On Thursday, January 8, 2009 at 9:50:45 AM UTC-5, Hyfler/Rosner wrote:
> BOB MAY, 90: FUR TRADER, TRAPPER AND OUTFITTER
> Hudson's Bay Company post manager was a legend of the
> Eastern Arctic
> One of the last HBC apprentices, he went North at 17 and
> stayed there all his life, becoming a heroic figure among
> Inuit elders. He later founded a successful hunting and
> fishing camp
> WHIT FRASER
> January 8, 2009
> KUUJJUAQ, QUE. -- Bob May was one of the last Hudson's Bay
> Co. boy apprentices. At 17, he left the comforts of the
> South to become, in the original wording of the company's
> 1670 royal charter, a "gentleman adventurer." He remained in
> the North for the rest of his life and is considered a hero
> among many Inuit elders in the Quebec Arctic.
> After leaving the HBC, he became an outfitter and was widely
> recognized for his contribution to tourism in northern
> Quebec. Visitors to Kuujjuaq, Que., formerly known as Fort
> Chimo, often stopped by hoping to hear adventures or view
> the huge trophy caribou antlers hanging on his walls. He was
> hospitable, but would remain first and foremost modest. For
> a man who once saved a community from starvation, he shared
> his good deeds and generosity only in the intimacy of his
> diaries - and sparse details, even then.
> The son of a park ranger, he was born in Manitoba's Riding
> Mountain National Park, where, as a boy, he so disliked his
> given name of Robert that he insisted on always being called
> Bob. He came by his wilderness interest willingly, however.
> His parents were both committed naturalists. His father,
> John May, was an entomologist who put together one of the
> world's most impressive collections of insects and
> butterflies. About 1930, he accompanied his parents on a
> long drive across the Prairies to spend a summer exploring
> the backcountry of Banff National Park on horseback and
> collecting mountain invertebrates.
> While he embraced his parents' values on nature, he was
> mesmerized by notions of the Arctic and the visions of
> adventure, mystery and exploration its vastness then
> suggested. No one was surprised when, at 17, he joined the
> Hudson's Bay Co. After spending 1935 training in northern
> Saskatchewan, he found himself on a ship bound for the
> company's mostly northerly outpost: Arctic Bay on northern
> Baffin Island. He arrived three months short of his 19th
> birthday.
> The HBC post contained the only permanent buildings in the
> community, as the Inuit lived a traditional hunting life in
> tents and igloos. Despite his age and being the only
> Qallunaq (white man) in the region, he accepted the
> responsibilities of trader, teacher, doctor and nurse.
> Mr. May quickly adapted to Inuit life, becoming fluent in
> Inuktitut and developing the skills necessary for Arctic
> survival and success. He hunted, trapped, handled dog teams,
> learned igloo building and, above all, embraced Inuit values
> and traditions.
> He became so skilled and dependable that the company once
> lent him out as a guide and interpreter for a McGill
> University research party. The team leader, Duncan Hodgson,
> later wrote to HBC officers (in the terminology of the day)
> to declare that "Bob May can out-Eskimo the Eskimo."
> For all that, disaster can occur at any time in the Arctic
> and he experienced a number of narrow escapes. In early
> winter, 1939, he and three Inuit hunters nearly perished
> when their small schooner was battered and tossed for 12
> hours in a violent storm about 30 kilometres off the east
> coast of Hudson Bay. They lashed themselves to the deck and
> prayed the engine would continue running, as Bob later wrote
> in the Hudson's Bay Co. publication The Beaver.
> "The small engine room was constantly awash, and the bilge
> pump barely big enough to pump out the seawater that was
> constantly breaking across the deck," he said. "At one
> moment the craft was half submerged, but a moment later it
> was at the crest of wave where the wind would catch her and
> tilt us on a precarious angle."
> Almost miraculously, they saw the snow-covered cliffs of an
> island not 50 metres away, and were able to steer the ship
> to an anchorage on the lee side.
> Two months later, Mr. May was hunting caribou with two Inuit
> friends and 10 dogs some distance inland from the settlement
> of Puvirnituq on Hudson Bay. They had provisions for 14
> days, but surprisingly, found no caribou. They ran out of
> food and were soon close to starvation. Also, Mr. May was
> not well. His skin had broken out in painful boils and,
> fearing infection, it was decided that he would stay with
> the exhausted dogs while the others continued the hunt on
> foot.
> Left alone, his prospects seemed poor. The starving dogs had
> to be untied because they were eating their walrus-hide
> harness traces. Later, he spent half a day chopping through
> more than a metre of ice with a butcher knife in a desperate
> effort to hook a fish. The yield was one small trout. It was
> the "best meal he had ever had," he wrote.
> Three days later, four caribou came within range. Meat, at
> last. However, the dogs, hungry and loose, immediately tore
> after them. The caribou scattered and ran, and Mr. May
> managed to get off four shots. He brought down two, but had
> to fight off the ravenous dogs. Eventually, he prevailed and
> fed both himself and the huskies, storing the remainder of
> the meat under hefty snow blocks.
> The next day, one of his Inuit companions returned after
> walking about 15 kilometres with meat and the news that they
> had shot seven caribou. With new provisions, and revived by
> food, they were able to undertake the return journey to
> Puvirnituq. Not once in his account did Mr. May mention the
> cold, which must have been about -35 Celsius with constant
> winds.
> Besides writing for The Beaver, he also kept a series of
> notebooks. His handwritten ledgers provide more than one
> account of long trips by canoe or dog team in severe
> conditions with the sick or injured. A number of times, he
> travelled hundreds of kilometres across Ungava Bay to get
> help at the old Fort Chimo airbase in what is now Kuujjuaq.
> In the early 1950s, he took an Inuit child suffering from
> appendicitis 230 kilometres by dog team across the Ungava
> Peninsula in bitter cold and heavy snow to rendezvous with a
> Royal Canadian Air Force crew. Reaching Fort Chimo, they
> were put aboard and flown to Halifax, where surgeons saved
> the boy's life.
> In Kangirsualujjuaq and Inukjuaq on the eastern shores of
> Hudson Bay, he is credited with saving entire communities.
> Elders there still recall how more than a half century ago,
> Mr. May provided rations when the population was facing
> starvation and illness. As manager of the company post, he
> had broken open the store's inventories of food.
> He also served as part of the military. As an original
> member of the Canadian Rangers, the Arctic militia unit
> established during the Second World War, he helped provide
> information on air or sea movements as well as weather
> observations. Northern weather information was vital for
> transatlantic military flights and he was officially rated
> as essential to the war effort.
> Around that time, Mr. May fell in love with a beautiful
> young Inuit woman named Nancy. Their first encounter had
> occurred years earlier, on one his first Arctic voyages,
> when his ship had stopped at Port Burwell on the northern
> tip of Quebec. Among the youngsters who greeted the visitors
> was a young girl whom he thought very striking. He offered
> what would have been a big treat in that time and place - a
> stick of gum.
> Several years later, he moved to the post at
> Kangirsualujjuaq, where he asked around for a reliable cook.
> Arrangements were made to hire Jeannie Annanak, and she
> arrived with her daughter. It was the same beautiful girl he
> had given the gum to so many years before. It was love at
> second sight.
> At the time, HBC rules forbade employees from marrying
> Inuit, but he was defiant. Mr. May stood his ground and said
> he would marry Nancy or quit. He got his way and, over the
> years, they lived at a series of HBC posts in the Eastern
> Arctic, all the while raising eight children.
> Life could be dangerous, even for the family of an HBC
> manager. Twice, Mr. May had to cross Ungava Bay by boat to
> save the lives of his own children.
> In 1950, four-year-old Johnny developed a severe infection
> from a dislocated shoulder. The crossing took two days,
> through early winter ice, in a small fishing boat with a
> single-cylinder engine. Reaching the other side, they found
> a U.S. Air Force plane that rushed the boy first to Goose
> Bay, Labrador, and then to Montreal for surgery.
> In 1959, his oldest daughter, Mary, was hit in the jaw by
> ricocheting shotgun pellets. Mr. May bundled her in
> blankets, placed her in the bow of a canoe powered by a
> small outboard motor and again set off across Ungava Bay in
> rough water and stiff winds. The trip to the hospital at
> Kuujjuaq took 11 hours. Mary was given immediate attention
> and soon fully recovered.
> All the while, Mr. May hunted and trapped to supplement the
> family larder. His diaries concentrate mostly on insights
> into daily life and record such events as the freeze and
> breakup of the George River each season between 1943 and
> 1953. He also jotted down the number and species of animals
> trapped or shot to feed the family and his sled dogs: "153
> seals; 96 caribou and more than 5,000 ptarmigan." He paid
> careful attention to weather, and noted whether the children
> played outdoors. Generally, they did - even at -30.
> Most of his accounts were brief: "Shot three seals - three
> foxes in the traps ... new addition to the family - a girl.
> Nancy is fine."
> Eventually, however, the HBC sought to transfer the family
> south into what Mr. May called "Indian country," which he
> knew would not be the life for Nancy. He decided to leave
> the company, although the parting was on excellent terms.
> All at once, he had to find some other way to support his
> family. By then it was the early 1960s, and demand had
> developed for tourist outfitters and facilities. The Mays
> built Pyramid Mountain Fishing and Hunting Camp about 150
> kilometres upstream from Ungava Bay on the spectacular
> George River.
> Beginning in the spring of 1960, the family spent a year in
> the bush living on their land and preparing the lodge. Mr.
> May built a small log cabin for Nancy, himself and the
> younger children. The older children and their grandmother
> lived alongside in a tent.
> It was a lonely Christmas that year, "so far away from
> civilization that even Santa couldn't find us," daughter
> Mary recalled. Christmas morning arrived without presents,
> but her father strangely insisted on going out about once an
> hour to walk in a big circle on the frozen river.
> Finally around noon, he said: "Listen, do you hear it?" They
> rushed outside in the cold and looked skyward to see a small
> single-engine bush plane. It circled and then landed. To the
> children's joy and surprise, the pilot was Phil LaRiviere,
> an old family friend. He stepped out of the plane laden with
> presents, fresh oranges and candy for all. Mr. May had made
> the arrangements months earlier; his hourly treks in the
> snow were to show his friend where to land.
> In the 1950s and 1960s, schooling presented unique northern
> challenges for the Mays. At one point, they moved the family
> to Kuujjuaq so that the children could attend primary
> school. Beyond Grade 7, however, there were only boarding
> schools and, because he was white, the government excluded
> his children from the education system of the day - the
> now-controversial residential schools.
> Instead, the Mays relied on home schooling and
> correspondence courses. Although money was tight, Mr. May
> managed to send each child to high school in Colorado for
> one or two years. His parents had relocated there with their
> insect collection in the 1940s and opened the May Natural
> History Museum, which is still a major attraction in
> Colorado Springs.
> Through the years, the Mays instilled both Inuit and
> Qallunaq cultures into the children. He always spoke English
> to them; Nancy spoke only Inuktitut. Occasions were always
> observed in the proper cultural context. Thanksgiving and
> Christmas were turkey dinners, with all proper etiquette
> honoured. Inuit traditions, such as eating a seal - correct
> only when done sitting on the floor - were equally
> respected.
> The children all became successful in their own fields.
> Johnny and Billy are well-known bush pilots. Peter is a
> biological technician, guide and businessman. Bobby is a
> video producer and director. Madge Pomerleau is the
> executive director of the regional hospital in Kuujjuaq.
> Sarah Tagoona is executive director of the women's shelter
> in Kuujjuaq. Annie Probert is a consultant and former
> executive director of the regional school board in northern
> Quebec. And oldest daughter Mary Simon is a former Canadian
> ambassador to Denmark and current president of Inuit
> Tapiiriit Kanatami, the national organization representing
> Inuit people.
> By 2002, Pyramid Mountain had become a thriving concern and
> the Mays decided to turn it over to Peter. They retired to
> Kuujjuaq where Nancy became ill and died the following year.
> Characteristically, Mr. May carried on alone. Until he was
> hospitalized a year ago after losing the use of his legs, he
> was still working on his woodpile - if only with the aid of
> a walker.
> In Inuit terminology, he was a Qallunaq, yet the preachers
> who said his deathbed prayer and presided over his funeral
> spoke only in Inuktitut, the language of the Inuit.
> BOB MAY
> Robert Mardon May was born Sept. 7, 1918, in Sandy Lake,
> Man. He died Nov. 11, 2008, in Kuujjuaq, Que. He was 90. He
> is survived by daughters Madge, Sarah, Annie and Mary, and
> by sons Johnny, Billy, Bobby and Peter. He also leaves 94
> grandchildren, 49 great-grandchildren and four
> great-great-grandchildren. He was predeceased by his wife,
> Nancy, who died in March, 2003.

This is a fascinating obit, for sure--out-Eskimoing the Eskimos is a noteworthy faculty indeed!--but was it just recovered frozen in the Arctic tundra?

BRYAN STYBLE/Florida

radioacti...@gmail.com <radioactiveseattle@gmail.com> wrote:
> This is a fascinating obit, for sure--out-Eskimoing the Eskimos is a
> noteworthy faculty indeed!--but was it just recovered frozen in the Arctic
> tundra?
>
> BRYAN STYBLE/Florida

I think it was Lost In Space.
(But that Bob May was born in 1939,died 2009)

-=-=-
The World Trade Center towers MUST rise again,
at least as tall as before...or terror has triumphed.

Yo Louis:

Did you see that message to you in my posting regarding a potential restoration of a Haitian monarchy (in that thread a week or so below, the one regarding the Haiti presidential assassination)?

(I'm pretty confident you'll be at least partially able to answer my question...and I won't be the least bit surprised if you can do it authoritatively.)

STYBLE/Florida