William Larkham Jr., the winner of season 11 of Alone, the reality TV show that scatters individuals in the wilderness without outside assistance to see who can endure the longest.HISTORY channel/Supplied
Toward the end, when the Arctic nights were coldest and the days the darkest, and there was little to do but cocoon in a sleeping bag in his makeshift shelter, William Larkham Jr. daydreamed about dessert.
The 49-year-old fisherman would imagine his wife’s chocolate cake, topped with a dollop of whipped cream. Butterscotch pie like his mom used to make. Bread pudding with rum butter sauce. Cinnamon bear claws. Sometimes all of them, packed on a single plate.
“What a dessert that would be,” he’d think.
And even though he was slowly starving, with no idea when he could actually dig into a real chocolate cake back home in Happy Valley-Goose Bay, N.L., he felt honest-to-goodness happy.
Mr. Larkham became a folk hero in Newfoundland last year when he won Season 11 of Alone, the reality TV show that scatters individuals in the wilderness without outside assistance to see who can endure the longest. After 84 solitary days in Canada’s Far North, Mr. Larkham outlasted his mostly American competitors to win the US$500,000 prize.
Mr. Larkham is not a mental-health expert. He’s never read a self-help book. But he demonstrated remarkable resilience in the face of hardship and uncertainty, all while retaining his wits and optimism. What wisdom might he share with his fellow Canadians?
On a Sunday afternoon in February, as Canada faces a stormy and stressful winter with an unpredictable political forecast, Mr. Larkham hopped on a Zoom chat from his workshop in Labrador, with his fluffy cat, Swag, curled around his neck.
He’s too humble to brag. But as he reflects on lessons learned from his adventure, he can’t hide the silver-lining attitude that earned admiration from so many viewers.
Mr. Larkham with his new dog, Sassy, named after the pine marten he met on the show.William Larkham Jr.,/Supplied
In the last few days of the competition, his closest challengers filmed themselves near tears from frustration and loneliness. Mr. Larkham, on the other hand, would wake, stretch and head outside to boil water, with an easy cheer more befitting of someone glamping.
On his honour, he swears he didn’t hide any meltdowns from the camera, which the competitors had to operate themselves. For better or worse, he says, “I wasn’t going to pretend to be someone I am not.”
In fact, despite his Newfoundland accent and chipper demeanour, he could be considered, by reality TV show standards, rather boring. Yet isn’t that resilience? You face the problem, take a breath, and get on with it.
And he did, over and over again. When an audacious pine marten pilfered his food, he named her Sassy, and figured out new ways to hide his stash. When he went to retrieve the last of the beaver meat he’d carefully hidden under rocks in a shallow cave and found it missing, he spent more time trying to solve the puzzle of what happened to it than cursing the loss, even though he was out of food. He then traipsed to the river to set his net before night fell, and found a grouse in one of his traps.
His son’s 12th birthday fell in the last month of the competition. It was the first one he would miss, and a hard reminder of how long he’d been away. What else to do, he decided, but celebrate with the best meal he could – the white, fleshy head of his most prized fish, cooked in a pot over the fire. “I’ll remember this meal forever,” he told the camera, and saved the jawbone for a souvenir.
When he could’ve wallowed, he practised gratitude instead. (Sassy was a pest, but also company.) Rather than spiral, he shifted his perspective. (He called the looming full darkness of the Arctic winter an “exciting first,” not a dreaded trial.) Instead of lamenting what he couldn’t fix, he adapted.
“You always have to look for little positive things to look forward to,” he says. “If you focus on the negative, it’ll drag you down fast. So just stay away from it.”
Certainly, Mr. Larkham went into the Arctic highly skilled. He’d grown up in an isolated northern community, fishing and hunting with his family. From the books about northern explorers he read as a boy, he knew to undercook his food and save an animal’s blood for nutrients. Remembering the lessons of his Inuit relatives, he ate the raw liver from every catch, and drank hot birch tea to preheat his body before a nap. He packed nets and rope – the tools he knew best – instead of the bow and arrows favoured by many competitors.
Fishing for a living has taught him to stay calm; on the ocean, nothing’s constant, engines break down, the wind comes up quickly. “Getting mad slows you down,” he says. “You focus on what actually needs to be done.”
He admits he underestimated the mental endurance required to spend all that time alone, indefinitely deprived of modern comforts. The prize money – a windfall he’ll now use to build a new home for his family of four – definitely helped, he admits.
But to win it, he had to stay alert to grizzlies, plan his day to conserve calories and be careful in the cold. He found inspiration by savouring the chance to live like the early northern explorers he’d always admired. He set out scraps for Sassy and they’d share a meal, at a comfortable distance.
A mindful imagination was also useful; his cake fantasy occupied countless hours. “Honest to God, especially at the end of it, I used to look forward to lying down,” he says.
After 84 solitary days in Canada’s Far North, Mr. Larkham outlasted his mostly American competitors to win the US$500,000 prize.Brendan George Ko/Supplied
Until the competition, he says, he’d never really understood himself as someone who easily flipped negatives to positives. “Why even go there?” he asks. If people are going to catch something from you, better it be hope.
As for the threat of steep U.S. tariffs on his own industry, he says a person still has to live their day. But more Canadians could enjoy Newfoundland’s “tasty snow crab,” he suggests. “And I wouldn’t mind eating more Alberta steak.”
On his last day in the Arctic, his wife, Jillian, delivered the news he’d won, surprising him with a victory hug during a scheduled medical exam. He went home to his kids, William and Anna, and all the chocolate cake he could eat – once his stomach could handle full meals again.
Adjusting back to the hurry and noise of modern life took longer. Even now, he says, all the anxious busyness feels like a waste of human resources, a distraction from time better spent.
Slow down, he wants to say. Grieve the beaver tail that’s gone for good, and move on. Plan ahead for a fish on the line. Spend your time where it matters. Pay attention to the pine martens. Share your food. (And crack open a Canadian-caught snow crab.)
That’s his advice for surviving a hard winter. And if spring comes late, he says, there’s always a silver lining: So do the mosquitoes.
