Malcolm Gorrill
Northern News Services

Tuktoyaktuk (Aug 11/00) - Some things never change.

Just like the reception crew aboard the RCMP vessel St. Roch received in its landmark voyage more than 50 years ago, the crew of the two ships retracing the historic 1940-42 Northwest Passage journey received a warm welcome as they stopped in Tuktoyaktuk over the weekend.

Cashin served on original St. Roch A man who served aboard the original St. Roch will get a chance to relive a piece of his past. Bill Cashin, now living in Carmacks, Yukon, was a special constable aboard the St. Roch for about five years during the 1940s. He was among the many people who gathered to greet the St. Roch II: Voyage of Rediscovery when it sailed in to dock on the weekend. "I had a good life while I was on it, a good, clean life," Cashin said with a laugh. "They would make patrols in the wintertime. In the summertime you would transport prisoners. They would fly up a judge and court reporters and lawyers." Cashin has been following the St. Roch II with interest. The re-enactment is designed to raise funds for the restoration of the St. Roch. The original vessel is located at the Vancouver Maritime Museum. The reenactment is being carried out by the RCMP vessel Nadon and its support ship, the Canadian coast guard vessel Simon Fraser. He is spending a week on board the Simon Fraser. "I was invited to take a trip on the icebreaker," he said. "It's about 1,000 miles to Cambridge Bay, so I'm going to leave her there and go back," Cashin said. And what's it like to be back after all these years? "It's altogether different than when I was up in this country. It's a lot warmer, it seems. There was always ice floating around out here. Here I see kids, everybody's swimming there last night, all over. "And I felt the water -- man, that's really warm. It used to be freezing when I was up here."

A feast was held on Saturday evening to honour those on that ship and its support vessel, Simon Fraser.

The St. Roch II -- an RCMP catamaran formerly named Nadon -- arrived later than expected on Friday. During the feast, St. Roch II captain Sgt. Ken Burton pointed out the ship and her crew still received a warm welcome.

"There's a variety of references all throughout the sailing of the St. Roch about the warmth and positive encounters they had with the people that lived here and in the vicinity," Burton said.

"We are very, very fortunate that even last night, we saw it again. We were two or three hours late. We had a big piece of ice there to go around, but when we pulled in towards the port, there were about 50 people and a couple of boats out there. They'd been looking for us for the evening, just wanting to make sure we were safe," Burton said.

"It was particularly gratifying because we'd just finished about six days of solid ice navigation to get here," he said. "A deep and personal and professional thank you to each and every member of the community here at Tuktoyaktuk."

A new member with the RCMP detachment in Tuk perhaps summed it up best. Const. Wayne ("Skipper") Bent told the visitors, "You've brought the Royal Canadian Mounted Police back into the North in the way it has been respected in the past, and we thank you for that."

The St. Roch II crew left behind a CD containing the first set of digitized photos from the more than 5,000 photographs stored at the Vancouver Maritime Museum that were taken by crew aboard the original St. Roch. Tuk residents were urged to look over these photos and contact the museum if they could help identify anyone.

After the ceremonies, the many people present sampled the large amounts of food located on the centre table. The Tuktoyaktuk Drummers and Dancers closed out the celebration, and the Mounties nearly brought the house down by joining them.

The St. Roch II departed Tuk on Monday.