As the crow flies, Eutsuk Lake is only sixty-seven kilometres from the community of Wistaria on Ootsa Lake. Today, visitors can make the trip by plane, but most still choose to go by water, which involves sailing west down the Nechako Reservoir to Chikamin Bay and then portaging over a narrow headland between the two watersheds.

On a good day with a fast boat, the journey takes under two hours, but a brisk wind from the west can quickly turn a pleasure cruise into a three-hour battle for survival. Waves at the aptly named Windy Point can reach five feet in height during a storm, making this man-made waterway unsafe for all but the largest vessels.
Even before construction of the Kenney Dam, when Ootsa and Whitesail were smaller lakes joined by a short river, the trip to 鈥楤ig Eutsuk鈥� was a long and sometimes dangerous journey. The hazards didn鈥檛 end on the far side of the rail portage, either, because Eutsuk was subject to the same vagaries of weather as other lakes in the Great Circle. Its remote location on the far side of a formidable mountain range also meant that help in an emergency would be a long time coming.
These hazards did not deter the area鈥檚 earliest visitors. Trappers like John Mickelson, Jack McCuish, Fred Knowles, Tommy McKinley, and the Bolom brothers, and before them, the area鈥檚 indigenous people, travelled the waterways in dugout canoes and homemade boats. According to Mickelson鈥檚 diary, one trip up Whitesail Lake in a rowboat took him five days.
These intrepid men, whose exploits have become legendary, left for their trap lines around Big Eutsuk in October, and stayed there (often alone) until the ice on the lakes melted the following spring.
Uninhabited Eutsuk Lake is vast and beautiful. The shoreline is studded with miles of sandy beaches and dozens of small, secluded coves, many of them named after trappers who frequented the area. One small piece of real estate jutting out of the lake is named Trap Island because McKinley once cached the tools of his trade there.
McKinley鈥檚 cabin, built along Eutsuk鈥檚 north shore between 1910 and 1915, was still standing in the 1980s. Perched on a heavily treed hillside above picturesque Grell Cove, the small one-room structure had two windows, one overlooking the bay and another beneath the roof overhang atop the front porch. A steep, well-worn path under the trees led down to the water, and another trail behind the cabin went northeast to St. Thomas Bay.
According to one old timer, McKinley鈥檚 winter home was so small that he could reach out and take the coffee pot off the stove without getting out of bed. He must have believed in economy of movement, because he also used powerful binoculars to monitor the lakeshore segment of his trap line, thus reducing the need to travel outdoors in inclement weather.
Like many of the area鈥檚 early trappers, McKinley had a fondness for drink. During Prohibition, he built a distillery along Pondosy Lake and used it to produce sipping liquor from sawgrass.
McKinley鈥檚 closest neighbour and trapping partner was Fred Knowles, a British immigrant who came to Canada in 1903. After spending time in Duncan on Vancouver Island, Knowles, who had a bad case of wanderlust, made his way to the Lakes District in 1912. There is no indication that he had any experience as a frontiersman prior to his arrival here. One source claims that Knowles was a trained violinist who had previously worked as a butler. Yet within a decade, he became one of the area鈥檚 most respected trappers.
Knowles lived about four miles (six km) from McKinley. His cabin, which measured about twelve feet by fourteen feet (3.6m x 4.2m), was approximately the same size as McKinley鈥檚, but boasted a cellar for storing supplies. Furnishings on the ground floor were minimal and consisted of a bed, table, and wood stove, yet they took up so much floor space that the occupant could only access his basement by lifting the table.
One winter before freeze-up, Knowles shot a moose on an island in Eutsuk Lake. He butchered the carcass and started loading it, but quickly realized the added weight might ground the vessel on the soft sand. In an effort to prevent this from happening, he pushed his boat a little farther into deeper water each time he dumped another chunk of meat over the gunwale.
At some point, the boat got away from him. It was too cold for a swim, so he built a crude raft of two logs tied together with his undershirt. Unfortunately, by the time the exercise was complete, his riverboat filled with meat had drifted out of sight.
Knowles supposedly poled and paddled back to his main cabin, where he kept a 鈥渓ittle tiny tub.鈥� Desperate to recover his primary source of transportation, he took to the lake yet again, this time in the tub.
He made good progress until a stiff wind came up and forced him to shore. He took shelter in Bill Harrison鈥檚 trapping cabin, and stayed there until the storm blew itself out. When he finally emerged from the shack several days later, he found his missing boat a short distance down the beach with its cargo reasonably intact. Cold weather had kept the meat from spoiling, so Knowles took his kill home and lived off it for the remainder of the winter.
On another occasion, Knowles fell into a beaver dam while trapping and was unable to extricate himself. Fortunately, a First Nations family heard his cries and pulled him out. The trapper was so grateful that he invited them to visit him any time they were in the vicinity.
Knowles hunted extensively and supplemented his supply of wild game with potatoes planted around his cabin. He buried the spuds each spring before leaving for the 鈥榦utside world,鈥� then harvested them when he returned the following fall with his winter provisions.
When he wasn鈥檛 trapping, Knowles sometimes lived with McKinley on the latter鈥檚 floating home at Ootsa Landing. McKinley died in 1947, and three years later, Knowles moved to Francois Lake. The former butler joined his trapping partner in the 鈥榞reat beyond鈥� on Sept. 20, 1957.
Industrial development has changed the Ootsa Lake country irrevocably, but not Eutsuk Lake. Unaffected by the Aluminum Company of Canada鈥檚 Kenney Dam project, 鈥楤ig Eutsuk鈥� remains much as it was as a century ago. The wind-swept lake is still cold and clear, the pristine rivers that feed it flow unimpeded from snow-capped mountains, and the sandy beaches have far more four-legged visitors than two-legged ones.
McKinley and Knowles, we suspect, would be pleased.
(c) 2023 Lakes District Museum