Some sources say an old trapper by the name of Smoker got lost in a snowstorm years ago.
After his death, Smoker’s ghost was seen driving his komatik, always appearing just in time to announce that a storm was brewing.
Other Labradorians claim a different origin for the figure.
They say Smoker is the spirit of a man named Esau, a Newfoundlander who crossed over the Straits of Belle Isle into Labrador to trap.
Unfortunately for Esau, trapping didn’t pay as well as he had hoped. A born entrepreneur, Esau set up an illegal still deep in the spruce forest. There, he mixed spruce cones, sugar and yeast into a deadly concoction called “smoke,” a vile drink which gave the trapper his new name of Smoker.
The Mounties did eventually catch up with the bootlegger.
They smashed his kegs and carted him off to jail in St. John’s for a year.
But that year gave Smoker time to think, and he went back to Labrador with a plan.
Smoker begged or stole every white husky for miles around. He then made a suit of pure white skins, painted his komatik white and lashed a white keg to it. Dressed from head to toe in white, Smoker drove his team from place to place delivering his brew.
The RCMP tried their best to get their man, but it was like chasing a ghost.
Legend maintains that his own brew finished him off.
One day in a drunken fit he fell off a fish flake and broke his back. He lingered for three days suffering, and before he died he cried out “Lord God, don’t send me to Hell! Let me drive my dogs to the end of time and I’ll make up for the bad I’ve done.”
Smoker was buried in Newfoundland, but his ghost was cursed to wander the winter landscape.
Even today, the howls of Labrador’s winds are still sometimes joined by another sound, the sound of a dog team running through the night.
Some have heard the team passing by, while others have listened to the sounds of dogs’ traces slapping against the side of their cabins.
Others have seen the team of white dogs driven on by a driver dressed all in white furs.
But no one has ever seen their tracks, and no one has been able to track the driver down.
Once a Labrador man was caught in a terrible blizzard, driving his own dog team over the hills. The man fought onwards, hoping to find shelter.
Suddenly the sound of another dog team could be heard.
Out of the blizzard ran 14 pure-white huskies, driven by a man dressed in white furs from head to foot.
The lost man followed the stranger in white, and half an hour later he was brought to the winter huts of the fishermen of Frenchmen’s Island.
When he saw a fisherman standing in an open doorway, he stopped his dogs.
As the stranger moved out of sight the rescued man shouted out his thanks.
“You’re welcome,” said the fisherman at the door, “Come in and get warm.”
The cold driver thanked the fisherman, but said he had been calling out to the stranger on the komatik who had passed on in front of him.
The fisherman looked at him strangely and said there had been no man before him.
Storyteller and author Dale Jarvis can be reached at [email protected].