THREE CANOES

foreign [Music] Journey your television passport to the exciting Colorful World of Adventure brought to you each week by the Ralston during a company of checkerboard Square St Louis makers of rice checks wheat checks Rye crisp and instant Ralston the Famous Foods in the checkerboard packages and here to present the actual films of tonight's Bowl journey is John Stevenson good evening ladies and gentlemen we're about to see the actual films of a dramatic journey by canoe in the bitter cold regions of Northern Canada a journey which took the life of its young leader Mr Arthur moffatt of Norwich Vermont this Expedition consisted of six young men and three canoes the starting point was here at Lake Athabasca going north along the DuPont River portaging over Rocky Cliffs of Northern Canada encountering the Wild game and the giant grizzly bear and concluding after three long months of hardship in the northern pocket of the great Hudson Bay to present this true story film and tell us his Adventure we Welcome to our Studios one of the six Trailblazers Mr Fred pessl of Detroit Michigan we'll get underway in just a moment but now let's listen to our friend from checkerboard Square Lee Goodman now my girl once again the bite that light invites the appetite the fight that slide invites the appetite no no no my girl lightly lightly you have to learn to be very very light when you talk about rice Jakes you're mean you are me mean why I'm just an ordinary serial salesman look here try some rice Chex for yourself they're these light-sized bite-sized little waffles of toasted rice [Applause] [Music] and when you fix them up with sugar and milk you'll find they've got a delicious delicate flavor all their own just write for folks who have an appetite for something light in the morning the bite that's light invites the appetite by George I think she digs it [Music] the bikes the flight invites I really think she did this [Music] by George you get him rice checks regular or family size the light size bite-sized cereal from checkerboard Square Mr pessel uh all Journeys have some kind of an objective what was yours well John this country that we were traveling in is probably the most unknown region in Canada and our preliminary object was to travel through this unknown region and record our experiences with the animals and the land Mr Moffett was the head of the Expedition and I went along a second in command well we know from the newspaper is that the leader Your Leader Arthur moth had lost his life on his expedition would you tell us please how that happened well John the accident happened about 150 miles from our destination the weather had changed rather abruptly about a week before and we were now traveling in snow and ice where we before been traveling in very sunny weather and so we were traveling very fast trying to get out of the country before the winter really set in and we were a little less cautious than we usually were instead of scouting the Rapids before we shot them we entered what we thought would be the last draft that's in this trip with less caution went right into it from the start Arts canoe tipped over and mine tipped over shortly thereafter and the four of us floated down the river while the boys in the other canoe were able to get ashore and they emptied the water out of their canoe and came out to get us they dragged us ashore and the minute we were out of the water our clothing froze right on our bodies by this time of course we were north of the tree line and we had no wood to make a fire we had lost our gasoline and our stove so the only thing we could do was huddle together on that small island and try and keep each other warm art was about 10 years older than the rest of us and after about 40 minutes he died without regaining consciousness certainly a terrible tragedy it's hard for those of us who are surrounded by the Comforts of civilization to realize what a a real Menace exposure must be I assume that you were constantly confronted with that problem yes we were John and yet this was really one of the reasons why we went it was severe and difficult but I think we've come back with a better understanding of life and I'm sure you did now where exactly did you start our starting point John was a small Trading Post of Stony Rapids about 800 miles north of the Canadian border and you see our route here northeastward through this Chain of Lakes across the large Dupont Lake to Baker Lake on the coast of Hudson Bay here we are now transporting our canoes and Equipment across from Stony Rapids to the actual beginning of our trip on Black Lake in the background you see the smoke rising from the forest fire that is ready to greet Us in the distance we traveled in three canoes and carried about 1500 pounds of food and supplies with us excuse me you're going to get all this into three canoes I hope so we'll see as we start loading it's now June 29th John and here we are now trying to fit it all in with two men to each canoe we tried to even up the load so that each canoe had an even load and now we're starting out across Black Lake paddling our slow easy Pace that we hope will lead up the miles as we progress northeastward [Music] you can see the canoes are pretty heavily loaded there John [Music] and now we're at our first Portage Portage is a canoe man's term for carrying the canoe and gear over land when you can't go through the water we're planning here to carry our canoes and supplies two and a half miles from Black Lake into the next small Lake here Pete is tying in the paddles across the forts of the canoe you'll use the paddles as shoulder rests as he carries the canoe weighs about 120 pounds and is rather a bulky Affair takes two men to hoist it up on his shoulders there we use the paddles as shoulder straps Joe here is using a temp line to carry a heavy pack across and we started this routine that we were to repeat many times during the trip I imagine in terms of Miles how long a trip will this be we covered about 900 miles on canoe walking oh maybe 100 or so first part was rather dry through nice stands of spruce and Pines but very shortly we got in a pretty difficult swamp that meant wet feet and a lot of flies as we walked along the Portage we found a little friend here a porcupine and contrary to perhaps some opinion he didn't throw any quills was more Curious than anything else and watched us as we worked our way by here we are now at the end of the Portage we make five round trips to carry that 1500 pounds of gear at the end of it we climbed a tree to look to the Northeast and see just what lay ahead of us we looked off and saw quite a large lake disappearing into small bays and into eventually the river and after a Portage like that we decided to spend the night and Camp wait until morning and so we had our usual stew of onions macaroni a few dehydrated vegetables perhaps a can of bully beef or so good pot but by gosh it seemed to shrink a little farther along the Trap Mr pessel who is your cook on this journey well art moffatt was our dinner chef and I specialized in breakfast we're hungry all the time although we certainly eat enough for 10 men this was an interesting campsite John in that we found here the first evidence of ice in a small cave very close to our camp and although we've been expecting ice certainly along the trip it was rather early in the game to see the ice here the next morning we loaded up again and we're on our way as you can see it began a very definite routine of loading and unloading loading and unloading portaging and then into the canoes again we had one boy along who decided this would be a good time to quit cigarettes it wasn't long before he was bumming them what was the temperature difference in your trip John it was very comfortable we were paddling in the 70s and the 80s during the day very often it was quite a contrast to the weather later on when we had to break the ice along the side of the river another campsite I'm crawling out of our two-man mountain tents that we used you can see we had to be very careful with mosquitoes and tie up the netting whenever we left we used this rain tarp draped over the top of the tents to ensure against any sudden squalls and of course carried our sleeping bags and air mattresses the end of this Portage we looked across the bay and saw the source of the smoke that we had seen from the very first day of our trip there on the other Shore the forest fire was Blazing just engulfing that entire Ridge of spruce and pine hundreds of thousands of Acres must go up in Flames yes it does even from this side of the bay we could see the Flames licking their way up through the trees and later on we walked around the bay and approached right into the forest fire itself we were able to get very close because of the wind and saw this frightening scene from all 30 or 40 feet this is as close as we've ever been to a forest fire and as close as you'd want to get I certainly wouldn't want to get any closer the noise and the heat of this fire was deafening and unbelievable so it's certainly a chaotic sight is anything being done to check this particular fire no John it's just too far away from any civilization at all fire just burns until either it comes to the shore of a lake or we happen to have some rain there's nothing that can be done about it it's a terrible waste I should say so we don't know but we think lightning starts these fires this must be also a very frustrating feeling to be standing here and not be able to do anything about it can't do a thing and the fire almost takes on a human aspect after a while the way it crawls around the ground circling the large trees and then just exploding in a pillar of flame we stayed there as long as we could and then moved on at the end of each day before we set up camp we throw our fishing lines in and bring in dinner we were six Hungry Boys and needed quite a bit of fish but we were lucky to have some pretty good sized ones along your Art's got an 18-pound lake trout and he's a beauty yes sir that's filleting the fish now cutting part of it into steaks some of them were too big to fillet others were small like these and we could get them into the frying pan very nicely we generally coated them with cornbread or some flour before frying them in the lard that we were carrying with us and George here the cigarette man was enjoying his fish to the very last seems like you've got a natural comedian in your group certainly gave us a lot of laughs and again on our way paddling still Upstream still toward the North you can see here the trees are still quite abundant we're traveling in Bush country but soon expect to be into the barren lands themselves approximately how far out are you now well we must be about 250 miles out from Black Lake and about that far out we found an Indian Arrowhead this one and many like it which we found were collected for the Ottawa Museum and are quite important in the study of this region and at lunchtime the cigarette goes back and forth back and forth he's enjoying that last bit more and more art was an ornithologist we spent a lot of our time studying the birds of this region found some very interesting ones very characteristic of the Arctic here are yellow Lakes looking around and certainly taking care of her young ones that would seem to be about as hungry as we were we spared a bit of our very precious supplies and fed this Canada Jay he seemed to appreciate it quite a bit and so we moved on weather was perhaps a little cooler now but still quite comfortable we noticed as we passed the small island a pair of caribou horns sitting rather prominently on the Rocky outcrop and so we stopped to investigate perhaps an Indian left these here for a marker or why do you say in Indian Mr pestle does that mean that this road isn't that well traveled why this route hasn't been traveled by any organized party since 1893 John really again our friend here kind of looking forward to the real thing later on you can see the very beautiful rack that these animals carry as the boys were watching the antlers here they were attacked by a few these small but very indignant Birds they're already turns and have a very interesting life cycle they spend their summer months in the Arctic and then migrate all the way to the western coast of Africa and as we found out later they attacked the boys here and trying to protect the young turn that they had in their nest on this small island young fluffy little fella had some very indignant parents I'll say you can see how well they uh camouflage themselves in the lichens around the rocks well we weren't interesting and disturbing this family so after we had taken our pictures we pushed off again and returned the antlers to the spot on the island we've now traveled about five weeks and had covered almost 400 miles John it's cold now there's a bite in the air thank you Mr pessl we'll continue the expedition of the three canoes in just a moment but first here's a word from Lee Goodman from checkerboard Square how'd he do lovely morning isn't it mind if I take a peek oh look at there would you we checks oh do you like we checks for breakfast too listen just between us grown-ups there is another cereal made that's more fun for adults and kids who want to be like adults got a grown up flavor yes ma'am nothing nappy Pappy about wechecks [Applause] right they don't get all wishy-washy and sugar and milk like the man says on TV huh we check stay crisp and crunchy to hold both through exactly bite-sized little biscuits of toasted wheat and each and every time you have wheat checks for breakfast you get all a Happy hearty flavor of real whole grain wheat let's say now uh how about this the next time you're shopping yes uh that is next time you're shopping be sure and pick up a package of wheat checks family size or regular the grown-up cereal from checkerboard Square we're now approaching the Karen John let's buy JB Terrell in 1893 you'll see Terrell's name on many maps and publications of the Canadian government he was a famous Arctic Explorer and he left this Karen on his journey down the dubont river we examine the Karen but found that Terrell's note had been taken by some museum curator and so we left one of our own and then pushed on you can see the country now is getting a little more Barren the trees are very sparse not far from Terrell's Cairn we found this abandoned cabin that we had been told about when we left Stony Rapids the post who belonged to George riddle was a rather mysterious white trapper he had been up in this country for some time but no one had ever seen him nor heard more than a few stories certainly is a mystery certainly was and after looking at this strange example of white man's inhabitation we moved on and taking our cue from Terrell's Karen we decided to build one of our own we picked this very prominent Hill in rock cliff near the large Dupont Lake and climbed up ready to leave our sign and record our journey we picked an exposure that would be easily seen from both approaches and started to build our small cairn Castle the master builder here kind of boxed The Works up but we rebuilt the Cairn and wrote Our note it was rather ironic in that we mentioned that we were in good shape had plenty of supplies and expected to reach our destination about the first of September along the river now we began to spot many animals and probably the most amusing was a little sick sick they're named by the natives for the characteristic sound they make very curious friendly animals and as we traveled along the rivers we encountered the Caribou very often they are migrating now from their summer land along the Arctic Shore down toward the Forest Country in the south remarkable animals in that they can travel with amazing speed over this Rocky country they have an extra bone in their ankle John which enables them to move rapidly if you get close enough you can hear this bone cracking just like a man cracking his knuckles and they too use the river and Portage yes they do not carrying quite as much but nevertheless the same idea here old Longhorn looks rather forlorn and this is a fine specimen of a perfect Buck John you see the characteristic u-shaped antlers with the shovels in front he uses those for digging in the Moss in the evening we could hear the ankle bones of the Caribou clicking as they walked by our tents docile curious animals not at all afraid of the men but the little different vein the barren ground Grizzly he too was curious but seemed to be a very ominous creature he was picking berries when we surprised him and he kept his distance but was anxious to find out just who these Intruders were in his land he stood about eight feet tall John and must have been close to a thousand pounds let's not get any closer Mr pessel rhino and of course I mentioned before that we've carried about 1500 pounds of grub with us but as the trip progressed the Caribou was a very plentable supply of meat we used every bit of the Caribou we could the meat naturally and here art is drying and Tanning the skin that we used for blankets and ground cover later on along with the Caribou we enjoyed the very delicious blueberries that ripened under the Arctic sun and practically formed the purple cover at times on the ground they were a very welcome addition to our dwindling sugar supply and we ate them with relish new fellas are literally living off the land at this time now aren't you yes we were this part of the trip was very fine for that John we found mushrooms and the tarmigan the fish the caribou but I think our favorite was Art Specialty the blueberry Johnny Cake he made a cake with cornmeal and water and then poured in the sweet delicious blueberries it was really a treat up here John to have anything that approached pastry watch closely the women will probably want the recipe to this yes and the technique we're using here in the reflector oven takes about oh half hour and we've got this fine blueberry Johnny cake we're getting into some of the smaller and easier Rapids now you see us here landing above a Rapids and the boys are getting out to scout Root Down The Rapids before we attempt to shoot it we did this on practically every Rapids we encountered trying to pick a spot between the white water and send our canoes in the safest possible way down the river above each one of those white patches John is a large Boulder and then below of course the heavy waves and what we're trying to do here is just pick the way through here which can avoid the white water as much as possible art and Pete now watch while I take the canoe down for the first run this is true pioneering going over unchartered Waters yes and it means that we've got to be very careful and very cautious trying to stay as close as possible to the route we have chosen you can see us now along the far Shore with our heavily loaded canoes naturally we can't avoid everything well we made that one John and can only look forward to many more like it beyond the Rapids is a small pool where we can collect our breath again and start out getting cooler now as we go every day it seems to get colder here at this campsite we find the first evidence of Eskimo culture these rings of stones were used by the eskimos to hold the outer portions of their tents down a kayak bench in the Eskimo lay their along these benches for repairing well what happened to the eskimos Mr pestle this is an abandoned Eskimo hunting camp John since then the eskimos have moved closer to Hudson's Bay in the Trading Post we call these Eskimo men some say the eskimos use them merely for a company and as a guide along the way whether it's a constant problem now John and we have to be very careful we're moving fast now hoping to beat the winter before it really sets in art here using his specially designed Arctic underwear and Joe tries a heavy park instead Bruce here uses a special ear muff setup it's pretty cold we approach this Gorge with very much concern the entire Watershed that we had been traveling on for two months now John funnel into this one large Gorge and flowed for two and a half miles Downstream into the next Lake we looked it over and naturally decided it was too much to shoot and so we porraged again two and a half miles of carrying all our equipment and our canoes along this terrifying Canyon the noise here was reminiscent of any Niagara that I've ever seen Wild Water and beautiful very beautiful we finished the Portage just before the end of this Rapids and decided we could shoot the ladder Park rather than carry on another mile or so and this Rapids was very similar to the last Rapids that we shot John the Rapids in which we had the accident Scott's Art's life as the winter approached we were hurrying much more and didn't take the caution that we should have and we tipped over art died very shortly after we were dragged from the water this is the last picture we have of him I'd like to remember him this way and since your camera had fallen into the water you naturally were unable to get any pictures of that yes John we were forced to leave Art's Body behind but when we arrived at Baker Lake made arrangements to have the mounties pick him up and he was buried then at Baker Lake at an Anglican mission where is Baker Lake Mr peso it's in a pocket of Hudson's Bay so art moffatt completed his trip yes he did John this was certainly a very moving film Mr pestle and we were very grateful to you I'm sure that our friends at home will agree with me that this is one of the most poignant Journeys we've ever had now you told us before we went on the air that you'd like to take the time to identify your fellow members of the Moffett Expedition yes John I would uh Bruce Le favor from Amsterdam New York was traveling in my canoe he's now working on his father's newspaper traveling with art was Ed Lana wet from Sao Paulo Brazil he's now at Dartmouth College and then the other canoe Peter Frank from Santa Barbara California who's now at Harvard University and George Grinnell from New York City who's now in the Merchant Marine and of course art Moffitt and myself with the exception of course of the terrible loss of Mr moffatt if you knew in advance what the three months would have been like would you still have made the trip yes John I definitely would the experience that we gained from the trip and naturally we mourn Arts death but somehow I feel that we have come back better men we've been able to live closer to life than most people get a chance I believe we've lived very simply under very limited conditions together for quite some time and we've learned about each other and we've learned about ourselves we've come back more humble certainly and probably more impressed with the insignificance of each one of us in the light of the vast country that we saw we were little men in that country and we've come back now with I think more of a feeling of proportion and certainly very very nicely put Mr pessl you've certainly done us a great kindness in coming here from Detroit to present these films as a tribute to the moffatt expedition I hope you'll convey to Mrs moffatt our deepest thanks for permitting us to televise These Fine films in our program series we're very grateful to you all our program will continue in a moment with preview scenes from next week's adventurous Journey after a last gentle reminder from Lee Goodman rice Chex just right at breakfast for folks who like to start the daylight and there are lots of ways that you can use these bite-sized waffles of toasted rice at your other meals for instance with chow mein in place of the usual noodles Chop Chop yum yum rice Chex the light size bite-sized cereal from checkerboard Square next week the story of Mr and Mrs Larry Van murick a young couple who buy a small sports car in Germany and proceed to drive this vehicle across Europe through the Middle East and Into the Heart of India a journey of four months living in and driving their small European car there's every kind of road from dangerous mountain Curves in Greece to trackless deserts of Jordan and Iran often the road exists only on the map Indian villagers hear their own voices for the first time from the van burek's tape recorder the van muricks film two other visitors to India Russia's Khrushchev and bulgani next week it's the high road to Delhi I hope you'll join us next week this time to see this fine film and until then this is John Stevenson saying thank you and good night Bowl journey is brought to you every week on film by the Ralston Purina company checkerboard Square Lewis Missouri [Music]