The small steamer tossed and pitched wildly as it plowed across Labrador's Lake Melville. On board, a soft-spoken nurse from Ontario named Mina Hubbard sat alone in her cramped berth awaiting the start of her greatest journey. She had left Halifax on June 16, 1905, and was now on her final approach to the North West River Post.

Landing on June 25, Mina was greeted with a wilderness feast of wild goose, plum pudding and hot coffee. "After the voyage from Halifax," she wrote in her memoir A Woman's Way Through Unknown Labrador, "it seemed good to rest a little with the firm earth underfoot and where the walls of one's habitation were still." The few-day stopover offered little rest, however, as Mina assembled a crew of four guides and hundreds of pounds of food, supplies and gear, including two canvas-covered canoes. She was heading into the unexplored Labrador interior — the same wilderness that had claimed the life of her husband Leonidas two years earlier.

Rare was the woman explorer in 1905. But the 35-year-old Mina had a will of iron and had resolved to complete her beloved "Laddie's" groundbreaking expedition to chart unknown territory across the peninsula from the North West River to Ungava Bay. Personal loss compounded by public criticism of her husband's credentials inspired the mission. Mina's mistrust of Leonidas's former adventure partner, Dillon Wallace, who had vowed to complete the expedition that same summer, added a fiercely competitive edge to her undertaking. Intent on preserving Leonidas's reputation, she recruited George Elson, the native guide from the 1903 trip, to lead her some 885 kilometres across Labrador.

The race was on.

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Mina had just more than two months to complete the trip. Her only chance to return to civilization before winter was to catch the Hudson's Bay Company steamer Pelican at Ungava no later than the last week of August. She hoped to gain an advantage by setting out three weeks earlier than her husband had and by travelling with a larger crew. Elson was well acquainted with the errors of the ill-fated expedition in 1903. Flawed local information and maps had steered Leonidas off course into a labyrinth of inland lakes. By the time he and his crew realized the error, they had been pushing upriver for two months and were unable to retrace their path to the North West River Post before Leonidas died of starvation and exposure.

The chance to share Labradors mysteries and her own story with the wider world fuelled Minas resolve.

The most demanding part of the journey was the upstream push to Lake Michikamau. Dozens of rapids had to be poled through or portaged around. Some days, the crew covered less than three kilometres. The canoes capsized on at least one occasion, leaving the crew without essential gear, including cooking pans and axes.

With her revolver or rifle in tow, Mina frequently explored the surrounding riverbanks alone studying flowers and taking photographs, much to the consternation of her guides. She was inspired by the wilderness and felt equal to the challenges it presented. "Secretly I rather hoped a bear would come along," she wrote in her journal after one foray, "for I thought I could manage him if he did not take me unawares."

The George River descent from Lake Michikamau was fast and with its share of hair-raising moments. Nearly the entire river north of Indian House Lake was an interminable chain of ferocious rapids. "Immediately at the outlet, the canoes were caught by the swift current, and for five days, we were carried down through almost continuous rapids," she wrote. "There were long stretches of miles where the slope of the riverbed was a steep gradient, and I held my breath as the canoe shot down at toboggan pace." Despite the odds, the hardships and Mina's own lack of wilderness experience, her expedition reached the George River Post at Ungava Bay one-and-one-half months ahead of Wallace and on schedule for her boat home. The achievement helped put Labrador on the map and finally allowed the memory of Mina's husband Leonidas to rest in peace.

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