better not testify at the Berger Inquiry into the Mackenzie Valley Pipeline.  We were sitting in my living room in Wha Ti, still called Lac La Martre in those days, in August 1977.  Whit told me the Government of the Northwest Territories would have my knackers for bookends if I spoke out.  He said the poop had hit the fan when he, a CBC employee, had testified at Norman Wells, one year earlier.
My house beside the lake was like an overrun refugee centre in the aftermath of a devastating typhoon, or the train station in Calcutta on Friday night.  It was the flop house for the media crew:  Whit Fraser, Abe Okpik, Joe Tobey, Jim Sittinchinli, Louis Blondin, Joachim Bonnetrouge and a bunch of other folks I’d never met before.  People lazing in all the rooms, draped over the furniture, sprawled out on any available stretch of floor.  Talking, scribbling notes, typing, eating, drinking, playing cards, reading.
The Berger Inquiry was a Big Deal.  I’d been listening to the CBC coverage from all down the valley, Yukon and points south across the country for well over a year.
Listening to Charlie Furlong, Tommy Ross, Freddy Greenland, Wilf Bean, Philip Blake, Frank T’Selie, Claire Barnaby, Earl Dean, Rene Lamonth, Gerry Cheezie, Sam Raddi, Roy Goose, Les Carpenter, Peter Green, Paul Andrew, Raymond Yakaleya, Steve Kakfwi, George Blondin, Phoebe Nahanni, Gina Blondin, and Richard McNeely.
Listening to Richard Nerysoo define what was a stake – “We are fighting for our survival as a free people,” he said.  Listening to James Wah-shee clarify history by saying – “The Treaty was signed when it was discovered that our land was more valuable than our friendship.”
Listening to Jim Antoine say that he was willing to lay down his life to stop the pipeline.  To Bill Lafferty who come out in favor of the pipeline.  He wasn’t much worried about the adverse spin-offs – “I don’t think an Indian drunk is any stupider that a White drunk,” he said.
Francois Paulette questioned the big rush to get the pipeline flowing.  “The earth is going to be here all the time.  It’s not going to be taken away.  Why are they rushing?”
And George Erasmus, president of the Dene Nation:  “Our struggle,” George said, “is for self-determination.  We want to be in charge of our lives and our future.  We want to be our own boss.  We want to decide what is going to happen on our land.  Our position is that there can be no pipeline until after our land claims are settled.”
For seventeen months I’d been listening to the Berger Inquiry on CBC radio.  It had finally arrived in Lac La Martre and Whit Fraser told me; (he didn’t tell me not to speak,) he told me I’d better think carefully about it.
I asked Whit if he remembered why he spoke in Norman Wells the year before.  Sure, he remembered, he said.  He spoke out because it was something he had to do.  Me too, I told him.  Well then, go for it, Whit said, but don’t say I didn’t warn you.
So I did.  And what I said to Judge Berger wasn’t anything subversive or even earth-shattering.  I simply asked him to listen well to the Dene people that spoke to him because they were speaking about our future too, the future of our country and the future of our children and our grandchildren.
The government didn’t fire me.  They probably didn’t even know about it.
But Canada knew about Tom Berger’s report when it came out.  And there was no pipeline.
Jim Green was at the opening of the Berger Inquiry Exhibit at the College last week. It triggered hundreds of memories for him because he addressed the Inquiry himself  at Wha Ti in August 1977.

Return to Rat River

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Albert Johnson was the first celebrity fugitive of the North.
Did he really die that frigid February day?

This year, 2002, marks the 70th anniversary of the North’s most infamous manhunt, for the Mad Trapper of Rat River.  The saga started when a man calling himself Albert Johnson shot and wounded an RCMP officer in late December 1931 near Fort McPherson, NWT.  It ended in a hailstorm of bullets in February after a posse chased him over the Mackenzie Mountains into the Yukon.  His body was taken to Aklavik, whose cemetery now holds his remains.  Or does it?  Did the Mounties get their man after all?  Fort Smith writer Jim Green posits a different story.

The November 17, 1977 issue of the Nome Nugget carried a small obituary on the bottom of pae 11:  “Alfred Jackson was found in his bed by neighbors who noticed no smoke from the stovepipe of his shack on Willow Flats.  Known to be a quiet man who kept to himself, Jackson ran a trapline for many winters and worked part time at the fish plant in season.  He was believed to have been about 80 years of age.  Mr. Jackson had no known relatives,”

An acquaintance gathered up Jackson’s meager possessions.  He found an Amoco wall calendar with penciled notes painstakingly printed on the back of the pages.  He read on:

I reckon this is pertnear gonna be my last chance to fess up so here goes.  I come to this country to get away.  I never wanted no trouble ever in my life again.  I wanted to be alone. To be left alone.  I had a bellyful of people.  I never meant to shoot that Cop.  I never wanted to shoot nobody.

By the time I was 22 years old, I’d been locked up all over the States – Lincoln County Jail, Wyoming State Penn, Sheridan County Jail, and San Quentin.  I’ll tell you I had it with Cops and lockups.

I ain’t saying I didn’t deserve some of the jail time for the stupid things I done.  I’m saying I had enough of that and wanted a new life.  Figured I couldn’t get into much trouble on my own.  Turned out, I was dead wrong on that one.

It took me a few years to work my way north from California but I got her done.  Built my cabin on the Rat River and was set to trap the winter.  Then that Cop came hammering on my door.  He went away after awhile, and then he come back.  I never meant to shoot him [Constable Alfred King].  Didn’t want no trouble.  Fired a warning shot through the side of the door.  Bang.  Down he went.  Then they all pulled out and they come back again.  More of’em.  Banging away at me from all directions.  All day and half the night.  I could have shot the lot of them.  They blasted the roof down on top of me with dynamite.  Then blew up the whole dang cabin with me under the bunk.  They left again.  I hightailed it in a blizzard.

They found my trail.  Dogged me pretty steady day after day.  Hard getting enough to eat with snares.  Small fire.  Shot one caribou.  Kep running. Back tracking.  Circling back to check on them.  Running.  Cold.

I didn’t mean to kill nobody.  That other Cop [Constable Edgar Millen] was set to nail me when I dropped him.  Got him before he got me.  Plain and simple.  Ran again.

The pass through the mountains was a tough go.  Like to froze up there.  But I made it.  Then they brought in that aeroplane and more Cops from the other side.  Had me going for awhile there.  Allas running.  Hungry alla time.  Never been so cold.

I got lucky on Eagle River.  Found two men camped on a caribou trail.  Snuck into camp and traded my snowshoes for skis.  I figured they musta split up the next day.  Them Indians with the Cops were following my snowshoe tacks and they caught him [trapper Phil Barnstrum] on the river.  Blew him away.  After that, I was home free.

I never heard if the Cops knew they shot the wrong man or not.  If they did, you bet they weren’t saying nuthing.  I got clean away.  Kep moving.  Made it downriver to Alaska the next summer.  Back in 1932, that was.  Been here ever since.  I allas felt bad about the men I shot and the trapper they killed but that was the way it was.
– John Johnson

Albert Johnson, the “Mad Trpper of Rat River,” was born John Konrad Jansen on July 13, 1898, in Bardo, Norway.  He grew up Johnny Johnson in South Dakota.  Albert was but one of several aliases.

excerpt from Up Here, March 2002

The Cure for Cabin Crazies

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“He was dead all right.  True fact.  Toes up and eyes wide.  A blue bullet hole smack dab in the middle of his forehead.”

This is what I remember from the first story I ever heard about cabin fever, though it didn’t have such a handy moniker at the time.  Having  grown up in the cattle country of southern Alberta, it’s not surprising the tale was about a couple of guys who holed up for the winter in a small log shack on the eastern slope of the  Rockies.  When spring finally arrived, the first visitor to happen by found the dead one stiff in his bunk.  The other dude had high-tailed it across the border to the States but he left behind a pencil scrawled note:

“Brodie took to putting on airs,” he wrote, “so I fixed his wagon.”

A bit extreme perhaps but it must have seemed like a good idea at the time.  The final act of pulling the trigger had undoubtedly built up one transgression on top another.  Peeing too close to the cabin door in the morning, spitting in the woodbox, never washing his socks, reading the dictionary every night and like that until the shooter had it up to there, couldn’t take it no more, not one more minute; pulled his hogleg and let fly.  BLAM!!

Upon moving North in 1969, I soon began picking up on weird stories of bizarre behavior attributed, so it was said, to a strange malady called fièvre de cabine, cabin fever.   It generally strikes a person during the long, cold and interminably dark severity of winter.  You get bored, edgy and irritable.  You find it difficult to relax and hard to concentrate.  You’re restless and frustrated with doggone near everything.  Or, maybe you seem to be immobilized by an all-encompassing feeling of lethargy.  And you can’t get it together to do anything about your dilemma.

Folks react to cabin fever in a variety of ways.  For some, there’s a real craving for carbohydrates and sweets.  They overeat and may gain weight.  Some get drunk.  Feel better, then worse. Some take to rather peculiar acts to try to shake it off.  Take Chuck McGillvery, for instance.  Four months in the cabin in the dark most of the time was beginning to get tedious.  He figured he needed some action, yeah, that would be just the ticket.  He poked a couple more chunks in the stove, pulled on his boots, yanked his parka around his shoulders and slammed out the door.  Outside, he grabbed the ice chisel and shoved off the porch, stomped on down the lake trail and out onto the ice.

Chuck worked up a wholesome sweat smashing a hole – nonstop – three feet wide down through four feet of ice.  When he had her done, McGillvery stripped off all his clothes and jumped bare ass in the black water.  WHOOOOSH!

Chuck’s closest neighbors, Don and Nan Taylor, had been watching this whole drama unfold from start to finish with no little interest, both of them with their elbow plunked on the table, binoculars snugged to their eyeballs.

“Looks like Chuck fell off the shelf.” Don murmured.  “I told him he should find himself a woman.”

“Oh shush,” Nan countered, “just a touch of cabin fever is all, he’ll be okay now.”

By this time, Chuck was hauling his freight just as fast as his bare feet could fly over the hard packed snow back towards the warm cabin.  He was pounding up the trail, breath rasping through his throat, freezing parts flapping in the breeze, and laughing like a maniac.  But by the Lord Harry, he felt some better.

That was a story from the Gold Range, Yellowknife’s notorious bar, about 30 years ago.  McGillvery isn’t his real name but some folks will recognize the guy.  He’s still around; a lot calmer these days.

Introductory excerpt from UpHere magazine article.