Wasa-wasa Part 2, Sam Kilburn and Harry Macfie in Windermere

A RETURN TO WASA-WASA AND THE BIOGRAPHY OF HARRY MACFIE AND SAM KILBURN OF WINDERMERE

PART TWO

     NOTE: FOR PART ONE ON THE BOOK "WASA-WASA," AND ITS WINDERMERE, MUSKOKA CONNECTION, ARCHIVE BACK TO YESTERDAY'S BLOG

     At some future date, we hope to find the final resting spot of adventurer, Sam Kilburn, who we believe was buried in the tiny, tree-wreathed cemetery, in Ullswater, beside the historic United Church, where his kin folk, the Forges, formerly of Windermere are buried. He was buried beneath a simple white, wooden cross, in the fall of 1921, so we expect it is long gone by now. When we have a photograph of his plot, and the church he was buried beside, we will publish it on this blogsite.
     In yesterday's blog, we got as far as Harry Macfie, having had his reunion with his old prospecting friend, Sam Kilburn, who was, at the time, living near the shore of Lake Rosseau, in the Village of Windermere. Sam Kilburn was related to the Forge family, early pioneers, and of the Longhurst family, of the original hamlet of Windermere. Kilburn, who had been gased in the battlefield of the First World War, had been captured, and served time in a German hospital. He had sent Harry Macfie a postcard from the prison hospital, to let him know he was still alive, and slowly recovering from injuries sustained in battle. Kilburn had settled into a little bungalow in a hollow of land near the shore, that was surrounded by wildflowers and roses. When Macfie arrives at the small house, Kilburn has just come outdoors, and is sitting on a bench against the wall. As Macfie notes, his old friend has suffered ongoing poor health that had deteriorated his physical condition, from the days they had been adventurers in the Canadian north country. We resume the story, just after the meeting and embrace of the two men, who hadn't seen each other in a quarter century.
     "You see that," Sam Kilburn asked his newly arrived friend, Harry Macfie, while "pointing to a big scar across his forehead. "That's a souvenir of a shell splinter I got in Flanders. But it didn't go too deep for them to sew it up again. And this,' he opened his shirt across his chest and showed another big scar - 'that comes from a bayonet thrust that went through one lung. They fixed that up pretty well, too. But it was the gas that nearly finished me off; for I've only got the damaged lung left, the gas did the other."
     Macfie writes, "He was delighted that I had at last managed to find out where he was, so that we had been able to meet again. 'I've waited for you to come,' he said, 'to give my cabin a name. I didn't want to christen it till you came. I've just finished it, you see.' I racked my brains, but it was not easy. I thought of Sam as I had first seen him, as he sat on the bench in the sunshine, gazing into the far distance, and recalling a long train of memories, and I suggested the name 'WASA WASA,' which means in Indian, 'distant' or 'far, far away.' He thought this a good name, so we christened his little cabin Wasa Wasa. We lay awake for a long time that evening, smoking and chatting about all that had happened since we parted up in the north, when I went home and he stayed behind. Our pipes glowed, and a great full moon shone through the open window. From the meadow and garden came the scent of new-cut hay, of roses and other flowers, and from the shallow creek we heard the deep, many-voiced chorus of the bull-frogs. The dawn had begun to creep in through the window before we fell asleep. I slept late next morning, and when I woke Sam had breakfast ready. When we had finished and were sitting outside in the sunshine, I saw that he had already climbed up and painted the name Wasa Wasa on the white shingle roof in large red letters.
     "Sam's cousin, who lived close by, had a model farm, and it was on their land and with their heop that he had built his little cabin after spending several years in a sanatorium. Now he was to grow healthy and strong again in the beautiful forest air of Lake Muskoka (he meant Lake Rosseau). The days passed, pleasant happy days in each other's company, and every evening Sam made a big log fire outside his cabin under one of the leafy sugar maples. 'You see, I was right after all,' he often said, 'when I said that some day the wilds would bring you back and that we should sit together again beside a camp fire.' It was not quite the wilds we had once known, and in which our camp fire had blazed, but it was a camp fire all the same, in its own way. All our friends in Windermere assembled round it every evening, and by its light and the glow of our pipes, we told them, and lived through again, all our adventures together far away in the north."
     Macfie writes in his journal, "And now, after all these years, we sat together by a camp fire beside pretty Lake Windermere (meant Lake Rosseau), and watched the play and flicker of the flames. Certainly this was not the wilds to which we were once accustomed, but what did that matter> The main thing was that we had met at last. After our parting on the Bering Sea, Sam had paddled home to our cabin and worked for another year on our claims (prospecting), at the head-waters of the Fish River, but without further success. He had bought some more dogs to complete the team, and with Royal as leader, he had moved on alone, eastward through the wilds and right up the Yukon River to Dawson City. After a short stay there he continued up the Klondike River and worked his way by degrees over the whole mountain chain, down to the Mackenzie area, where he lived a trapper's solitary life, for several years, searching for gold all the time.
     "During his last winter up there he had built a hut in the woods on one of the Mackenzie River's tributaries. Intending to build an open fireplace, he took the dog team one day and drove across the river to fetch some suitable clay from the other side. The ice seemed perfectly safe and in the water-hole he had cut below the cabin it was several inches thick. He dug out the clay and took a good load on the sledge, but as he had some mink traps a little farther upstream he thought he would examine these at the same time. So with his load he drove on up the river, took two minks out of the traps and started home again. The sledge ran easily on the glass ice and the dog trotted comfortably along. They were about halfway across when the ice suddenly broke. The sledge sank at once and was carried away under the ice by the swift current. Sam, who was sitting on the load, managed to throw himself on to the ice and now tried to save the dogs, fighting for their lives in the rift in the ice. But the current took them; one after another, they were carried away under the ice, and when Sam reached the rift they had all gone except Royal, whose forelegs were cut and bleeding from his struggles for life. Sam managed to catch hold of him but could not get at his knife to cut the dog loose. The ice broke again and Sam too fell into the rift. The current pressed him hard against the edge where had seen Royal's head disappear. That he himself succeeded in getting up onto firm ice was a miracle. But he often regretted that had not accompanied one of the best dog teams in the north on its last journey. That winter he lived alone out in the wilds. Next spring he made his way by degrees to Athabasca, from there to inhabited regions and by the Canadian Pacific Railway to his relations in Windermere."
     Macfie adds, "I had a letter from Sam written in Montreal in the middle of July, in which he said he was going to England to see his relations, and would then come up and visit me. But he got no farther than England, for then World War broke out. He enlisted at once in the regiment of his home town till the letter-card from Magdeburg, where he lay wounded and a prisoner. For ten days I had been my partner's guest, wonderful days of sunshine and memories. Our friends, who used to meet there, in the evenings to listen to stories of our experiences and adventures, were again assembled round the fire, this time to leave of me for awhile. During the day I had received a telegram saying that my presence over on the Pacific coast was necessary. I reckoned that presence over there I should clear matters up in a short time and could be back in three weeks, when we were planning a hunting expedition farther up country. My week in Vancouver and the country round about took longer than I had reckoned, and it was over a month before I returned to Toronto one evening. There were several letters waiting for me at the hotel. One of them contained a hard object, and I opened that first. Inside the letter lay a ring inset with small nuggets of gold; on the ring was engraved, 'For auld lang syne North of 63.' The letter was from Sam's cousin Henry, who told me that Sam was dead. He had died a week earlier; a heamorrhage had ended his life. Everything possible had been done for him, but his life could not be saved.
     "When I came to Windermere again, my friend lay under a little mound with a simple white wooden cross. The sun was setting behind the mountains, and the leaves of the maples gleamed red as I walked through the wood, shimmering in wonderful autumn colours, from the little churchyard where my friend sleeps his last long sleep. The last rays of the sun shone through the leaves of the big maples and threw a trail of light, as of the purest gold, over his little cabin, Wasa Wasa."
     When Suzanne did a search last evening, of death records, circa 1924, she found the death certificate for Sam Kilburn, but instead, she found that he had died at the public Cottage Sanatarium in Gravenhurst, not at his cabin in Windermere. The death record indicated the cause of death was pulmonary tuberculosis. His exact date of death was September 15, 1924, and was buried September 17th. The body we believe was signed for by Mr. Crosby of Gravenhurst. It is expected, although not named in the book, that Sam Kilburn was buried in the tiny cemetery belonging to the Ullswater United Church.