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Rediscovery of Hubbard's Rock

Pages 5 to 12
Picture Galley (place cursor on pictures to read captions)

"I'm heading for the Susan," barked pilot Mac Forgie into the radio as our Viking Helicopters Hughes 500 rose from the ramp of the Goose Bay, Labrador, seaplane base. "Two fellas on a do-or-die mission. Something about a lost grave up the river."  As Forgie banked and pointed the machine north, I turned to my companion in the jump seat behind and shouted, "To-day's the day, Dillon, it's Hubbard's rock or bust." "Yes", came the response, "to-day is the day!"  It was mid-afternoon on 27 July, 1973, and the first patches of blue sky were breaking through after a steady three-day rain.

Forgie had come to our rescue by offering to help us make a final attempt, after a failed try the previous week by Canadian Armed Forces Labrador helicopter, to find the long-lost inscribed boulder marking the last camp of  Leonidas Hubbard, an estimated 40 kilometres above Grand Lake on the upper Susan River. The nimble Hughes, with its large bubble canopy offering a superior view of the country we were about to explore, was ideally suited to the job, and spirits were high as we flew over the big lake of the Hubbard and Wallace expeditions and entered the valley of the Susan.

As a lifelong admirer of the work of my companion's father, Dillon Wallace, I decided in 1970 to do something that might help offset the growing tendency of historians to lionize Mina Hubbard at the expense of Wallace.  A 1960 article about Mrs. Hubbard in The Beaver magazine, highly uncomplimentary to Wallace, had been gnawing at me for years. What better way to start, I thought, than to locate and refurbish the inscription carved on Hubbard's rock in 1913 by Wallace as a permanent memorial to his intrepid trail companion who had perished there in 1903.  (Go to page 2)