“One of the things that always amazed me was that people in the south knew nothing about this magnificent river, the magnificent lakes. They knew nothing about the North.”
As an 18-year-old, Neil Gower wanted to learn about northern oil and gas exploration, and the role northern transportation played in the 1970s.
“All the freight went through Hay River, all the pipes, and the drilling rigs, and the trucks,” he said.
“There isn’t as much written about this as you’d think.”
Ultimately, that led the adult Gower to begin work on a book – A Métis Man’s Dream, which was published earlier this year and follows Gordon Gill, a Métis resident of the North, from his start as a cook’s helper on the tugboat MV Malta to his founding of Northern Arc Shipbuilders and Northern Crane Services.
Advertisement.
Advertisement.
Gower himself worked with Northern Transportation (which has since morphed into the GNWT-owned Marine Transportation Services) for four summers in Fort Smith, Hay River, Norman Wells, and along the Great Bear River. Hay River loomed large in Gill’s life, too.
Gower said writing the book and telling Gill’s story was his way of educating people about the existence and history of tugboats and barges on the Mackenzie River.
Gill and Gower say they have donated roughly $9,000 in book sales to three organizations – the Hay River Métis Government Council, United for Literacy and the Edmonton Community Foundation.
Gower, who is also Gill’s lawyer, said his hard work and “willingness to take a risk” persuaded him to write the book. He wanted to share Gill’s story in a “sensitive compilation of his remembrances of the changes he has seen in his lifetime.”
Advertisement.
Advertisement.
“When business was bad, when oil exploration in the Arctic and the Beaufort Sea fell to nothing and the shipping industry in Hay River was decimated, Gordon went around to all the people that had a crane and weren’t using them,” Gower said.
“He created a crane company out of what was kind-of the remains of the shipbuilding industry.”
Gill could not be reached directly to speak about his story. However, in an email response shared by Gower, Gill said the most challenging aspect of life aboard tugboats was “having a family and being away from them for almost all of the summer.”
“I would like younger people to know, to be free to meet and learn from others, to be curious and happy, to be able to work,” the email stated.
The book has sold more than 850 copies in the Northwest Territories and Alberta according to Gower, who is now working on a second non-fiction book.
The latest one, The Red Canoe, will be a memoir “all about the rivers of Alberta.”
