After 72 years, a remote reunion of sorts at Fort Ross

Sarah Marcus, of Stamford, Connecticut [left], and Marjorie Adams of Colchester, Vermont, peer into the windows of a building at Fort Ross, an abandoned Hudson’s Bay Company post on Somerset Island. Marcus is the great-granddaughter and Adams the granddaughter of Walter Queen, who travelled to the site in 1937. (PHOTO BY CHRIS WINDEYER)

FORT ROSS — Seventy-two years to the day after her grandfather landed on a lonely beach on Somerset Island, Marjorie Adams laid eyes on two simple shacks he helped build.

Walter Queen, a Massachusetts industrialist and engineer in the U.S. Navy, was a paying passenger aboard the Nascopie, the Hudson’s Bay Company ship that on Sept. 2, 1937 landed at Depot Bay and began construction of the Fort Ross trading post.

On Sept. 2, 2009, Adams, wearing Queen’s old atigi, stepped off a zodiac that brought her from the cruise ship Lyubov Orlova and fulfilled a personal dream that spanned 27 years.

“I’m just feeling so happy to be here,” Adams, a retired science teacher from Colchester, Vermont, said. “I’ve wanted to be here ever since I found my grandfather’s letters back in 1982.”

Between those letters and a collection of still photos and movie footage taken by Queen himself, Adams has been able to piece together a picture of his journey to the Canadian Arctic.

Queen was a former commander in the US Navy who was called into service on the day the First World War ended, Adams said. After the war, he made his fortune inventing and producing expansion joints for steam ships.

He was also a member of the Ancient and Honorable Artillery Company of Massachusetts, a militia during the American Revolution that evolved into a social organization for veterans, Adams said. In 1933, at the age of 53, Queen bought passage on Robert Byrd’s expedition to Antarctica and took the flag of “The Ancients” to 78 degrees south.

“I’d love to go to the Antarctic,” Adams said. “But there are human stories involved here and I guess I’m more interested in human stories than penguin stories. [Fort Ross] is the centre of where all of his journey that summer was focused.”

Adams said she suspects part of Queen’s motivation for going on the Arctic trip was to fly that flag as far north as he had south. Whether he accomplished that isn’t clear, but it’s possible. Adams said the Nascopie also travelled to Ellesmere Island that summer.

On Sept. 2, 1937 the Nascopie was at anchor in Dept Bay, waiting for another HBC ship, the Aklavik, to arrive from the west through Bellot Strait. Together, the two ships completed a transit of the Northwest Passage. Then, as now, it was a rare feat, even for two ships.

Fort Ross was an HBC post from 1937 to 1947. In the Nunavut Handbook, historian Kenn Harper writes that Fort Ross was home to Inuit who the HBC moved from Cape Dorset, Pangnirtung and Pond Inlet to a post on Devon Island to trap foxes. When that post closed the company moved the Inuit to Arctic Bay and then Fort Ross.

“That post proved difficult to resupply because of ice conditions,” Harper wrote, “and in 1947 it closed.” From there most of the Inuit settled at what is now known as Taloyoak.

But two buildings still stand, (one still contains furniture a person could probably sit in), with only the odd piece of plywood thrown up to protect against the elements. Seventy-two years ago Queen may have had a hard time imagining his granddaughter would travel here on a cruise ship.

That Adams arrived at Fort Ross on Sept. 2 is itself a fluke: the Orlova had to change its schedule due to ice conditions in the Victoria Strait, and wasn’t supposed to call here until Sept. 4.

Imagining Fort Ross 72 years from now, Adams said, “I would just hope for a happy fortune for this place.”

“You know, it’s just the most wonderful place for the lichen to grow and for nature to take its course….” she said, tearing up.

“I am so glad I didn’t see ruins.”