The Lansdowne Letters: Backing Up

I ended my last post with a threat of bears in Two Point on Lac Seul,
but for this post I need to back up to our departure from Lansdowne House;
for the trip to Sioux Lookout had a long lasting impact on one of us. 

Our sudden eviction from the Forestry house in Lansdowne House,
followed by our even more sudden departure from the village,
left us no time to think about leaving or to say goodbye
to some of the people we knew.  It was that abrupt.

Mom, my siblings, and I scrambled into the Norseman
tied on at the Hudson Bay dock and settled into our seats.
Dad handed up Gretchen, and I took her and held her on my lap,
along with a Nancy Drew book I was reading.





I dug into my Nancy Drew mystery with a fierce concentration,
trying not to think about leaving and trying not to get airsick.
The Norseman droned through choppy air, and I fought the urge to throw up.

Suddenly Roy was shaking my arm, and he and Mom were shouting
above the noise of the engine for me to look out the window.
I looked below and saw a long, ragged line of smoke and flame
devouring the spindly trees and skirting the boggiest patches and lakes.

It was likely the forest fire that had forced us out of our Forestry home,
the one that firefighters were moving into our house that evening to tackle.




Already that spring, wildfires started by lightening were popping up 
in the vast wilderness of the boreal forest in northern Ontario,
and I can't be certain that this fire, twenty or thirty minutes
south of Lansdowne House, was the fire that evicted us.
  
No one knew it yet, but the fire season in June and July of 1961 would prove severe, setting a record that stood for half a century.
The Department of Lands and Forests would battle over 200 wildfires
with many firefighters, fifty-six airplanes, and eleven helicopters
during the two months in its Northwestern Ontario Region. 

The savage sight of billowing smoke and bright flames crowning trees mesmerized us. 
But for me the violence was surreal, for we bump-glided above it
sensing no searing heat, no crackle of flame, nor acrid odor of smoke.
The raging fire slipped behind us and vanished just as Lansdowne House had.

Landing on pontoons for the first time thrilled us, 
the experience heightened by a frisson of fear that we might not hit the water right.

Certainly I was remembering Dad's tale about a Superior pilot
who misjudged where the surface of the water was when landing in Armstrong in 1959.
He tried to land ten feet below the actual surface,
his plane went to the bottom of the lake,
and it was two days before his body was recovered.

We did not suffer the same fate, but landed uneventfully
and taxied on the lake to the Austin Airways dock in Nakina.



I have no memory of getting from the dock to the train station,
but I'm quite certain that the Austin Airways staff helped us,
just as they had when we flew into Lansdowne House.
There is something special about people living in unforgiving environments.
They step up to help friends or strangers with warmth and compassion,
recognizing that another time it could easily be them in a tough spot.



Till next time ~
Fundy Blue



Crossing Petit Passage to Tiverton
Bay of Fundy, Nova Scotia, Canada
© M. Louise (MacBeath) Barbour/Fundy Blue
All Rights Reserved




Notes:

1.  Dad's Tale:
     I shared my father's story in this post:  TLL: Bush Planes and the Puzzle of Thanksgiving.

2.  Forest Fires 1961:
     We didn't know it at the time, but 1961 would be a record year for forest fires in northwestern
     Ontario with 1,534,917 acres or 621,159 hectares burning.  That record wasn't broken until 2011.
     ottawa.ctvnews.ca

     Foster, W. T.  "Aircraft in Forest Fire Control in Ontario." The Forestry Chronicle (1962): p. 46.
     Link

3.  Landing on Pontoons:  

For Map Lovers Like Me: