Terry Halifax
Northern News Services

Aklavik (July 12/02) - A woman came back to the Delta for a visit last week, after being away for more than 50 years.

Winifred Scott came back to visit the Delta after being away for 50 years. - Terry Halifax/NNSL photo

Winifred Scott came North in July of 1943 to work at the Aklavik hospital.

"I had taken a course at the Anglican Women's Training College in Toronto and I met Bishop (Archibald Lang) Fleming, who was Bishop of the Arctic," Scott recalled. "They offered me a job and I took them up on it."

After she completed her studies, the young woman returned home to Manitoba to spend a month with her family before taking the journey North.

She took the train to Edmonton and then to Waterways -- about two miles from Fort McMurray.

"From there, we boarded the Northland Echo as far as Fort Fitzgerald," she recalled.

The boat at the Bell Rock portage wasn't ready to sail, so they stayed aboard the Echo while they waited.

At the time, Fort Fitzgerald was booming with the U.S. Army and Canol pipeline crew so, lodgings were limited.

"The kept the Northland Echo in port as a floating hotel for us," she said.

Scott spent the next three weeks aboard a Hudson Bay boat, travelling from Fort Smith to Aklavik.

"The boat burned wood for fuel and we spent as much time loading wood as we did travelling," she chuckled.

On landing in Aklavik she was sorry the boat ride had to end.

"I was reluctant to get off the boat, because it had been our home for three weeks and we'd enjoyed the trip so much," Scott said. "I think if someone had offered me a trip back, right then, I would have gone."

She went to work in the 40-bed hospital where she also lived.

"The staff quarters were full-up, so I had a room upstairs where the patients were," she said. "There were three RNs, a cook and myself -- that was the entire staff."

Her job was to do the hospital laundry and help out with the cooking when the cook had her half-day off.

"The patients preferred their own diet to ours and someone had brought in this big pot of soup," she remembered. "I took the lid off this pot and floating around on the top were all these rabbits eyes!"

"I remember slamming the lid back on very quickly."

She worked at the hospital for two-and-a-half years until she married Edgar Scott and the couple had a baby girl.

The newlyweds lived in an 8'X16' "caboose," and spent much of their time working out on the Delta. One spring day they received some sad news.

"We were north of Aklavik and we got a radio message from Freeman Humley that our house was flooding," Scott said.

They returned home to find their home up to the eaves in the swollen Mackenzie River. Once the water subsided, they dug out and dragged the caboose into town.

Edgar worked with the Carmichael family and she got to know them all. She had a visit from Fred while here on her visit.

"The last time I saw him, he was 11 years old," Scott remembered with a smile.

"I made him a pair of gloves for his 11th birthday."

On return from her trip to Aklavik, she said there were a lot of new roads and not too many familiar sights.

"The only thing that I could recognize was the mission house," she said. "It's the only building that's still the same."

"The one person I was hoping to see passed away a couple years ago," she said. "Her name was Dolly McLeod and she was one of the first people I'd met there."

"At 87, there just aren't too many people left."