SSttuuddiieess iinn VViissuuaall CCoommmmuunniiccaattiioonn Volume 6 Article 4 Issue 2 Summer 1980 1980 NNaannooookk aanndd tthhee NNoorrtthh Paul Rotha RReeccoommmmeennddeedd CCiittaattiioonn Rotha, P. (1980). Nanook and the North. 6 (2), 33-60. Retrieved from https://repository.upenn.edu/svc/ vol6/iss2/4 This paper is posted at ScholarlyCommons. https://repository.upenn.edu/svc/vol6/iss2/4 For more information, please contact [email protected]. NNaannooookk aanndd tthhee NNoorrtthh This contents is available in Studies in Visual Communication: https://repository.upenn.edu/svc/vol6/iss2/4 Nanook and the North Paul Rotha with the assistance of Basil Wright PART I* He had been one of the Jameson raiders in South Africa. We went up north of Lake Nipigon, wonderful lake about a Let a giant among men and a sultan of storytellers speak hundred miles long, then up one of the rivers running into it first: to the Height of Land, where the water divides roughly going south into the St. Lawrence and north into Hudson Odysseus made his journeys and then Homer wrote about Bay. As we were crossing this Height of Land, the stream them. To discover and to reveal-that is the way every artist was very small-the beginnings of these streams were sets about his business. All art is, I suppose, a kind of explor mere trickles-and we finally came into a lake called Little ing. Whether or not it's true of art, that's the way I started Long Lake. It was about twenty miles long. Knobel was in filmmaking. I was an explorer first and a filmmaker a long way his usual position in the bow of the canoe. He'd do his after. mapping as we went along with a cross-section book and a Even in my youth I was always exploring new country. My little compass-a sort of mariner's paper compass. father was a mining-engineer and, in a manner of speaking, Suddenly his compass began to turn around very we were a nomad family. We moved from one gold-mining quickly, more and more furiously as we went on. Then it camp to another in various parts of Canada. I was then about stopped dead. We knew at once what was happening. We 12 years of age. I learnt to track and hunt rabbits from the were passing over a body of magnetic iron-ore under us in Indians and I had an Indian dog-team and toboggan. It was a the lake. So with that little compass, we located a large frontier country where the Indians were much more primitive range of iron-ore. We staked out about five thousand acres than they are now. There used to be Indian dances near our of land covering several veins of this ore. They were not camp. I also used to trade with the Indians in a small way. I opened up until many years later. They were very far away couldn't speak Indian but knew a few words of a sort of patois. and were simply held as a reserve. Thirty-five years later They taught me many things. Hunting, for example. Hunting someone else went there and found gold. rabbits in the tamarack swamps. If you picked up the trails, There is a saying among prospectors-"Go out looking for you put your dog on one. He begins following the trail and one thing, that's all you'll ever find." We were exploring only for chases the rabbit. All you had to do was to stand on another iron-ore at that time. 2 part of the same trail. The rabbit would come around to where you were because the trail was always in a circle. You had to Robert Flaherty was born in 1884. He was the eldest of be patient and wait, and then the rabbit would come loping a family of seven children of Robert Henry Flaherty and along and you got him. This was in the depths of the cold Susan Kloeckner Flaherty. Robert Henry's father had winter, when there was deep snow on the ground and the emigrated from Ireland by way of Quebec in the mid rabbits couldn't burrow. nineteenth century. Both father and son were Irish Protes As I grew up, even in my teens, I went on prospecting tants. Susan Kloeckner was a German Cat hoi ic from expeditions with my father, or with his men, often for months at Coblenz. a time, travelling by canoe in summer and by snow-shoe in winter. It was sometimes !lew country, country that hadn't In 1957 David Flaherty recalled how his mother, known been seen before, the then little-known hinterland of Northern as the Angel of Port Arthur, went to mass each day at six in Ontario. We mapped it and explored it, or at least my father the morning. "Maybe," says David, "my mother didn't and his men did. I was just an extra. know about music and such things, as my father did, but Most of this country was to the west and north of Lake she loved people dearly and had a great and deep com Superior, forest land with a great many lakes. More water than passion."3 land, really. The lakes were interconnected by streams, so Flaherty himself remembers the "poverty stricken that you could canoe for hundreds and hundreds of miles. country in which we lived" in Michigan, and how his Sometimes I went on prospecting expeditions with just one father left the family to explore the little-known frontier Indian in a birch-bark canoe for as long as two months at a country where gold had been discovered (Griffith time. 1953:xvi i-xvi i i). On one expedition, I remember, we went north of Lake Superior and were away for two months. The expedition Several attempts were made to give the young Flaherty was headed by an English mining-engineer, Mr. H. E. a formal education. "The boy learned with ease," writes Knobel 1· Robert Lewis Taylor in aNew Yorker Profile (June 11, 1949), "far outstripping his tractable colleagues, but he •~==~~=~=~=~=~=~=~=~=~=~=~=~=~=r~:::r:::::::::::::::r::r~:::::::::~~~~· sm·~mMIIIIIIIIIIIIIE. .- ---• refused to observe the rules. His visits to the classroom Paul Rotha is a filmmaker, journalist, and author of many were spasmodic. When the humor was upon him, he books on film such as Documentary Diary, The Film Till would turn up every day for a week or so, but he was Now, and Rotha on Film. He is a pioneer in the British likely to lounge in around eleven o'clock smoking a cigar. documentary film movement. He would verify that the capital of South Dakota was Pierre rather than Bismarck, parse a sentence, exhibit a Basil Wright, concerned, along with John Grierson, since working knowledge of long division, and leave for the 1929 with the development of the documentary film, is the mid-afternoon fishing." director of Song of Ceylon and many other films. He also is the author of The Long View, an international study of the film. 34 studies in Visual Communication We should note here that although Mr. Taylor's Profile of seven months, during which time, according to some re Flaherty is both amusing and readable, it is not to be ports, he took to sleeping out in the woods. When he was taken too seriously. It is fanciful and, in places, inaccu expelled, his father wrote wishing him the best of luck in rate. Nevertheless, at the time it was published Flaherty whatever he elected to do on his own in the future (Taylor did not refute anything it said, even if it did tend to picture 1949, June 11 ). him as something of a clown and playboy, which he cer Flaherty's brief education at the Michigan College of tainly was not. Mines may not have enriched his intellect but it did en In 1896, when Bob was 12, his father took a job as able him to meet the girl who was to be his wife and manager at the Golden Star Mine, in the Rainy Lake area lifelong collaborator, Frances J. Hubbard. Her father, Dr. of Canada, and the boy went along too. Mrs. Flaherty Lucius L. Hubbard, was a man of academic distinction: remained in Michigan to take care of the three younger philatelist, bibliophile, ornithologist, mineralogist, and children, two sons and a daughter. The population at the geologist. In those days Boston, where he lived, was the mine was a tough assortment of some 2,000 miners from main financial source for Middle Western mining opera all parts of the world-South Africa, Australia, the United tions. Dr. Hubbard was State Geologist of Michigan; when States, and Canada itself. Schooling of the orthodox kind he retired he begah the development of new copper was unknown. Bob and his father lived in a cabin but ate mines in the Upper Peninsula, and here he and his family at a boardinghouse. And it was here that Flaherty's love settled down. for the primitive, the unsophisticated, and the rough Although Frances had a normal middle-class educa ways of "uncivilized" life began to ripen. Also, some tion, including Bryn Mawr and "finishing" in Europe, she where during his youth, he was taught to play the violin, also had the unusual advantage when still very young of maybe by his father; it was an accomplishment he re going with her father on a number of expeditions in which tained all through his life and from which he derived great he charted for the first time great areas of the forests of satisfaction. Maine. This profoundly influenced her, and when they They stayed at Rainy Lake for almost two years. Then settled in Michigan, she took to wandering again. the ore gave out and they moved to Burleigh Mine, in the "I used to go off alone every day on my horse," she Lake of the Woods country, where they were joined by the remembers, "following the faint, overgrown trails of the rest of the family. Here young Flaherty's education was old logging days. I would pick out on the map one of the given serious attention. His parents decided to send him tiny lakes or ponds hidden in the woods and set off to find to Upper Canada College, in Toronto. There is a firsthand it. Sometimes I got lost, or darkness fell before I could memory of him there: About the year 1897 Sir Edward reach home and I would spend the night in one of the Peacock, then a master at the College, was one of those deserted lumber camps that the forests had swallowed who attempted to educate this "tousle-headed boy who up. What I liked best was to wander all night on the shore had little idea of the ways of civilisation."4 He noted that by the lake by moonlight. I thought no one cared about this strong, healthy, self-reliant child found a knife by it these things but me" (Griffith 1953: xix-xx). self easier to use at table than a knife and fork. He was But young Bob Flaherty came in one day for Sunday popular with the other boys. dinner, and everything he said seemed to her an answer Flaherty's own memories were of a public school, "some to all she wanted to know about the wilds. He was without thing like English public schools with English masters. formal education while she had had the best; his upbring They played cricket and football. I never learnt cricket. ing and experience were at the opposite pole from hers; We also played lacrosse, which is a Canadian game, and but she quickly realized that he represented all she this I liked very much. It was originally an Indian game" wanted from life. "I thought, when we were married, we (BBC Talks, June 14, 1949). would go and live in the woods," she said. But at 14 Bob went back with his father-"to the frontier, But a very great deal was to happen before these two to the magic land of Indians, unknown lakes, tangled young people were to be married. It seems that young forests and mysteriously winding streams" (Griffith Flaherty elected to go and work for a time with some 1953:xviii). This was how it was for the next two years. Finns in a Michigan copper mine. After this, his father, In 1900, Robert Flaherty, Sr., joined the U.S. Steel Cor now with U.S. Steel, took him off on several explorations poration. He and his family moved to Port Arthur, ~hich for iron ore, and he linked up with Mr. Knobel, as he has was to be their home for a number of years. In a fmal already told us. Later, it is said, he was taken on by the attempt to educate their self-educated youngster, they Grand Trunk Pacific Railway, which wanted a survey sent him to the Michigan College of Mines, thus bringing made of its territory, as it was expanding in competition him again into the United States, But he did not stay there with the Canadian Pacific. He took the commission of a long enough even to graduate. Griffith tells us that the wide survey literally, and once, when the railroad officials college authorities soon made up their minds that Flah believed him to be in the vicinity of Winnipeg, he con erty had none of the qualifications considered necessary tacted them from British Columbia, giving them the rea for an academic mineralogist and "bluntly fired him" (Grif son that he want~d to see what the west side of Van fith 1953:xvii). Actually, his stay there lasted just over couver Island was I ike. Nanook and the North 35 Mrs. Frances Flaherty, however, in later years did not A turning point in my life came when I first met up with Sir remember Bob's ever working for the Grand Trunk Pacific, William Mackenzie, who in his life-time was the Cecil Rhodes but she did confirm his prospecting for marble along the of Canada. He was building a great railway across Canada from the Atlantic to the Pacific. It was to be the Canadian west coast of Vancouver Island in 1906. She did, in fact, Northern, now the Canadian National Railway. Mackenzie had spend a couple of months with him there on the Tahsish heard that there might be iron-ore and other mineral deposits Inlet in the Rupert District. A Mr. H. T. Curtis, a retired along the sub-Arctic east coast of Hudson Bay on a I ittle mining engineer, later remembered meeting Flaherty for known group of islands called the Nast of Gulf Hazard. He tuitously about November 1906 at the Balmoral Hotel, Vic asked me if I'd like to go up there and explore and then make toria. Curtis, who was assistant to the resident engineer of a report to him. That was in August, 1910. [BBC Talks, July 24, the Canadian Pacific Railway (Island Division), found the 1949] young man "a most likeable soul, kind-hearted, gener ous, but improvident.''5 He appears to have had some sort Flaherty first met Mackenzie through his father who, of allowance from his mother, but although he paid the after 10 years with U.S. Steel, had switched his services hotel bills, he spent all the rest on things like books, fancy as a consulting engineer to the firm of Mackenzie and ties, and socks. He and Curtis used to go on canoeing Mann, in Toronto. It is not for us here to describe the trips, in which Bob was expert and altogether in his ele tremendous part played by this firm in general and Sir ment, though he showed no enthusiasm for fishing. William Mackenzie in particular in developing Canada at Curtis introduced him to various people in Victoria, that time; we will only note that it was Mackenzie's judg among them a well-known local architect, Sam MacCiure, ment of men which helped to launch Bob Flaherty on his whose wife was musical. As Flaherty already had his career. Nor do we propose to give detailed accounts of famous violin, he often went to the MacCiure house, and each of Flaherty's several expeditions for Mackenzie be as a result he and Curtis got to know the conductor of the cause they can be found better written in his own words local Musical Society, a Mr. Russell. This acquaint in his book My Eskimo Friends (1924), his articles in the anceship resulted in Flaherty and Curtis's sharing a Geographical Review (1918), and in his diaries 6 now in house with Russell and his brother. "We more or less the Robert Flaherty Papers housed at the Butler Library of mucked in together," said Curtis, "and Bob filled the role Columbia University. But the simple account he himself of house-boy." made at a later date must not be omitted (BBC Talks, On Christmas Day, 1906, Bob and Curtis went canoe June 14 and July 24, 1949): ing toward the Indian settlement on the other side of Vic toria Inlet. Flaherty was captivated by the Indians' music I jumped off with one companion named Crundell, an Eng lishman, from the temporary railway frontier at Ground Hog and songs. Mr. Curtis added, "He talked at one time of in Northern Ontario. By small canoe we paddled down the going to Alaska when the spring set in, but to do what I Ground Hog River, the big Mattagami and the swift Moose don't remember. He never needed to have any specific to the great fur stronghold of the North, two-and-a-half cen aims as to occupation or employment. In fact, work in my turies old, Moose Factory, at the southern end of James idea and experience was right out of his ken. However, I Bay. From Moose Factory we travelled by open "York" learned in later years of his success as a film-maker, etc. I sailing-boat some 70 miles to Charlton Island, and from left British Columbia at Easter, 1907, to follow my profes Charlton took a schooner to Fort George, a little post on the. sion and had the occasional breezy note from Bob but east coast of James Bay. Because of the head-winds, the finally lost contact." journey of less than 200 miles from Charlton to Fort George Between 1907 and 1910, Flaherty worked as a prospec took ten days. At Fort George, hardly half-way to our final destination, the Nastapoke Island, we were caught by tor for a small mining syndicate above Lake Huron. Then winter. he switched his services to a bigger concern and headed My companion returned south. When the sea-ice had north to the Mattagami River over a route that had not formed, I went on by sledge with a party of Indians as far as been used for 150 years. He may have been, in Mr. Cur the last northern trees, at Cape Jones. The Indian country tis's word, "improvident," but for a young man in his early always ends where the trees end, and there is the begin twenties he certainly knew how to find his way about the ning of the Eskimo country. The Indians left me at Cape wildernes·s. He discovered some iron ore deposits, Jones, from whence I was at the Eskimo camp at Great staked a claim for his employers, and went south to To Whale, the last northern post. I spent the night in a tent. All ronto. There an event took place which was to shape the the Eskimos were in igloos. During the night a terrific storm remamder of his life: came up and in the morning I found my tent had collapsed. I was covered with canvas and an awful lot of snow, but I was able to breathe. The Eskimos came around and with much laughter they pulled off the canvas and took me into one of their igloos. I could speak only a few words of their language, about a hundred words or so out of a vocabulary: Is it cold? Is it far? I am hungry-that sort of thing. Their language is not a very extensive one but it is very difficult to learn, much more difficult than the Northern In- 36 studies in Visual Communication Nanook and the North 37 Figure 1 It was on this trip, my first for Mackenzie, that Nero, my Cat. No. 100 Eskimo friend, told me something that greatly interested me. He saw that far out to sea, perhaps a hundred miles out vintage photogravure, on loan from FSCC (see No. 29). to the west, there was another group o'f islands which was N 370 very big. I had noted these islands dotted in tentatively on 8V2" x SV2" I 21.5 x 14.2 em the Admiralty charts. They were called the Belcher Islands. subject: photograph of Allakariallak (Nanook) at Port No white man had ever landed there. They had been put on Harrison post, with record player, 1920--1921, lnoucdjouac. the map by a Captain W. Coates, a shipmaster of the Hud identification: Nanook. The Grammophone. Flaherty 9. son's Bay Company in the early eighteenth century. The A VOICE FROM A STRANGE WORLD: Nanook, "The Bear," company had established its first post in the Bay in 1670. Chief of the lkivimuits, is famous throughout Ungava as a They've had ships coming in once a year from England great hunter, skilled in the ways of the North, and learned ever since. in all the lore of the Arctic wilds; but the white man's box in When the Eskimos told me that this was "big land," I could which singing and talking is so miraculously imprisoned is hardly believe it. They were only little bits of dots on the a greater mystery than any of which he has ever dreamed. map. However, when I saw more Eskimos along the coast, Fascinated by its strangeness he studies it with eager they told me the same story. I asked them to make curiosity in a vain attempt to discover the origin of the sketch-maps for me, and they all more or less coincided voice. Accustomed to the traders' canned goods, he although drawn by different Eskimos.7 suspects that this music is canned also. Flaherty 6. I asked Nero how far off the islands were. He said some thing like a hundred miles but I mistrusted his idea of fig note: the above caption contradicts even Flaherty's own ures. So in order to find out the size of the largest of the writings on the sophisticated response of the Inuit to new islands, I asked him, "How many sleeps would it take to technologies. Flaherty apparently relied on the Inuits' sledge from this end of the island to that end of the island?" technical expertise to repair his photographic equipment. He said, "Two sleeps." So I knew that, if he spoke the truth, it was a big piece of land. He added also that there was a l?ng narrow lake on the biggest island, so long that it was like the sea. What he meant was that looking from one end of it to the other, you could not see land. And he also told dian languages. But I could always make myself under me that the cliffs of these islands looked as if they were stood. One can do a great many signs. And the white man bleeding when you scratched them. has a way of expression. His face reveals so much to a . Now one of the most important types of iron-ore, hema native. He can read your face like a book, while his face tite, looks blue but when it is scratched, it leaves a blood remains impassive. red streak. So at this point I became really interested in the It was a long haul with a 12-dog team over 250 miles but Belcher Islands. I had by now picked up so much informa at last I reached the Nastopone Islands with my Eskimo tion about them from so many Eskimos that I felt sure there companion, whose name was Nero. He could speak a little must be something in the story. And when I finally returned pidgin-English. to Lower Canada from this expedition in the autumn of 1910 When I surveyed the islands (Taylor and Gillies) which and reported my findings to Sir William Mackenzie, he be Sir William Mackenzie had sent me to examine, I found came as excited about the idea as I was. He asked me to there was iron-ore there all right but it wasn't very make up another expedition and go back. important-not economically important. It was what we call The second trip in 1911 took nineteen months and we got "lean" ore. The island which had the largest deposits was only about 12 miles long and about half-a-mile wide. It lay wrecked on the way trying to get out to the Belchers.8 So 1 waited many, many months at Great Whale River Post until along parallel to and about a mile off the coast. It was the winter came. When we were about to cross over the crested with snow-covered rocks. We were in the sub sea-ice, it broke the evening before our departure. It had Arctic in the middle of winter. It was bitterly cold. A com been frozen 125 miles right across to the islands but now it plete desolation. And I had to face the fact that the long began t? drift: Sometimes the Eskimos got caught on big journey had been for nothing. floes of 1ce th1s way. They may be adrift at large on the sea At the south end of the island I saw a monument sticking for a year or more. They may drift as far as a thousand up near some slabs of rock. It was about 6ft. high, what miles. The ice doesn't melt. As the summer gets on, the ice they call an American Man in that country, for what reason I don't know. I think it is an old· raider term. I noticed how the wo~ks ~orth an? begins to go through Hudson Straight, moss was encrusted in fractures of the stone, apparently ":'h1ch IS the discharge of Hudson Bay into the North Atlan tiC Ocean. Hudson Bay itself is 1200 miles Iong-an inland very old, and it had obviously been up there a long, long time. s~a connected with the North Atlantic by a strait that is 500 To show how different is the Eskimo idea of figures from m1les lo~g and over 100 miles wide. So the ice that gets our own, when I said to Nero, "This is very old, isn't it?," he through mto the ocean doesn't begin to melt until it reaches said, "Oh, yes, very." "How old would you think it would down towards the Gulf Stream away east of Newfoundland. be?" I asked him. "Oh," he says, "maybe a t'ousand years." "How would you know it's a thousand years old?" "Oh," he says, "I see it when I am small boy." A thousand years doesn't mean anything to an Eskimo .... 38 studies in Visual Communication When Eskimos have been caught like this, maybe a fam The Laddie, which had been built in 1893 at Fogo, New~ ily has been separated and they have not met up again for found land, was rerigged at St. John's, and a crew of eight years afterwards and then perhaps hundreds of miles Newfoundland seamen was engaged under the com away. There have been cases of an Eskimo family camping mand of Captain H. Bartlett. She was specially equipped on the sea-ice when it has broken during the night. The for ice-breaking and was outfitted for an 18-month expedi igloo has been cut in half just as you'd slice an orange. tion. All was set for departure on August 14, 1913. But One part of the family went one way on the drifting ice and there was as yet one very important piece of equipment the other half went the other, not to mees up again maybe for many months. 9 missing. So, after the ice had broken, I decided not to wait and Whether it was Flaherty's own idea to take a motion make another attempt to reach the Belcher Islands be picture camera with him on this, his third, expedition or cause almost a year had gone by. Instead, I made a survey whether it was Sir William Mackenzie's suggestion is dif of the Ungava Peninsula by sledge with an Eskimo. Also ficult to determine. Richard Griffith, whose book was writ during this next summer (1912), I made two equidistant ten mainly under the eye of Flaherty and the bulk of it cross-sections of an area almost the size of Germany in the read by him before his death, gives the impression that it Barren Lands, about 125,000 square mi les.10· was his own idea. "When Flaherty excitedly declaimed his enthusiasm for Eskimo life to his employer, the ever This modest statement gives no indication of the receptive Sir William agreed [our italics] that he should hazards of these journeys or the degree of the achieve take a movie-camera along with him on his next expedi ment. Two previous attempts had been made to cross the tion" (Griffith 1953:36). Flaherty himself, on the other Barren of Ungava, one by A P. Low' and the other by the hand, says: Reverend E. J. Peck. Both had failed because of the fail ure to discover game to supplement the rations carried Just as I was leaving, Sir William said to me casually, "Why by sledge. don't you get one of these new-fangled things called a motion Flaherty's expedition was not better supplied. But picture camera?" So I bought one but with no other thought whereas Peck had turned back with a heavy heart after 11 really than of taking notes on our exploration. We were going days rather than face starvation, Flaherty took the risk into interesting country, we'd see interesting people. I had no and won through after a journey lasting over a month. He thought of making a film for the theatres. I knew nothing what took with him four Eskimos. His favorite was Nero, a cele soever about films. [BBC Talks, June 14 and July 24, 1949] brated Great Whale hunter with a smattering of English, who engaged to take them as far as Lake Minto and then The fact remains that Flaherty went down to Rochester, return. Omarolluk and Charlie came for the deer they took a three-week course in motion picture photography hoped to slay on the journey, and Wetunik was supposed from the Eastman Company, bought one of the earliest to know the country between Lake Minto and Fort Chimo models of the Bell and Howell movie camera, and made on the Atlantic coast of the Ungava Peninsula. Extracts some tests which were not very successful. He also from Flaherty's diary of the journey give a graphic ac bought a portable developing and printing machine, count of the traveling conditions (see Griffith 1953:8-15). some modest lighting equipment, and, presumably, a fair Flaherty ended the journey across the Barrens of Fort amount of film.12 Chimo with his Eskimo companions. But when he re They sailed The Laddie a thousand miles northward turned to Lower Canada in the autumn of 1912 and re round the Labrador Coast through the Hudson Strait to ported his findings to Mackenzie, he found what he him Baffin Land. Too late to have a winter base in the Bay self had feared, that from the geological or mineral point itself, they put into Adadjuak Bay and with the help of of view his surveys were not important. By the fifties, some forty Eskimos set up a winter camp. In the last week however, the big iron ore deposits he discovered in both of September The Laddie sailed back south, just before Ungava and the Belchers were being very gainfully the ice began to form, so that she could be wintered in worked by the Cyrus Eaton Company, "bringing in untold Newfoundland. Flaherty and three of the crew settled in wealth to the New World."11 for the 10 months of winter. There were 2,000 miles of Despite Flaherty's failure to find deposits which at the sledging to be done along the coast and island to the time would have been economical to work, Sir William great lake of Adadjuak-and there was the filming. But Mackenzie insisted that he go north again to the Belcher Flaherty did not get around to using his new possession Islands, this time by proper ship. He was still impressed until early the next year, 1914. He tells us: by Flaherty's report of what the Eskimos had told him about the size of these islands and by the maps that had been drawn. So he bought for Flaherty a topsail schooner called The Laddie, 83-ton register, from an uncle of the famous Captain Bob Bartlett, who had been Admiral Peary's skipper on his North Polar expeditions. Nanook and the North 39 February came, cold but glowingly clear and calm. Then While at Great Whale River Post, on the way back, we began our films. We did not want for cooperation. The Flaherty first learned that war had broken out in Europe. women vied with one another to be starred. Igloo building, It was October 1914. His father had been sent up to the conjuring, dances, sledging and seal-hunting were run off Belchers to verify Bob's findings, and Bob records the as the sunlit days of February and March wore on. Of meeting: course there was occasional bickering, but only among the women-jealousy, usually, of what they thought was the When we landed I glimpsed several forms flitting past the over-prominence of some rival in the film .... On June.10 , I window lights and dissolving in the darkness. Puzzled, we prepared for our long-planned deer-filming expedition, climbed to the cabin and strode into a lighted but deserted and on the following day, with camera and retorts of film13 room. Nearly half-an-hour we waited there, our surprise and and food for 20 days, Annunglung and I left for the deer curiosity mounting the while, when at last the familiar, long, grounds of the interior. Through those long June days we lanky form of old Harold (the Post's half-Indian, half-Swedish travelled far .... interpreter) stood halting in the doorway. Recognising me in a We were picking out a course when Annunglung pointed moment, his fear-beclouded face became wreathed in smiles. to what seemed to be so many boulders in a valley far He reached out for my hand, exclaiming, "My God, sir, I t'ote below. The boulders moved. "Tooktoo!" Armunglung whis you was the Germans!" And so it was that we first heard of the pered. We mounted camera and tripped on the sledge. great World War. [Flaherty 1924:43] Dragging his six-fatham [sic] whip ready to cow the dogs before they gave tongue, Annunglung went on before the team. He swung in behind the shoulder of an intervening Flaherty's expeditions to the North had by now hill. When we rounded it we were almost among them. The lengthened his engagement to Frances Hubbard to 10 team lunged. The deer, all but three, galloped to right and years-and it was an engagement conducted, by force of left up the slope. The three kept to the valley. On we sped, circumstances, mainly by correspondence. But at last, on the camera rocking like the mast of a ship at sea. From the November 12, 1914, they were married. The ceremony galloping dogs to the deer not 200ft. beyond, I filmed and took place at the home of one of the bride's cousins in filmed and filmed. Yard by yard we began closing in. The New York City. Flaherty was not, it seems, too flush with dogs, sure of victory, gave tongue. Then something hap money at the time; Frances bought the wedding ring and pened. All that I know is that I fell headlong into a deep drift also took him round to City Hall to get the license. of snow. The sledge was belly-up. And across the traces of the bitterly disappointed dog-team Annunglung was dou But it would seem-and after so many years these bled up with laughter. Within two days we swung back for things can be told-that Miss Hubbard was not the only camp, jubilant over what I was sure was the film of films. young la,dy to whom the young explorer had been paying But within 12 miles of the journey's end, crossing the rotten attention. Mrs. Evelyn Lyon-Fellowes, of Toronto, writes: ice of a stream, the sledge broke through. Exit film. [Flah erty 1924:124--125] I met Mr. Robert J. Flaherty a number of times when he ap peared to be courting my chum, Miss Olive Caven. It was Thus Flaherty describes with characteristic understate between his Arctic trips and his marriage. I chaperoned them ment the total loss of some of his first efforts at filmmak once at lunch at the old Queen's Hotel [now demolished]. On ing. this occasion he gave me a wonderful photo of a husky dog, The summer of 1914 was nearly over when the The taken I understand in an igloo. He gave Miss Caven many Laddie sailed back from the south. Flaherty and hfs beautiful presents including a white-fox fur, and numerous photos of Eskimos which she accepted as she admired him men were ready to leave within a weel<, bound at long last very much. On his last return from Hudson Bay, he spent the for the elusive Belcher Islands. first evening with her and left that night for the United States. A This time the expedition was a complete success. They few days later he arrived back in Toronto with his bride, discovered-or rather rediscovered-the islands and Frances, and asked poor surprised Olive to help them find a mapped them. They proved to be even larger than Fla house to live in-which she did. She had not known of his herty had imagined. The Eskimo maps, moreover, were engagement. She eventually recovered from the shock and wonderfully accurate. A rectangle drawn around them married most happily and well. She died over a year ago.14 would have enclosed an area of some 5,000 square miles. The longest island was over 70 miles in length. When the Flahertys were married, remembers Ernes It had a fresh-water lake on it, as the Eskimos had said. tine Evans, a very old friend of theirs, the Hubbard family There, too, were the blood-red cliffs, just as Nero had announced that they were seeking a Fo-rd agency post for forecast. But when Flaherty reported on the area later, it the bridegroom, assuming naturally that he would now was with the same result: he did not consider them of settle down (Evans 1951). But the newly married explorer sufficiently high grade to warrant their operation at so was to disappoint them. remote a latitude. Flaherty did, nevertheless, have two rewards for his expedition. The Canadian government subsequently decided to name the largest of the Belcher Islands after him. He had also in his possession a certain amount of exposed cinematograph film. 40 studies in Visual Communication During that winter of 1914-1915, Flaherty put his film wore, some three week's food, notes, maps, specimens into some sort of shape. It was too crude to be interesting. and the film-two boxes covered by the Eskimos with But he was planning to go north again in the spring, this water-proofing of sealskin carefully sewn" (Flaherty time to explore and winter on the Belcher Islands; and he 1924:132).17 Eventually they reached Lower Canada was determined to attempt a better film (Flaherty again. 1924:126). Thus, even at this early stage, Flaherty ex Flaherty now had in all some 70,000 feet of film in pressed himself dissatisfied with his work as a Toronto which had been taken during two expeditions. cinematographer although he was still no more than an Encouraged by his wife, he spent some months in 1916 amateur. putting a print (taken from the negative) into some kind of So in the summer of 1915, Bob and his new wife, to continuity order. For an unexplained reason, fortunate in gether with Mr. Flaherty, Sr., Margaret Thurston, a Bryn the I ight of what was to happen, this assembled print was Mawr schoolmate of Frances, and David Flaherty, jour sent to Harvard, presumably to be screened by someone neyed by canoe with Indian guides from the railhead in there. Later, while Flaherty was packing the 70,000 feet of Northern Ontario down the Ground Hog, Mattagami, and negative in his cutting room in Toronto, ready for dispatch Moose Rivers to Moose Factory on James Bay. There they to New York, "much to my shame and sorrow I dropped a boarded The Laddie. At Charlton Island, in James Bay, all cigarette-end in it." The complete negative, of course, the party camped for several weeks except Bob, who, went up in a sheet of flame and Flaherty, having tried to with The Laddie and her crew, headed for the Belcher put out the fire without success, narrowly escaped losing Islands once more. The others stayed on the island which his life; he was hospitalized for several weeks. Grierson David Flaherty described as being "carpeted with refers to Flaherty's having carried scars on his hands springy white moss covered with delicious wild currants from this fire all his life, but others, including the authors, and cranberries. We caught trout in the streams and shot do not remember them. yellow-legs along the shore. Frost was already in the air There remained, however, the positive print which had when in late September the once-a-year Hudson's Bay been sent to Harvard. Flaherty hopefully sent this to New Company steamer Nascopie picked us up."15 York to a laboratory which might be able to make a new Meanwhile, now on his fourth expedition, Flaherty had negative from the print, but it seems that this process, so reached his destination and had set about more filming. common today, was not possible at that time. Thus he This included a sequence of Mukpollo, an Eskimo, har had only one copy of his film, which would, of course, get pooning a big bull-walrus which Flaherty "filmed and scratched and deteriorate every time it was screened. He filmed and filmed until the last inch was ground away." did show it a good deal, nevertheless-at the American He wrote: Geographic Society, at the Explorers' Club in New York, and to sundry friends at his home in New Canaan, During the winter, we compiled a series of motion pictures Connecticut. showing the primitive life, crafts, and modes of hunting and travel I ing of the islanders-an improved version of the film we "People were polite!'" he said, "but I could see that what had previously made on the Baffin Island expedition. With a interest they took in the film was the friendly one of wanting to portable projector bought for the purpose, we showed the see where I had been and what I had done. That wasn't what I islanders a copy of the Baffin Island film, purposing in this wanted at all. I wanted to show the lnnuit (Eskimo). And I way to inspire them with that spirit of emulation so necessary wanted to show them, not from the civilised point of view, but to the success of our filming. Nor were we disappointed. En as they saw themselves, as 'we, the people.' I realised then thusiastic audiences crowded the hut. Their "Ayee's" and that I must go to work in an entirely different way." [Griffith "Ah's" at the ways of these their kindred that were strange to 1953:36] them were such as none of the strange and wonderful ways of the kablunak (white man) ever called forth. The deer espe And later he added, "It was utterly inept, simply a cially (Tooktoo! they cried), mythical to all but the eldest scene of this and a scene of that, no relation, no thread of among them, held them spellbound. [Flaherty 1918:456] a story or continuity whatever, and it must have bored the audience to distraction. Certainly it bored me."18 Many years later Flaherty was to tell a story of how he Thus the "Harvard print," as we might call it, the only was taught the rudiments of motion picture photography example of Flaherty's first efforts with a film camera, no by a missionary whom he met on one of his expeditions longer exists. There is no doubt that he himself was only and how later the missionary was found hanging by his too glad to have it forgotten. His close friend and admirer neck in a hut that Flaherty had converted into a darkroom. We regard this story as almost certainly apocryphal, but Flaherty told it to at least three people.16 This expedition was also an adventurous experience. The Laddie had to be abandoned during the winter and its timbers used for fuel piece by piece. "Everything had to be left behind," Flaherty wrote, "saving the clothes we