The Wrong Lake

As James Brady and Absolom Halkett waved goodbye to the twin-engine Beech plane on June 7, 1967, they did not realize they’d been dropped off at the wrong lake. The men would soon have recognized the pilot’s mistake, though, and they would have known to sit tight. But when a third man, Berry Richards, arrived with more supplies on June 16, all he found was an abandoned camp, with a canoe tied to a birch tree. Richards knew Brady, a Métis leader and Second World War veteran, and Halkett, a band councillor, would not have tried tackling the dense bush alone; he reported them missing to the RCMP.

It was Richards who had hired Brady and Halkett to look for uranium in the rugged mix of Canadian Shield, boreal forest, and muskeg that is northern Saskatchewan. Prospecting was just one of their many skills. Brady was also something of a radical intellectual. The walls of his cabin were lined...