Port Burwell, Labrador

Assorted Detail - 1930-1939

Kayak Construction in Port Burwell - 1934

Made of materials from the environment, the kayak is a symbol of the cultural connection to both the surrounding land and water. Kayaks were traditionally made of a wooden frame stretched with sealskin or caribou hide depending on the region. Above the tree-line, the frame would have been built from scavenged wood and driftwood. Regardless of region of origin, the traditional skin-on-frame kayak is a sleek craft built primarily for hunting. The kayak was a vessel for hunting narwhale, seal, walrus, birds, caribou, fish, among other fauna. The hunter's tools would have been attached to the deck of the kayak for ease of access.

Traditional skin-on-frame kayaks were built with a wooden frame, lashed together with sealskin cord or caribou sinew. The skins were sewn together and attached using water-tight stitching of sinew thread. Building the kayak was often a community-oriented task: men would build the frame and women would prepare and stretch the skins across the frame.

The Development of the Postal System

The Hudson's Bay Company did not open any trading posts in the arctic islands until after 1900. The first posts in the area were established at Wolstenholme on the northern end of the Ungava Peninsula in 1909 (at that time, but no longer, a part of the Northwest Territories) and at Lake Harbour on Baffin Island in 1911. But, no post offices were created until 1921 when, to assert Canadian sovereignty, Pond Inlet on Baffin Island became the first Eastern Arctic trading post to be so designated. To supply their posts, the Hudson's Bay Company maintained a fleet of steamers that would annually travel to all its arctic trading posts, bringing in sufficient personnel, provisions and trading goods for one year, and returning with arctic fox and other lucrative animal pelts, which were the main reason the Company was in the arctic in the first place.

The establishment of trading posts gradually led to changes in the way of life of the Inuit, or "Eskimo", as they began to congregate near the posts to partake in all the provisions the HBC stores sold, offering in exchange the furs that the traders were eager to purchase. In only about one generation, the Inuit were transformed from a subsistence culture entirely dependent on its own resources for survival, to a culture which was encouraged to trap for furs in exchange for the trappings of the white man's way of life.

After the transfer of the arctic islands to Canada in 1880, the Canadian government gradually became interested in discovering the nature and extent of its new arctic territory. The first government expedition occurred in 1884, but it was not until the 1920's that the Canadian government become serious about the sovereignty of its arctic regions. In 1898-1903 the Norwegian explorer Otto Sverdrup had mapped the area around Ellesmere Island, and claimed this area (and northern Greenland) for Norway. Canada subsequently sent JE Bernier, the famous arctic sea captain, on an official government scientific expedition to survey the territory in dispute.

Subsequent to Bernier's voyages, first in the DGS Neptune and later in the DGS Arctic, a recommendation to assert sovereignty by establishing a Canadian presence in the region was made. Acting on this recommendation, the Canadian government in 1921 created the Eastern Arctic Patrol, with a mandate to establish an RCMP presence in the disputed territory through patrolling the region and establishing police detachments for customs, immigration, game law enforcement, and postal service.

In 1922 the first annual patrol, aboard the Canadian government ship the DGS Arctic, established a RCMP detachment, and post office, at Craig Harbour on southern Ellesmere Island, not too far from the present settlement of Grise Fiord. As the location of the post was not known until after the site had been chosen on the 1922 voyage, postal equipment was not supplied to this post until the following year, and only one small mail from the six Mounties stationed there was dispatched with the annual supply ship that year. The postal equipment was subsequently destroyed when the post burned down that winter, while the Mounties had to complete the winter in the blubber shed and await the next year's supply ship. None of this 1923 mail is recorded in collectors' hands today, and only a proof strike reading "Craig Harbour/Ellesmere Island" in the Canadian Postal Archives records what this earliest high arctic postmark looked like.

Because of the ongoing sovereignty issue, the Mounties at Craig Harbour were ordered in 1926 to close the Craig Harbour post and establish a new further north detachment at Bache Peninsula, on Kane Basin on northern Ellesmere Island. With the aid of the annual supply ship, this time the Beothic, a new detachment and post office was created, and two constables were assigned to overwinter. The postmark reads "Bache Peninsula". This post office was later closed in 1933 due to inaccessibility (and after the territory was awarded to Canada by the World Court), and the Mounties were ordered south to reopen the Craig Harbour detachment, and its post office. In the seven years of operation of the Bache Peninsula post office, it only was reached three times by the supply vessel, dispatching but three mails from its resident population of only two or three Mounties by this means. Although mail was sent and received somewhat more often using a small RCMP boat or by using caches, only a small quantity of philatelic mail survives to remind collectors of the sovereignty disputes of this period.

Another RCMP post was established by the DGS Arctic in August 1924 at Dundas Harbour on Devon Island, south of Ellesmere Island. Postal equipment was proofed in February of 1925, but is not known on mail before the 1928 summer supply trip. It was closed in 1933 when personnel moved to Craig Harbour. Apparently, one remote RCMP outpost for this disputed region was enough to maintain Canadian sovereignty - in an area with no indigenous population except for an occasional hunting party from nearby Greenland.

Craig Harbour remained open until September 1940, at which time the RCMP detachment was closed in favor of maintaining the Patrol aboard the annual supply ship. The post office at Dundas Harbour was reopened in September of 1945, and remained open until August 1951, when the Craig Harbour post was once again opened.

A post office was established at Fort Ross, a small HBC trading post on the south coast of Somerset Island on the Bellot Straight facing the Boothia Peninsula, in September of 1940. The HBC had great hopes that this last link in a chain of trading posts from the eastern to the western Arctic would allow for the efficient movement of furs from the west to the east through the historic Northwest Passage. Although one commercial transit from the west aboard the MV Aklavik reached the HBC supply ship, the SS Nascopie, at Fort Ross in 1937, ice conditions generally prevented the viability of this enterprise, and the HBC store and post office was closed in March 1948. Only a few mails were dispatched during the post office's existence, usually coinciding with the annual dates that the Nascopie was able to reach the post. Most of the surviving covers are philatelic.

During the 1930's, the Canadian Government used the supply vessels of the Hudson's Bay Company to transport the members of the Eastern Arctic Patrol northward. By then, the annual Patrol consisted of not only the aforementioned RCMP personnel going north for posting, but also HBC personnel, doctors, dentists, supplies and provisions for a year's operation at the HBC trading posts, and even, commencing in 1933, passengers along for the 12-week interlude. Because of this regular, albeit only annual communication, post offices were also established at many of the HBC's posts on this route.

Beginning in 1932, the Post Office Department began to advertise that collectors could send covers north on the annual Eastern Arctic Patrol trip, for servicing at these northern posts. Consequently, quantities of collector mail can be found from the 1930's and the early 1940's postmarked at Pangnirtung, Pond Inlet and Lake Harbour on Baffin Island; Craig Harbour on Ellesmere Island; Chesterfield Inlet on Hudson Bay; and Port Burwell on a island at the extreme northern tip of Labrador, as well as from all the other ports of call in Newfoundland, Labrador, northern Quebec and Manitoba along this route, attesting to the interest such advertisements produced.