Prior to the First World War, the Canadian government began installing radio telegraph stations in key locations in Northern Canada. These stations, administered by the Royal Canadian Corp of Signals (RCCS), were expensive, high powered and operated by specially trained radiomen. And although they were a military project, the services would be available for civilian use. The Hudson’s Bay Company was keenly interested. The problem was many stations operated only seasonally or were located far from the smaller HBC outposts, making it difficult for the company to use them.
By the mid-1930s, however, the HBC had found a way to connect to this innovative communications infrastructure: It developed simple radio transceivers for company outposts that could run off 12-volt car batteries charged by wind-power generators, the same ones found on many prairie farms. In the NWT, incoming and outgoing messages between the outposts and HBC headquarters in Winnipeg were relayed through two high-powered RCCS stations. Beyond Winnipeg, these messages could travel through a near-global telegraph system.
The new system dramatically changed the way the HBC conducted business in the North. It also had a huge and unexpected impact on domestic life. Because of their power limitations, the HBC’s desktop-sized transceivers could only send and receive messages in Morse code and that was a problem. At first, trading-post apprentices were given the responsibility of learning this complicated system of dots and dashes. But the Hudson’s Bay Company was not restricting use of the new system to company business, so the wives of post managers took up the challenge to learn and use Morse code. They began using the transceivers to communicate freely with other trading posts and with family and friends down south and to keep track of what was going on in the world. This was new and exciting. Bearing the burden of isolation that was once a requirement of living in Canada’s Far North was being lifted one dot and dash at a time.
That was amply demonstrated in July of 1937. The HBC’s radiotelegraph system was experiencing an extraordinary volume of traffic, largely due to great interest in a tour of the North by Canada’s governor general at the time, Lord Tweedsmuir. Messages addressed to a certain “Honeychile” were attracting no small amount of attention, too. But who was Honeychile?
The HBC was hosting Lord Tweedsmuir’s summer tour and had reorganized the schedule for its fleet of steam-driven paddlewheelers to accommodate the governor general and many important invited guests
There was also a literal boatload of newspaper reporters on hand to document the historic journey. All were passengers onboard the SS Northland Echo as it travelled down the Athabasca and Slave rivers towards Fort Fitzgerald on the Alberta-NWT border. This was the beginning of the portage to Fort Smith, where the paddlewheeler SS Distributor was waiting to carry them all on the next leg of their journey.
During the trip to Fort Fitzgerald, the governor general, the guests and dignitaries, and the reporters witnessed an extraordinary event. While en route, the paddlewheeler was buzzed by a float plane that then landed on the river. With the Northland Echo pulled over to shore, the plane delivered a young woman loaded down with all manner of photographic equipment and, much to the surprise of everyone onboard, several boxes containing the chrysalises of mourning cloak butterflies. Under the stern gaze of the captain, this charming young woman introduced herself as Margaret Bourke-White, a photojournalist from New York. Life magazine had assigned her to cover Lord Tweedsmuir’s historic tour of the Canadian North. The chrysalises were along for the ride, waiting to be photographed as the butterflies emerged.
The captain fell to her charms and, later, agreed to pull over to shore when the chrysalises began to emerge so that the ship’s vibrations wouldn’t ruin the young photographer’s images. He also gave up his private cabin so Bourke-White didn’t have to sleep on deck of what was a very crowded boat.
When the Northland Echo reached Fort Fitzgerald, the passengers crossed the portage to Fort Smith and boarded the SS Distributor. This larger well-appointed ship would take them on a 2,100-kilometre journey down north to the Arctic Ocean.
Before the ship’s departure, a radio operator from the station at Fort Smith came aboard, looked around and, seeing Bourke-White, walked over and said, “We have been searching all over for someone who fits this telegram. You are the likeliest candidate.” The operator handed her an envelope addressed to “HONEYCHILE, ARCTIC CIRCLE, CANADA.” The message inside read, “COME HOME AND MARRY ME. SIGNED SKINNY.”
As the Distributor continued its journey down the Mackenzie River, there were many more telegraph exchanges between Honeychile and Skinny. At Fort Norman (now called Tulita), the ship made a longer stop to let its boiler cool, have the accumulated muck cleaned out and allow Lord Tweedsmuir to climb a nearby mountain.
During that long layover at Fort Norman, a radio operator came onboard with a telegram addressed to “HONEYCHILE, ARCTIC REGION.” It contained a desperate plea for Bourke-White to return home. Her response was an emphatic, “No.” She couldn’t come straight home, and she didn’t want to marry Skinny.
And that’s how Erskine Caldwell—the famous American author of Tobacco Road and God’s Little Acre and Margaret Bourke-White’s on-again, off-again boyfriend—had his heart broken.
For the radio operators across the North who “listened to Margaret and Erskine’s cables as if they were on a party line,” this looked like the end. Bourke-White was soon off on a thrilling new Life assignment photographing High Arctic communities from an airplane while Caldwell kept busy working on his latest novel.
But it didn’t end there. When Bourque-White finally returned to New York, she got back together with Caldwell. They made up and married early the next year. The marriage only lasted two years, however. Caldwell was busy writing best-selling novels while Bourke-White was off to Europe to photograph and report on the outbreak of war. She became famous as the first female war correspondent and went on to a distinguished career as a photojournalist. She and Skinny never reconciled.