Inuvik (Mar 20/98) - The man who drove his dog team through the Northern Lights, and about whom it was said could curl up like a dog on the tundra and sleep comfortably through the worst winter storm, died on Sunday.

He will be buried in the graveyard overlooking Inuvik today under a tombstone engraved with the message that he wanted to be remembered by. It will say simply, "Slim Semmler. He was a dog musher."

Semmler, the colorful trapper, storyteller and the owner of the first dry-goods store to open in Inuvik as the town was being built in 1957, died in Inuvik Regional Hospital this week aged 97.

Semmler, whose real name was Lawrence Fredrick but who was nicknamed "Slim" because he was so tall and slender, was born in Oregon and came North to be a trapper 70 years ago.

As a young man, Slim tried farming in Alberta but became discouraged at the back-breaking work of digging out huge stumps and began trapping instead, doing so well that he sent a letter to the Canadian government asking for a map of Hudson's Bay posts in the North where he might try making it his livelihood.

Looking at the map, he was attracted to the area near Kuglugtuk in the Eastern Arctic because it was so remote. And, as he put it later with a wide smile, "I wasn't scared of the cold, I wasn't scared of nothing."

Slim spent 20 years there, becoming one of the area's most successful trappers. One of his catches was his wife Agnes, whom he met after walking into a tent in Bernard Harbour one year.

"She was eating Jell-O, so I sat down and ate Jell-O with her," he would recall later. "I've been eating Jell-O ever since."

In later years, the couple became traders, selling flour, tea and other staples, a venture that brought him to Inuvik, then named East Three, in 1957. His first store was a wood-floored tent on the beach of the new community which was used until it was replaced by a succession of more permanent buildings. He never gave up the bush, though, and only sold his cabins when he was too old to work his traplines and mink farm outside town.

Friends from the early days of Inuvik remember a hard-nosed businessman who kept a chainsaw chain with a tape-wrapped handle underneath the counter in case of robbers, but also a decent man who went out of his way to help people going through hard times with cash or merchandise.

"He helped a lot of people out," recalled Gordie Campbell, who knew Semmler for almost 35 years. "I don't think anyone knows the number of people he helped, even him."

Semmler's most memorable story was the time he drove his dog team through the lights west of Coppermine 60 years ago. Years later, he recounted how the lights appeared directly in front of him near Cape Krusenstern, causing the air to sizzle and his dogs to panic and howl. He guided the team away from the lights, but later described how they had left scars where they had cut into the snowbanks and tundra, and how his dogs were "goofy" for days.

Semmler's stories were what friends remember most, and he was mentally sharp up until the end, recalling how trappers used to cut eyeholes in potato sacks to protect their faces from freezing while driving the trail or how he and two other men walked out of the tundra after a shipwreck after surviving on a diet of mice and whatever else they could catch to arguing Northern politics and government with his friends.

"He led pretty much the life he wanted to live," said Campbell.

His funeral was held at the Igloo Church today. Semmler leaves behind his wife Agnes, two daughters, a son and an adopted son.