CHARTRAND, ALBERT JOSEPH (360 -ENGLISH))

CHARTRAND, ALBERT JOSEPH  (360 - ENGLISH)

CHARTRAND, ALBERT JOSEPH

Albert Joseph Chartrand was born in 1904 and entered the Royal Canadian Police (RCP) in 1926.  From his young age, he was interested in raising and training dogs.  This experience became very useful during his career which was spent almost entirely beyond the Arctic Circle.  He was part of various detachments: that of the Herschel Island in the Yukon, as well as that of Aklavik, of Cambridge Bay and of Coppermine in the North West Territories.  Over the years he acquired an excellent reputation as a driver of dogsleds.  He even made distance records during his patrols: 380 miles (more than 600 km) in 6 days and 1100 miles (1770 km) in 21 days.  He was equally recognized for his talents as a fisherman and seal hunter .

He was part of the crew of the celebrated Royal Canadian St.-Roch Schooner  during its first trip in the North-West Passage in 1940.  During his second winter in the Arctic, while the schooner was anchored in Parsley Bay, Chartrand died suddenly of a heart attack.  Since he was the only Roman Catholic, his comrades wanted to give him a funeral respecting his religious practices. Two members of the  crew drove 800 miles (1280) back and forth in a dog sled to get the closet  Catholic priest. A few months later, Father Gustave Henry celebrated the funeral service on top of the rocky hillock which had been raised in memory of the deceased.  Albert Joseph Chartrand received the Northern Polar medal posthumously.

Empriente, vol. 11, pages 118-119