The rest of the day is spent lazily watching northern Manitoba go by -- as I write this, we pass a bald eagle perched high over the Grass River. I've brought along a fragile copy of A Thousand Miles from a Post Office or, Twenty Years' Life and Travel in the Hudson's Bay Regions by great-great aunt [Betsy Fallding]'s husband Joe. The book was published in 1922 after he retired as the first Anglican Bishop of Keewatin and returned to England alone.

With no medical assistance, [Joseph Lofthouse] helped with the delivery of his only child Marjorie in 1887. Betsy -- the second white woman in Churchill -- was unwell after the birth, so Joseph travelled for 11 days by snowshoe to find the nearest doctor, who announced that Betsy must return to England for surgery.

A year after Betsy's death, her only child Marjorie -- described as a "woman of charming and magnetic personality" -- and Marjorie's newborn son died during the Spanish flu epidemic in Saskatoon, where Marjorie had married prominent businessman Walter Briggs.