Grunter
07-26-2005, 09:01 AM
Mina Hubbard set out 100 years ago
By DENE MOORE Tuesday, July 26, 2005
Canadian Press
ST. JOHN'S -- It was 100 years ago, and women in Canada couldn't vote or hold public office, yet Mina Hubbard set off into the unforgiving, uncharted wilderness of Labrador and into the pages of history.This year, Labrador is celebrating the forgotten hero of feminism, who in 1905 made a dangerous expedition to explore Labrador from North West River to Quebec's Ungava Bay. Today, residents of North West River will re-enact her departure as part of the celebrations of her historic, if little known, adventure.
Hubbard's maps from the six-week expedition were accepted by the American Geographical Society and the Royal Geographical Society of Britain, and she provided valuable details on Labrador, including the massive caribou migration.
"[Given] the stigmas that were around for women at that time, for a woman to travel to Labrador and spearhead a journey of that magnitude -- it's definitely something that should receive recognition," said Waylon Williams, a member of the Mina Hubbard Centennial Committee.
Born Mina Benton in 1870 on a farm near Bewdley, Ont., she worked as a teacher in Ontario before attending nursing school in New York. There, she met Leonidas Hubbard while nursing him through typhoid fever.
They married in January of 1901 and were barely beyond newlyweds on July 15, 1903, when Leonidas, assistant editor of the U.S. nature magazine Outing, set out on the North West River to Ungava Bay expedition.
With him were his friend Dillon Wallace, a New York lawyer, and Métis guide George Elson. By September, lost, exhausted and out of food, they were forced to turn back.
By mid-October, Leonidas was starving, and his companions made the decision to leave him and go for help.
Five days later, Elson stumbled into the cabin of four native trappers, who later found Wallace delirious in the snow and Leonidas Hubbard, then 31, dead in his tent.
Later, having read Wallace's book, The Lure of the Labrador Wild, Mina Hubbard concluded he blamed her late husband for the ill-fated expedition.
When Wallace announced he would try again, she quietly made plans for a competing voyage.
"This was a personal journey for her, a way for her to feel close to her husband," Mr. Williams said. "It was as much a spiritual journey for her as a physical journey."
Hubbard set out on June 27, 1905, either a day before or after Wallace. Her guide was Elson, and they were joined by another Métis guide, Joseph Iserhoff; Job Chapies, a Cree from Rupert's House, Que.; and Gilbert Blake, a Labrador man.
"It did not seem strange or unnatural to be setting out as I was on such an errand," Hubbard wrote in her book, A Woman's Way Through Unknown Labrador.
"Rather there came a sense of unspeakable relief in thus slipping away into the wilderness, with the privilege of attempting the completion of the work my husband had undertaken to do."
She had a revolver and hunting knife strapped to a belt over her skirt, and in addition to her moccasins and seal-skin boots, she noted she had "a blouse -- for Sundays."
For two months, the group made their way more than 1,000 kilometres through the unforgiving Naskaupi watershed, encountering Montagnais and other natives, stomach-churning river rapids and Labrador's notorious black flies.
The Hubbard expedition arrived at the Hudson's Bay Co. post in George River, Que., on Aug. 27, 1905 -- six weeks before Wallace.
Two years ago, Terry Gipps and three friends retraced the 1903 route of Leonidas Hubbard, and Mr. Gipps said it gave him a great appreciation for the ordeal all of the expeditions went through.
"Very little, if anything has changed up there," he said from his home in Grafton, Mass.
The area is so remote, so vast and so rugged that likely nobody has been on the routes since the Hubbard expedition, he said. "It's an incredibly difficult trip. You're covered in flies and it's raining a lot, and when it wasn't raining, it was really hot and humid. Certainly an expedition and not a vacation."
Although Mina Hubbard was not the first non-aboriginal to traverse the Labrador interior, her expedition was extraordinary, said Randall Silvis, whose new book, [i]Heart So Hungry, chronicles the trek. "I think it was shocking, especially that she went into the wilderness alone with men," he said.
While the four men may have done the heavy-lifting, it doesn't diminish Mina Hubbard's accomplishment, Mr. Silvis said. "After all, her husband had starved to death and died, and I think in many ways, she expected to do so herself. But she was willing to sacrifice her own life to attempt to redeem her husband's reputation."
She married again, to a man from England and moved there; the couple had three children before divorcing in 1926. She died May 4, 1956, after being struck and killed by a train in Coulston, near London. She was 86.
Many Canadians and Americans don't know who Mina Hubbard was, Mr. Silvis said. "I would hope she gets wider recognition because I think she deserves to be ranked among our explorers.."
(For more information, see the website: http://www.mina2005.ca (http://www.mina2005.ca/))
By DENE MOORE Tuesday, July 26, 2005
Canadian Press
ST. JOHN'S -- It was 100 years ago, and women in Canada couldn't vote or hold public office, yet Mina Hubbard set off into the unforgiving, uncharted wilderness of Labrador and into the pages of history.This year, Labrador is celebrating the forgotten hero of feminism, who in 1905 made a dangerous expedition to explore Labrador from North West River to Quebec's Ungava Bay. Today, residents of North West River will re-enact her departure as part of the celebrations of her historic, if little known, adventure.
Hubbard's maps from the six-week expedition were accepted by the American Geographical Society and the Royal Geographical Society of Britain, and she provided valuable details on Labrador, including the massive caribou migration.
"[Given] the stigmas that were around for women at that time, for a woman to travel to Labrador and spearhead a journey of that magnitude -- it's definitely something that should receive recognition," said Waylon Williams, a member of the Mina Hubbard Centennial Committee.
Born Mina Benton in 1870 on a farm near Bewdley, Ont., she worked as a teacher in Ontario before attending nursing school in New York. There, she met Leonidas Hubbard while nursing him through typhoid fever.
They married in January of 1901 and were barely beyond newlyweds on July 15, 1903, when Leonidas, assistant editor of the U.S. nature magazine Outing, set out on the North West River to Ungava Bay expedition.
With him were his friend Dillon Wallace, a New York lawyer, and Métis guide George Elson. By September, lost, exhausted and out of food, they were forced to turn back.
By mid-October, Leonidas was starving, and his companions made the decision to leave him and go for help.
Five days later, Elson stumbled into the cabin of four native trappers, who later found Wallace delirious in the snow and Leonidas Hubbard, then 31, dead in his tent.
Later, having read Wallace's book, The Lure of the Labrador Wild, Mina Hubbard concluded he blamed her late husband for the ill-fated expedition.
When Wallace announced he would try again, she quietly made plans for a competing voyage.
"This was a personal journey for her, a way for her to feel close to her husband," Mr. Williams said. "It was as much a spiritual journey for her as a physical journey."
Hubbard set out on June 27, 1905, either a day before or after Wallace. Her guide was Elson, and they were joined by another Métis guide, Joseph Iserhoff; Job Chapies, a Cree from Rupert's House, Que.; and Gilbert Blake, a Labrador man.
"It did not seem strange or unnatural to be setting out as I was on such an errand," Hubbard wrote in her book, A Woman's Way Through Unknown Labrador.
"Rather there came a sense of unspeakable relief in thus slipping away into the wilderness, with the privilege of attempting the completion of the work my husband had undertaken to do."
She had a revolver and hunting knife strapped to a belt over her skirt, and in addition to her moccasins and seal-skin boots, she noted she had "a blouse -- for Sundays."
For two months, the group made their way more than 1,000 kilometres through the unforgiving Naskaupi watershed, encountering Montagnais and other natives, stomach-churning river rapids and Labrador's notorious black flies.
The Hubbard expedition arrived at the Hudson's Bay Co. post in George River, Que., on Aug. 27, 1905 -- six weeks before Wallace.
Two years ago, Terry Gipps and three friends retraced the 1903 route of Leonidas Hubbard, and Mr. Gipps said it gave him a great appreciation for the ordeal all of the expeditions went through.
"Very little, if anything has changed up there," he said from his home in Grafton, Mass.
The area is so remote, so vast and so rugged that likely nobody has been on the routes since the Hubbard expedition, he said. "It's an incredibly difficult trip. You're covered in flies and it's raining a lot, and when it wasn't raining, it was really hot and humid. Certainly an expedition and not a vacation."
Although Mina Hubbard was not the first non-aboriginal to traverse the Labrador interior, her expedition was extraordinary, said Randall Silvis, whose new book, [i]Heart So Hungry, chronicles the trek. "I think it was shocking, especially that she went into the wilderness alone with men," he said.
While the four men may have done the heavy-lifting, it doesn't diminish Mina Hubbard's accomplishment, Mr. Silvis said. "After all, her husband had starved to death and died, and I think in many ways, she expected to do so herself. But she was willing to sacrifice her own life to attempt to redeem her husband's reputation."
She married again, to a man from England and moved there; the couple had three children before divorcing in 1926. She died May 4, 1956, after being struck and killed by a train in Coulston, near London. She was 86.
Many Canadians and Americans don't know who Mina Hubbard was, Mr. Silvis said. "I would hope she gets wider recognition because I think she deserves to be ranked among our explorers.."
(For more information, see the website: http://www.mina2005.ca (http://www.mina2005.ca/))