The Long Crossing and Other Labrador Stories

 By Elliott Merrick.
 University of Maine Press, 1992.
 136 pp.
 ISBN: 0-89101-074-2

Review by MICHAEL PEAKE -- Che-Mun Editor

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 This book came to us quite a few years after publication via the author, the noted Labrador writer Elliott Merrick. who complained the book was little noticed when it appeared, probably the result of a academic press and low promotion budget.
 The Long Crossing is Merrick's take on perhaps the most famous tales of Labrador canoe adventure-the Hubbard-Wallace expedition in the early part of this rapidly dwindling century. The Hubbard tale is one of nine stories which make up the book, but the dominant one in size only.
 This topic was already deftly and sensitively handled by James West Davidson and John Rugge in their superb book Great Heart in 1986. Merrick doesn't really add anything new to this three expedition tale of heroism, stubbornness and pride.
 The interesting thing about this book are the other short stories included. They bring to life many of the characters already familiar to Merrick readers from his first effort, the classic True North. Merrick also produced six other books including Northern Nurse but his first remains his landmark effort.
 Given the passage of time and the recent and large scale events happening in northern Labrador, Merrick's world has almost completely disappeared, except for the wilderness which, although shrinking, remains the lure that drew Merrick there and continues to attract us today.
 Merrick's point of view is what is most important here. He is able to connect the reader to a world which has gone but those ideas and sensibilities linger still. His closing paragraph at the end of the Hubbard-Wallace tales tells the tale.
 "So ends the saga of three expeditions and the four erstwhile friends, Leonidas Hubbard, Dillon Wallace, George Elson and Mina Hubbard. Perhaps the kernel of the story is not in the three books at all but in the guides, those men of Indian, Eskimo, Scottish and French admixture who find the way and give their loyalty. These are the men who carry the load. In a black night of wind on a wild shore, they are not dismayed. They seldom write of bad ice rapids or the lonely campfire in the snow-nor of the leaders they have led home."