*These podcasts are currently in production with an anticipated launch date in mid to late September 2024.
DownNorth Tales Podcast
Yellowknife, Canada
downnorthtales@downnorth.ca
What it’s all about!
Welcome to DownNorth Tales, a podcast telling stories from Canada’s far north. These are stories from the history of northern Canada that you likely have never heard before. In the stories there’s little mention of Sir John Franklin, Alexander Mackenzie or Samual Hearne. My focus is on stories of adventure and misadventure, of tragedy and comedy.
My name is Randy Freeman, I’m an Historical Geographer (MA), an Anthropologist/Archaeologist (BA) and someone who loves telling stories. I’ve lived in Yellowknife, the Capital of Canada’s Northwest Territories, for close to 40 years and during that time gathered many, many hundreds of fascinating stories about people, events and places in the north.
You might be asking why! Why this obsession for unusual northern stories and why ‘downnorth’? The age-old adage ‘everyone loves a good story’ probably explains my obsession but why I chose to call them ‘DownNorth Tales’ is a little more obscure. The expression ‘down north’, sometime spelled ‘downnorth’, was in use from the mid-1880s to the 1950s and 60s to describe how many travellers came north, down the rivers (Athabasca, Slave, Mackenzie, etc) that flowed north to the Arctic Ocean.
I moved ‘downnorth’ in 1985. I was hired by the Government of the Northwest Territories (as their Territorial Toponymist) to create a way for First Nations governments to request the recognition of their traditional place names. These names are used for lakes, rivers, hills, mountains and villages, some have been in use for thousands of years. My work required lots and lots of historical research.
While researching place name origins, I started to come across stories that I found fascinating and, being a storyteller, I started to re-tell these stories and forced my friends to listen. One friend was a producer from CBC North radio (for you non-Canadians out there CBC stands for Canadian Broadcasting Corporation). This producer challenged me to come into the CBC studios and tell a story or two. Before I knew it, I was asked to become a freelance broadcaster for CBC and was given a weekly time slot to come in and tell stories. That side gig lasted from 1996 to 2009,13 years with a total of 457 radio programs! I also became a freelance history columnist for Up Here Magazine (www.uphere.ca) and, from 1999 to 2011, wrote 89 columns. I have recently been asked to return to Up Here Magazine, you may want to check out this popular Canadian magazine.
The following are brief descriptions of the first six stories I will be posting to your favourite podcast provider:
The Little Policeman (Aklavik, NWT 1936)
This was a classic ‘good cop/bad cop’ routine. The Big Policeman, 6’7” Ernest Covell, would bring in a group of troublemakers and entertain them with magic tricks, while the Little Policeman sat in the corner of the Aklavik RCMP detachment waiting his turn to ruthlessly interrogate these suspects.
McMeekan’s Canadian Club (Yellowknife, NWT 1946)
At its peak, Hiram Walker’s Canadian Club was one of the most popular whiskeys in the world. Clever marketing was the key to its success and in the 1940s the New York-based advertising agency that handled the contract wasn’t beyond a little bullying when it came to finding the perfect subjects and locations for their ads. Just ask Jock and Mildred McMeekan of Yellowknife, they were the victims of a ‘home invasion’ by these New York types!
Baptist Cadian (Fort Norman, NWT 1835)
Baptiste Cadien’s future looked grim. Condemned “to be taken, &c. and on the sixteenth of March instant he be hanged by the neck until his body be dead”, his only hope was a last-minute appeal for clemency. Baptiste Cadien’s slow march to the gallows began when his wife left him or, as he claimed, was ‘stolen’ by a Sahtu Dene. This was in the fall of 1835 while Cadien was employed at the Hudson’s Bay Company’s Mackenzie District trading post of Fort Norman (now Tulita) as a Dogrib interpreter. Appeals for clemency worked, instead of execution, the sentence became “transportation to Van Diemen’s Land”.
Tex Morton (Yellowknife, NWT 1951)
When Tex Morton arrived in Yellowknife in July of 1951 to perform his travelling magic show, he immediately realized that his death-defying pre-show stunt wasn’t going to work in this Far North community. This country-singer-turned-hypnotist and magician always offered a teaser, which usually drew a crowd and earned enough hype to sell out his shows. Morton wasn’t just your average stage hypnotist. He was a New Zealander who, as a teenager, moved to Australia and by 1936 was famous for his songs, they were hits on many Australian radio stations. So, why Yellowknife and whyhypnotism?
Hulbert Footner, Going Down North, the Long Way! (Hay River, NWT 1911)
Born and raised in Hamilton, Ontario Hulbert Footner left home at the age of nineteen and headed for the bright lights of Broadway. This was 1898 and talented Broadway actors were the toast of New York's upper crust. Unfortunately, this didn't include Hulbert Footner. He was, as described many years later by his son Geoffrey, simply "a bad actor". In 1911 Footner decided to seek fame in a different direction, he would become a northern explorer and write about his adventures! On his way north Footner purchased, in a bar in Edmonton, a hand drawn map that would show the way. For the outrageous sum of five dollars Footner got a map that was just wrong!
Lord Tweedsmuir (Mackenzie River, NWT)
“The Governor-General was always keen for physical exercise...and no sooner did he set his eyes on Bear Rock than he wanted to climb it.” Bear Rock, a few miles downstream from Fort Norman (now Tulita), rises thirteen hundred feet above the waters of the Mackenzie River. It’s one of the most sacred of sites for the Dene people of the north, they call it Kweteni?aa. So how is it that Canada’s fifteenth Governor-General, Lord Tweedsmuir, found himself both willing and able to climb this sacred mountain? And aren’t Governor-Generals, as the sovereign’s personal representatives in Canada, supposed to be stuffy, port-drinking, cigar-smoking old British gentlemen of aristocratic birth? John Buchan, a.k.a. Lord Tweedsmuir, was not your typical Governor General!