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Kirsten Murphy
Northern News Services
Iqaluit (July 23/01) - Had returning Second World War veterans not taken Gordon Rennie's seat at McGill University, life would have been very different -- and likely very boring -- for one Newfoundland teenager.
 Gordon Rennie |
News/North: You're 72 years old and you look great. What's your secret?
Gordon Rennie: A triple bypass three years ago on July 13. And I walk 32 minutes every day.
N/N: Regardless of the weather?
GR: I have a state of the art treadmill.
N/N: You have a fantastic memory for dates and names.
GR: It's something I live with (laughs). I like it when people ask questions.
N/N: Perhaps your greatest claim to fame is working for the Hudson's Bay Company, now the Northwest Company, for five decades. Tell me about the early days.
GR: Frobisher Bay was the first heated store I'd worked in. In Kimmirut, where you didn't have a heated warehouse, you didn't sell things like canned soups or Carnation milk. Here you could.
N/N: When did the HBC shift from trading post to store?
GR: When I came here in December '56. They'd done away with trading tokens.
N/N: Trading tokens?
GR: Everything was predicated on the cost of white foxes.
N/N: Predicated? Based on?
GR: That's right. I've just been aching for a chance to use that word (roars with laughter). There was a lot of employment with all the construction. A tremendous number of the people from Kimmirut, including Sarah's father, came here. Sarah -- who later became my wife -- came to work for us as a housekeeper.
N/N: And before that?
GR: We'd come to Frobisher by dog team. It was like the big city. The Americans were here with PX or BX and you could buy current records or cameras at U.S.-cost prices. I used to buy a case of cigarettes at a time.
N/N: How much?
GR: One dollar a carton, or 10 cents a package.
N/N: How did people travel between Apex and the military base?
GR: MoT (Ministry of Transportation) had a Bombardier.
N/N: What significantly changed this area in your lifetime?
GR: By 1958, DIAND started building a town site in Apex. They couldn't build in what's now Iqaluit because it was U.S. territory. Then Inuit started moving in from the camps.
N/N: Before Iqaluit, you spent three years in Kimmirut, then known as Lake Harbour.
GR: Your office was in your residence. When people came into trade you'd give them a mug of coffee and a couple biscuits. In Kimmirut we'd give out dog feed. Everyone came in from camps by dog team, this was way before snowmobiles.
N/N: What kind of dog feed?
GR: We'd send out a walrus hunt. They'd go to Locksland, around the most eastern end of Frobisher Bay. They'd fill a Peterhead boat with walrus and then we store them in a warehouse until the dogs came in. One year the engine went on the boat and we didn't make the walrus hunt. Behind Kimmirut is a lake with reversing falls. It was full then, probably still is, of rock cod. We jigged hundreds, I mean hundreds, of rock cod, then haul them back by dog sled.
N/N: You met your wife Sarah in Kimmirut?
GR: My wife was the first Inuk person I met there. Her father had a Peterhead boat, he'd come out to meet the company ship, the MV Rupert's Land or the C.D. Howe (a government ship). His job was to pilot the them through the narrows. Sarah and her sister were on the boat. (Twenty years later) we were the first couple married in the Anglican cathedral in Iqaluit in 1970.
N/N: You took your time.
GR: You didn't jump into things then.
N/N: Was it hard fitting in?
GR: They spent most of their time making fun of me (laughs). My clothes and dialect were from the Central Arctic.
N/N: In 1947, 10 years before arriving in what was then Frobisher Bay, you worked in a half-dozen posts, including Arviat and Tavane in the Central Arctic. Did it feel like an adventure extraordinary at the time?
GR: When I got up on the Peterhead boat and looked at the shore and everybody in town was lined up waiting to shake my hand yes, I wondered what I was getting into. In those days, that was a very isolated place. There only other white person was the store manager and I was the trainee.
N/N: How did you communicate with HBC head office?
GR: Everything was done by radio, now it's telephone. Radio messages were done in CW, Morse Code. That's the first thing I learned in Tavane. I was there 18 months, six months alone because the manager moved out to another store. Then I travelled down the coast by dog team and canoed down to Churchill. Back in those days you were only allowed to take holidays every three years. Then it was every two years, then recently, like 20 years ago, they changed it to every year.
N/N: Did you ever think of quitting?
GR: Once. In Duck Lake (Manitoba) some of the Chipewyan started giving me a hard time. I couldn't speak a word of Chipewyan at the time. The only way I could converse with them was through an old chief who spent some time with Inuit and knew some Inuktitut. By then I could speak a fair amount of Inuktitut. I look back on it as a good negotiating experience.
N/N: You retired in 1996. Was there ever any doubt you'd work for the HBC as long as you did?
GR: I hadn't planned to join the Hudson's Bay Company. I was going to go to university. I had my entrance certificates for McGill and Memorial College (Newfoundland). Then the word was I wouldn't be able to attend because returning (war) veterans were given first choice.
Then I saw an ad in the St. John's Evening Telegram looking for young men wanting a life of adventure in the Canadian North. So I answered the advertisement and they snapped me up.
N/N: Did you consider yourself adventurous?
GR: I'd always worked but I'd never consider myself adventuresome. It was a job.
N/N: Living here for 50 years is a drop in the bucket if you're an Inuk. You, though, have roots in Newfoundland. What made you stay?
GR: It was an interesting life I got used to. Everybody's got to be somewhere. I've thought about buying a house in the south and spending time there but I'm into real estate. Aside from Bill MacKenzie's house, I own six other homes so I have to look after my interests. I had 14 places at one time. I don't own the land, nobody does.
N/N: You served on town council and later as mayor? What do you think of the current labour dispute?
GR: I don't see why they couldn't have reached a settlement by now.
N/N: If Mayor John Matthews and Doug Workman had a thumb war, who would win?
GR: Please don't ask me that.
N/N: You left St. John's, Nfld., in 1947. Have you returned?
GR: Oh yes, I'm not Bill MacKenzie, I love to travel. We were in Cuba for two weeks, we go to Vegas every year. Sarah loves to gamble.
N/N: A lot has been said about Bill MacKenzie. Anything to add?
GR: Anything that hasn't been said, I'm not going to say. I knew Bill very well, his idiosyncrasies.
N/N: Any future plans?
GR: Nothing I'm going to talk about (laughs).
