Richard Gleeson
Northern News Services

NNSL (May 31/99) - Tom Holst has cooked his way across the North over the last 30 years.

During that time he was based in Yellowknife, a place where people were always willing to give each other a hand, where deals were done on a handshake.

That changes that have occurred since he arrived haven't been enough to erase the memories of those old days, and the friendships that were forged then.

In his first years here, Holst said he had "more friends and more money in the bank than ever before."

Holst: When I say more friends, I mean more people who would just say, 'What are you doing Saturday night?' or 'What are you doing on Sunday?' And offer you dinner or go fishing with you just like that.

Yellowknifer: When did you arrive?

Holst: May of 1970. From Toronto. During those first years I was a member of the Elks' Club and the Legion. I could go down there at two o'clock in the afternoon and see an oldtimer, like Gordon Greenway or Danny Bagen -- you'd sit and talk to them and, next thing you know, it's eleven o'clock at night. They'd be so full of stories of the North and what they'd done.

This is part of what made me stay up here.

And the one thing about the North, if you want to work, and you get the respect of the people up here as a worker, you'll get hired again. And people will come to you. You don't have to go to them. I've travelled all across the Northwest Territories, being paid for it. A cooking job here, a cooking job there. I've been on the Beaufort Sea, done bush camp cooking.

Two weeks in and two weeks out, or five weeks in and two weeks out. And at the end of the winter you'd be walking down the street and someone would say, 'Tom, what are you doing for the next month? Well, do you want to go up to the Cambridge Bay M.O.T. base, or Arctic Red River or over to Rankin Inlet, while their cooks are on holidays?'

Yellowknifer: I guess the cook is an important part of any camp.

Holst: The cook is the centre of a bush camp. If the food's bad, the men are going to be bad. They're working 12 hour shifts, they want to be fed, fed good, and a lot of it.

Yellowknifer: Get a chance to fish much?

Holst: Some of these camps I've been in have been near virgin lakes, lakes that haven't seen man before. And the fishing! They'll take anything.

I remember one camp I worked, the cook wanted to come out for two weeks, so I went in there. But after one week he came back. The foreman said to me 'If you wish to stay, you can, or you can go back.' So I said I would stay for the week.

So I did the breakfasts and the other cook, Hans, did the suppers. It was a geologists' camp. Everybody took off for the day and it was just soup and sandwiches for lunch.

One day I went out to the lake and tossed my line in and got three grayling right away. I put them on a stringer and went back and said 'Hans, we'll have grayling for supper.' I went back down and there was only one grayling on the stringer. But you should have seen the trout.

Yellowknifer: The trout ate the two grayling?

Holst: Yeah! There was seven or eight trout in maybe three feet of water, at the most. I thought 'Well, here trout,' and flipped it in and pulled one out.

Yellowknifer: Where was this?

Holst: About a hundred miles east of Great Bear Lake.

Yellowknifer: What's your best cooking experience?

Holst: The best for me was doing weddings. My signature at a wedding was to have the beef carved to order. We'd have the buffet table, then I would be at the end, with a hip of beef. The head table would get served, then the rest would come through and I'd serve them.

Another thing I did at weddings was kidnap the bride.

I'd take her downstairs or take her some place. We'd have a beer, and I would demand a ransom from the groom. So I'd bring her back to the groom, and the ransom would be paid, and I'd say, 'Oh, and there's one other thing. She wants you to get down on one knee again and propose to her.'

Or something of that nature. And quite a few people remember that as a part of the happiness of their wedding.

Yellowknifer: Have you done many weddings?

Holst: Yes. Since I've been up here, I'd say a good 100 weddings ... and I've probably worked most places here in town at least once.

Yellowknifer: Okay, what's your worst cooking experience? Any nightmare experiences?

Holst: That was a cooking job with this oil company that said, 'You'll be cooking for 15 people, have a stove and a well-stocked kitchen. So I ordered stuff like turkeys and roast beef, things to cook in the oven.

When we were on the plane I realized, 'This is a start-up crew.' All I had when we got out there was a two-burner Coleman stove in a 16 foot tent. And everybody was in there.

I didn't take much bread with me, because I was going to bake my own. I didn't take much dessert with me, because I was going to bake my own.

So we had things like turkey steaks. I'd cook the potatoes and put them on the oil heater they had for the tent, I'd do the vegetables and put them on there, then fry the steaks up. I invented a new way of cooking.

Yellowknifer: You had to.

Holst: When you're out in a bush camp cooking, necessity is the inventor. I took the Coleman stove and made an oven with tinfoil and baked bread. Mind you, it took me almost a day to do five or six loaves, but I did it.

Yellowknifer: How long were you there for?

Holst: About six weeks.

Yellowknifer: Apart from the people, what big changes have you seen here?

Holst: I'm a little disappointed there's only one or two float plane companies in town. When I first came here there used to be at least seven. I used to live down in Old Town. You could hear them taking off and you could tell what kind of plane it was by the sound of it.

And as you got to know the people down there, the pilots and personnel, they would say, 'Oh, we have to take a run out to such and such a place today. If you want to hop a ride we'll drop you off to fish and pick you up when we're coming back the next day.' Then, in exchange, you would do something for them, when they're really busy and you're just wandering around. Give them a hand rolling some barrels on a plane, or something like that.

Yellowknifer: I don't think that happens much anymore.

Holst: That's a big thing. Everything's turned from helping each other to business. Gone are the days when a handshake and a person's word were their bond.