2110-8-7-18

Down North

Fort Norman July 28.

My dear Excellency,

I dont know if you have ever been in a ship when it stops to have its boilers washed. It means no light & no water for 36 hours. No light doesn't matter for it barely gets dark at night but no water means that we join the ancient fraternity of the great unwashed. We are however ahead of time, as we got through the sometimes stormy

waters of Lake Athabasca & the Great Slave Lake without any delays, & to-day is slightly chilly for the first time. His Ex is in tremendous form and a weighing machine at Fort Simpson disclosed a gain of, I think, 5lbs.

Maggie is photographically terrific but otherwise innocuous. Yesterday she proposed to make the Governor General walk a mile to pose for her shaking hands with a bewhiskered priest in a R.C. church with a background of crude religious pictures showing the damned going through torments in purgatory. When I heard of

this brilliant suggestion I considered Maggie ripe for a lecture so I drew her aside & gave her the usual pompous exposition on the dignity & prestige of the Crown. She may have thought, & with justification, that it was all drivel but she was surprisingly deflated at the end of it - for the time being anyhow.

We suffered one mosquito onslaught but apart from that, they have been inoffensive. I hope you are getting your mails without any hitch. Occasionally an aeroplane descends on us out of the blue

& with much hooting & splashing we draw in to the bank. The aeroplane then lands & a portentous looking package covered with seals is brought to me with great ceremony. Inside is a three weeks old copy of the Ottawa Journal which I hastily try & conceal so that the other passengers may not cease to think what a frightfully important person the Secretary to the Governor-General is.

I do hope everything goes well with you & that you are not being pestered with functions. Love to the I.O.D.E.,

Yours very sincerely

Shuldham