As time went by, my mother began to think increasingly of
escape from the situation which had trapped her for so long. The atmosphere
in the old lady's house was not a happy one and my mother longed to go to
the other side of the world and start afresh. We had no money, but could
work hard and New Zealand sounded like a land of opportunity.
My brother blazed the trail by setting off just after the General
Strike of 1926, helping to stoke the boilers of an ancient coal burner as it
steamed across the Pacific Ocean. He was to work on farms in New
Zealand, and two years later my other brother followed him. The three of us
who were left at home were to wait until I had finished school, then set off
together.
As the time loomed near, however, my prospective life as a
farmworker lost its appeal for me. We wrote letters to everybody we could
think of to see if they could squeeze me in somewhere else, but the reply
was always the same – too young and no qualifications. Christmas 1929
came and went with the problem no nearer solution, but early in the New
Year, a chance happening at school provided a possible answer.
A week or two after the start of term, a visitor arrived to take up a
long-standing invitation to spend a weekend at the school as a guest of the
headmaster. He was the archdeacon in charge of the missionaries working in
the Canadian Arctic territories. The news that the clerical visitor was to give a
Saturday-night talk was received with some resignation by the boys, but the
archdeacon, whose diocese spread from the tree line right away up to the
last few humps of ice at the North Pole, had brought reels of film with him
and caught our interest and attention immediately when his operator put the
first one in backwards. It was the run of a visit by some Hudson's Bay
officials to a post above the Arctic Circle. A solitary white building crouched
beneath towering black cliffs. A door flew suddenly open and two portly city
executive types marched smartly out backwards, skilfully negotiated a short
but steep slope then performed an incredibly agile backward leap into a
motor boat waiting at the water's edge.
After this entertaining start, the film's chief interest centred on the
activities of the Hudson's Bay Company. Incorporated by Charles II in 1670
as the 'Gentlemen Adventurers trading into Hudson's Bay' and led by Prince
Rupert, they had been inspired by the thought of getting into Hudson's Bay
and establishing trading posts ahead of the French. In this they had been
successful, so they later extended their field of operation over the whole of
Canada and later still to the islands north of the mainland. The remote Arctic
establishments could only be supplied by sea and it was the voyage of the
tough little Nascopie that the archdeacon had recorded on film. There were
hunting scenes, trading scenes, pictures taken under the midnight sun, of
polar bears and walrus, of far-away places and people, enough to titillate the
imagination of any schoolboy. Moreover, from what our speaker said, it was
fairly obvious that this great company employed young people who did not
have any special qualifications. I summoned up my courage to confront the
authorities and request further details. An interview was arranged with the
archdeacon himself. It was to take place in the headmaster's study on the
Monday morning.
The missionary was looking out of the window at the boys
scuttling about in the quad on that wet and windy February morning when I
crept into the holy of holies. I thought that he looked rather surprised when he
saw me. He said:
'You wanted to see me I believe?'
'Yes sir,' I replied, not knowing quite how to develop the
conversation.
'How can I help you?'
'I wanted to ask about the Hudson's Bay Company and what age
the apprentices have to be,' I blurted out. The archdeacon looked at me in
silence for what seemed to be a very long time. It was fairly obvious that he
did not consider me to be the stuff of which 'Gentlemen Adventurers' are
made. Then he said slowly:
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