'I'm heartbroken': Award-winning trapper from Fort Smith dies

A quiet German immigrant who made Fort Smith home for 62 years is being remembered as a loving father, award-winning trapper and accomplished craftsman who meticulously built log cabins, freighter canoes and toboggans.

Karl Hoffmann died on January 19 at the age of 83, from natural causes. He is survived by his wife Vina Champagne, three of their six children and a large extended family.

Champagne said it was love at first sight when she met Hoffmann at her aunt's house a half century ago.

"This young man introduced himself to me and I thought, 'Oh my.' I was overwhelmed by his beauty," she said. "We've been together for 55 years and all of a sudden he's not around. I'm heartbroken."

Fitting in

Hoffmann became fast friends with Pi Kennedy, now 92, another legendary trapper and bushman. The two had their own cabins and traplines near Lady Grey Lake, about 130 kilometres from Fort Smith. When Hoffmann got his private pilot's licence and small plane at the age of 52, Kennedy was beside him in the co-pilot's seat.

"Some people didn't think he'd last, but he did," Kennedy said with a chuckle.

Hoffmann worked as carpenter and cabinet maker. The work took him to remote communities in the high Arctic and Old Crow, Yukon, which is where he got the idea to build, weld and sew his famous flat wooden sleighs, like the ones still used by snowmobilers and dog mushers.

An accepted outsider

When Hoffmann arrived in Fort Smith in 1957, non-Indigenous settlers were often viewed with suspicion, even if partnered with a local. Richard Mercredi said Hoffmann fit right in.

"Pretty hard to get a trapline back then because all the native people were still trapping. But because he got along well with everybody, he got that trapline," Mercredi said.

Mercredi spoke to Hoffmann about a week before he died. He knew his friend wasn't feeling well, but didn't realize it would be the last time they would speak.

"It's hard when it's sudden and you don't really have a chance to say goodbye," Mercredi said.

Longtime resident and former MLA Michael Miltenberger shared the sentiment.

"Everytime you lose a friend like Karl, you think about it. The circle of life is completed and another good guy is gone," Miltenberger said.

Not only are friends and family paying tribute to Hoffmann, but so are people like former Northern Journal reporter Meaghan Wolhberg, who interviewed Hoffmann in 2014 after he was named senior trapper in the South Slave by the territorial government.

"I remember him telling me that he viewed the bush as his church," Wohlberg said in an email to CBC. "He spent most of his years out on the land and continued to be a prolific trapper well into his older years, flying out to his cabin to trap even as an elder. My sincere condolences go out to his family and the whole community, who lost a truly dedicated bush man one of the last of his kind."

A memorial service is scheduled for July 2019 in Fort Smith.