Fort Wrigley 1952/53

After he finished Fur School in Montreal my father received his first post as HBCo manager in Fort Wrigley. We arrived in May, 1952. My sister was one year old, I was four. My sister and I would sit on the riverbank watching the boats pushing long lines of barges on the river - oil from Norman Wells going south and annual supplies going north. The first HBCo boat of the year was called the banana boat. I clearly remember Wrigley Rock, as well as seeing the hills beyond the rock. My father would get the mail from the Wrigley airport 7 miles upstream and across the river, by canoe in the summer and walking in the winter. I vaguely remember watching him walk home along the far shore of the river before crossing on the ice in front of our house. Using the radio to contact the airport would have been Mom's only recourse if he hadn't shown up. Four years earlier two RCSignals members had a near tragedy making this walk! Our family socialized with the RCSignals staff at Wrigley airport, but not often. The only other non-Indian people in the village itself were the priest and brother at the RC Mission next door. My father learned the basics of the local South Slavey dialect to trade merchandise for fur. In the winter we had occasional visits from the RCMP patrolling by dogsled from Fort Simpson 150 miles upstream.

The settlement of Fort Wrigley was abandoned in 1965 and residents moved to a new townsite at the Wrigley airport. Nothing remains at the site (63°15'56"N, 123°36'32"W) now.

In the summer a family of Christian missionaries visited Fort Wrigley for a few days. They used the upstairs of the warehouse for sessions which included drawing with crayons. I remember drawing an apple and being so surprised when the young woman suggested adding a leaf - I had never realized apples came from trees!

Our family sitting on the missionaries' boat, summer 1952. Notice Mike is wearing a tie - he loved to dress well for any occasion.

My sister Tania, aged 10-11 months, held by the daughter of the missionaries.
Wrigley Rock in the background, and that is likely the HBCo canoe.

A local boy, the missionary family, my sister and I on their boat.

Tania and I on the bank of the Mackenzie at Fort Wrigley watching bulk fuel being barged upstream.

A playmate and I picking flowers on the riverbank.

Behind me are the store and lighting plant.

Our house from the store window. 

Mike painted this tiger on the master bedroom wall. Years later I heard that the wife of next HBCo manager couldn't stand it so he put a sheet of plywood over the wall. 

Mike on his way to the airport in late spring 1953, I'm guessing near the east shore of the MacKenzie River at about 63.23619° -123.52181°. Those are blocks of ice along the shore - it looks like he turned the canoe so the photographer, possibly Mom, could include them in the shot. 

Me picking crocuses on a hill a kilometre west of town. Our house and the store are just visible.

Our house. The wind charger tower was gone as we had moved to a gasoline-powered generator to charge the 32-volt battery of lead-acid cells in the building on the left.
Photo from RCSignals website.

The fence on the left is our yard.
Photo from RCSignals website.

Photo from RCSignals website.

This 1957 view of Fort Wrigley shows the store and our house at the very edge of the aircraft wing, from what may be a Nordair DC4.
Photo by Bart Hawkins, from NWT Archives, N-1992-254-0289. 

Fort Wrigley was abandoned in 1965 when Indian Affairs and Northern Development moved the residents to a new Wrigley townsite north of the airport, ostensibly because of the swampy nature of the land and for convenience of access to the south. However, this Google Earth image from 2022 shows structures at the old site, almost exactly where the HBCo buildings once stood. These don't appear in older Google Earth images. I don't have an explanation for this apparent re-settlement. If any readers know please share....

In the summer of 1953 Mike was transferred to Arctic Red River.