The Chicora arrived this morning, bringing Colonel Wolseley and his staff, one company of the 60th Rifles, Mr. Joley, Mr. Dawson, and a party of men for the road, together with twenty horses, a like number of boats, and a quantity of stores. Her appearance was a source of gratification that in some cases was too profound to find expression in words.
— Molyneux St. John, Globe, May 30, 1870
The Chicora arrived at Thunder Bay on May 25, and Wolseley wasted no time trying to get a handle on the state of Dawson’s road. He and Lindsay Russell rode up to the Oskondaga River but found the road pretty much as St. John had described it two weeks earlier — the last four miles were still under construction, more than half the next section was “only cut through the woods,” and the last five miles to Shebandowan Lake hadn’t even been “marked out through the woods.” Work hadn’t progressed because the crews had been busy repairing the extensive damage caused by the fire, i.e., rebuilding the bridges, culverts, corduroy sections, and crib work built to hold back the cut-through hillsides. While St. John said most of this work was completed by the time Wolseley arrived, it came at the cost of any progress on construction.
Wolseley was in a bind again. He had orders to leave Fort Garry with the British contingent no later than August 20 in order to ship back to Britain by Christmas. The imbroglio at the Soo put that time-line in jeopardy. And now delays on Dawson’s road meant the expedition might not even reach Red River by fall, and an early freeze-up could mean British troops wouldn’t get home until spring.
The pressure on Wolseley to “greatly expedite the forward movement” could literally be seen building on the shores of Thunder Bay. Between May 26 and June 3, eight vessels disgorged over 700 troops, scores of voyageurs and teamsters, tons of stores, supplies, and matériel, and dozens of horses and oxen. (To get a sense of how “inconveniently crowded” the Chicora was on June 3, Cunningham said its manifest read as follows: 318 barrels of flour, 107 barrels of pork, 282 barrels of biscuits, 100 barrels of sugar, 200 barrels of beans, 100 boxes of tea, 50 cases of preserved potatoes, 25 barrels of potatoes, 30 tons of general merchandise, three tons of camp equipage, 285 bags of oats, five tons of hay, six barrels of coal oil, 17 lumber wagons, one engine, one boiler, 15 expedition boats, 40 horses, and 12,000 feet of lumber.) In the course of just one week, the tiny outpost of Government Station mushroomed from a “motley collection of wooden buildings and canvas tents” into Prince Arthur’s Landing.
On June 3, Wolseley came up with an idea to help relieve the pressure. He proposed sending a flotilla of eight boats up the Kaministiquia River to see if it was feasible to bypass the road and reach the bridge at Mile 21 entirely by water. Captains Young and E.I. Fraser were put in charge of a small team from the 60th Rifles — “and what man can accomplish Captain Young will do,” St. John judged. Simon Dawson, one of “two competent authorities at Thunder Bay,” opposed the experiment point-blank as a reckless danger to both men and boats. While Young and Fraser laboured to move their boats up the Kaministiquia River, particularly around the daunting Kakabeka Falls, Dawson’s transportation service began moving supplies to the base camp at the Matawan Bridge (Mile 26.5). Progress was slow as “alarming numbers” of the horses fell ill. On June 9, St. John said 20 of the 50 horses available were out of commission with many more “rapidly approaching the same state.” One issue was the horses purchased by the Canadian government were artillery horses “accustomed to limited food and light work.” They were simply overworked pulling the heavy wagons, especially through mud at times up to their bellies. Another issue was that the government had outfitted the horses with “ill-fitting harnesses,” resulting in severely chafed or “galled” shoulders. And on top of this were three days of heavy rains that made the road beyond the Kaministiquia Bridge impassable to the wagons. Lindsay Russell told St. John that the combined effect of the fire, rain, and horses likely meant “no part of the expedition will leave Fort Garry this winter.” The only good news was that Young and Fraser had been able to get boats to the “smooth water” beyond Kakabeka Falls by June 10. Wolseley deemed the experiment a success and ordered a second detachment of boats under Captain Francis Northey to depart up the Kaministiquia River the next day.
To deal with “conditions on the ground,” on June 10 Wolseley announced a series of changes to expedite the plan to get the expedition to Shebandowan Lake.
First, rather than take supplies directly from Thunder Bay to Shebandowan in one shot, Wolseley decided to stockpile everything at the Matawan Bridge. This would take advantage of the relatively decent state of the road that far and allow crews to finish the road beyond without any traffic on it. To this end, Captain Ward’s company of Regulars was moved up to supplement Dawson’s crew.
Second, based on their success on the Kaministiquia River, Wolseley ordered Young and Fraser to see how far they could float their boats up the Matawan River beyond the Kaministiquia Bridge. St. John said little was known of that river, but Wolseley hoped “and indeed seemed to take for granted that no insurmountable obstacle would be met.”
Third, Wolseley settled on using the Shebandowan River for the last three miles of the journey to Shebandowan Lake. As St. John predicted on May 11, it was simply more efficient to move men and supplies via the shallow-hulled “Ottawa boats” for the final stage rather than by wagon overland.
A fourth change involved the final approach to Fort Garry. Up to June 10, the plan had been to march the expedition overland on John Snow’s road from Lake of the Woods to Fort Garry. On news from “Indians of the interior” that Snow’s road was both incomplete and too wet to be crossed by a force as large as the expedition, Wolseley decided to proceed from Lake of the Woods via the Winnipeg River to Lake Winnipeg and then south to Fort Garry on the Red River. Wolseley had had enough of unfinished roads. He also confirmed orders that the British contingent of the force would assume lead position “on the line of march” so that as soon as the Canadian battalions arrived at Fort Garry they could begin their return home.