Minipi Camps Web Log
A Selection of books about Labrador
James West Davidson, and John Rugge. Great Heart: The History of a Labrador Adventure, 1988.
“In July 1903 Leonidas Hubbard, Jr. set out to traverse by canoe and portage one of the last blank spots on the map of North America – 550 miles of the subarctic barrens of Labrador in northern Canada.” Hubbard died. His expedition failed. “…Wallace [Hubbard’s partner] resolved, in 1905, to return to Labrador at the head of his own exploring party to try again.” At the very same time, Mina Hubbard, Hubbard’s widow, to redeem her husband’s honor, had also begun an expedition. And the race was on. This is the story of both the 1903 and 1905 expeditions, the latter being “a race unique in the annals of wilderness exploration.”
Dillon Wallace, The Lure of The Labrador Wild. First Edition, 1905. 1990 paperback Ed.
“It was Dillon Wallace who ended up being the [Hubbard] expedition’s Dante, the intrepid chronicler of its ever-increasing descent into Hell. …Not only did Wallace survive it [the Hubbard expedition], he went back for more, as if some deeply-buried aspect of himself were at last liberated by his ordeal.”
Wallace wrote a second book, The Long Labrador Trail, describing his second trip to Labrador in 1905 .
Mina Hubbard, A Woman’s Way Through Unknown Labrador. First Ed.1908. 1983 paperback Edition.
“On June 27, 1905, Mina Hubbard, a slender little woman with delicate features and a Gibson Girl coiffeur, found herself at one of the twin trading posts on North West River. On that same day, directly opposite, the rival expedition under Wallace, was about to set off.” Mina Hubbard writes, “This book is the result of a determination on my part to complete Mr. Hubbard’s unfinished work, and having done this to set before the public a plain statement, not only of my own journey, but of his as well. For this reason I have included the greater part of Mr. Hubbard’s diary….”
Robert M. Poole, “Labrador: Canada’s Place Apart,” National Geographic, Vol. 184, No.4, October, 1993.
“…Labrador’s desolate interior…awash in hard-edged beauty, Canada’s far northeastern corner, remains a land barely rippled by time.”
Sir Wilfred Grenfell, The Romance of Labrador, First Ed. 1934.
“This book is an attempt to record the scientific and historic facts about Labrador, as far as they are known. It is the ‘audi alteram partem’ of a medical man who has spent much of the past forty years on those coasts….”
Charles Meck, in his book, The Hatches Made Simple (The Countryman Press, 2002), devotes an interesting section titled “The Green Drake: A World of Difference,” to his encounter with this hatch while fishing with his friend, Steve MacDonald, in at Cooper’s Anne Marie Lodge.
Another great book, and certainly one of my favorites would have to be “Bush Pilot Angler” by Lee Wulff. Although most of the book describes life as an outfitter in Western Newfoundland, the end of the book describes Labrador, and specifically Lee venturing for the first time into Minipi. It’s a great read. ISBN 0892724803.
Posted by RobinCooper on 01/15 at 04:35 PM
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