INUVIK
This is not the first time Sheila Calvert has travelled the road named for her father, but she suspects it will be the last.

Sheila Dempster-Calvert, left, and cousin Tim Footman take a break from their trip along the Dempster Highway to take in the view at the Arctic Circle. - photo courtesy of Tim Footman

At 85 years old, she said she doesn't look too far into the future.

"I don't imagine I'll come back, but you never know," she told the Drum. "You can't make plans too far ahead at this stage, you know."

Calvert, who goes by her maiden name of Dempster when in the North, embarked on her most recent trip earlier this month, travelling from British Columbia to Whitehorse, and from there driving to Inuvik.

Accompanied by her cousin, Tim Footman, and his wife, she said retracing her own steps and those of her father, Jack Dempster, was a powerful experience.

"It's been a great trip for me," said Calvert. "It's on my mind so much. How could they possibly know the way? How can you know when you're just looking at an expanse of snow? It's very much on my mind that this is where he was."

Jack Dempster led a party of RCMP officers who braved the wilderness to find the famed Lost Patrol in 1911. The patrol, led by Insp. Francis Joseph Fitzgerald, died of exposure and starvation while travelling to Dawson City from Fort McPherson after becoming lost on the trail. Dempster and his men found the bodies on March 22, 1911.

The story has gone down in Canadian lore, with scores of books written about it. Despite being a main character's child, Calvert said it wasn't much talked about when she was growing up.

"It wasn't an easy life. Dad didn't talk about it a lot," she said. "He did talk about how they would look after their dog teams, they depended on them. But when writers would come wanting to do books, he would never talk to them. He was very modest."

Calvert and her brother were present when the highway was christened in 1979, and much recognition was made of her and her brother's presence.

She returned to the area in 1991 for a birding trip and again this year. Both times she has always come across people wanting to meet a Dempster.

So many people, she said, seem to have a connection to the story of the patrol or her father or the road.

Footman said the trip had been a great experience.

"It's been really interesting seeing the places where all this history happened," he said.

That history is much closer to Calvert than it may be for others. While visiting Keno, Yukon, she learned about a particular camp - named after a man called Wernecke - that was one of the first of its kind to try to cater to families with women and children, to make it livable.

She said she had grown up with a silver tea set that had been a wedding present to her parents, with "From the boys at Wernecke Camp" stamped on the bottom.

She said seeing the place where the tea set came from had really been something special.

"It's so different," she said. "I don't think I knew much about the details of his life until I started reading about it. It wasn't talked about."

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