The story of Leonidas Hubbard's doomed expedition into the Labrador interior, as recorded by his traveling companion Dillon Wallace.
By a campfire in southern New York in 1901, Leonidas Hubbard Jr. put the question to his friend: “How would you like to go to Labrador, Wallace?”
By 1903 the plans were laid and Hubbard confided: “It will be a big thing, Wallace. It ought to make my reputation.”
The two set out with their guide, George Elson, to canoe up the Nascapi River to Lake Michikamau in the interior of Labrador and make new maps, meet Indians, and run with caribou – all fodder for famous magazine articles Hubbard would write. But alas, they took the wrong river and Hubbard’s reputation was made instead through his death by starvation on the Susan River. A hundred years later the tale of his folly is no less poignant.
