Marty Brown
Northern News Services

NNSL (Aug 10/98) - John Clark first saw Fort Reliance in 1950. He was 19 years old and a junior member of the RCMP.

That's when his love affair with the country around the East Arm of Great Slave Lake and the Barrens began, a love affair that continues to this day.

"I've been posted in a lot of places," said the retired RCMP officer. "But Reliance is the only place I return to -- it never changes."

The RCMP detachment buildings have been bought by Yellowknife's Finlayson family, who now run a fishing lodge there, and the Royal Canadian Core of Signals station that housed a weather station has been boarded up, but trapper Noel Drybones still lives around the point.

The land and the water are still the same.

One log doghouse at the lodge remains, a testament to the working dogs that once lived there.

There's still lots of fish in the icy waters of Great Slave Lake, even though RCMP netted 18,000 pounds of fish a year for dog food then.

"I was born in Fort Nelson, B.C., so I was no stranger to mosquitoes or black flies," Clark said. "My father was an RCMP officer in Fort Rae in 1921, so the RCMP life seemed like a good life to me."

Clark applied to come North and after regular training and a two-week crash course in first aid, including mid-wifery, Clark wrote out his will and headed North.

The job of the two-member detachment was mostly administrative. A special constable, George Powder, and his family were housed at the detachment. Powder's job was to guide and translate for the members.

"We issued hunting and trapping licences, checked on the well-being of trappers, pulled the odd tooth and mostly flew the company flag," Clark said. "There was no crime then."

Because there was no Indian agent at Reliance or Lutselk'e, the RCMP detachment handled all medical supplies for the area. There are still little empty medicine bottles in the attic of the old detachment house.

There was nothing in Lutselk'e then, Clark remembered. Just a Hudson's Bay Company store and house, a church and a few houses for widows.

"If you wanted to visit with people, you had to travel with them, dog teams in winter, Peterborough canoes in summer. It was different times then. Everybody got along."

Between cutting wood to fuel fires at the detachment and fishing to feed the dogs, the RCMP members and Powder were kept busy. "It was like running a farm, watering and feeding all the animals."

But it was cutting wood that shortened Clark's stay at Reliance. The Fairbank's Morris stationary engine used for cutting wood hadn't been running for a year. Clark cranked it, but it kicked back and broke his wrist.

Clark left for Yellowknife the next day, his first trip out in two years. He didn't return to Reliance for 25 years.

In 1977 Clark drove to Fort Resolution and put his 22-foot freighter canoe in the water and headed for Fort Reliance. Since then he has made 10 visits to the place where things remain the same.

The gas for the kicker on his canoe was brought by barge this trip -- the same company that barged him fuel 47 years ago.