The ladies, the Gwich'in, and the Rat

In 1926, Clara Coltman Rogers and Gwendolen Dorrien Smith paddled alone down the Porcupine River west of the continental divide toward the Gwitchin community at Old Crow, Yukon Territory. In 1961, Clara, now Lady Vyvyan, published Arctic Adventure, the story of their trip. She records their encounters with mounties, Inuit, Dene, traders, trappers, and missionaries as the women travel over the Divide in search of the Klondike gold rush and the North of Robert Service. This edition adds fifty-nine black-and-white photographs of the early North, plus colour reproductions of twelve watercolour sketches Gwendolen Dorrien Smith made as the women travelled. Their field diaries and their many letters home sometimes suggest that the women knew they carried with them the norms of the British Empire. These writings offer a new understanding of women's early efforts to shape a voice and sensibility by which to record and inscribe the northern wilderness.