News

Memory of the month the way things were (Part Twenty)

Canada No 5

Out in the cut one afternoon in the distance I a saw grey shape running fast towards me, as it got closer I could see it was a coyote, occasionally stopping and looking back tail between its legs but there was nothing, then it would take off as fast as it could go across the ice until it was almost out of sight, moments later I see three more shapes following, wolves loping along as only they can, mile after mile they must have seen the coyote as dinner, I wondered later if  it managed to escape.  There was a lot of wild life about and one of the superintendents ran a trap line but I never saw him with any catches.

One morning I was on the small dragline, as I started to break a hole in the ice with a spud, this a long piece of pipe with a point and filled with concrete (see photo) and it would take numerous hits. I realised that the sheave on the jib had seized, lowering it down I could see it was no easy fix so after calling the fitter, Willie Lee a Scot, we decided a press was needed and some means of securing the jib was required so I fetched two International Harvester TD25 dozers one to stop the jib moving and the other as a base for the press, this worked well and we soon pushed out the shaft and had it running again. I think they would have struggled on this site without the Brits as all the fitting staff and a good number of the operators were from the UK.

As we neared the end of March the helicopter was back as the ice was becoming too thin to drive over and it was much less cold, then after a few weeks the superintendent asked if I could run a boat, wondering why I said yes I’ve got a small one at home, what he had in mind was for me to go ice breaking with a 35 foot steel launch, the ice had melted in the middle of the river but was still too thick at the sides for the barge to break through so that was my mission for a few days, then the barge came and the chopper went. 

In May Dick Shadbolt and I were both loading dumpers and as we were waiting with buckets up for a dumper to return Dick suddenly pointed up in the air, looking up I see a twin engine light aircraft heading towards us with both engines stopped, we both quickly dropped our buckets and it whizzed  right over us and was heading for the haul road, just as we thought he was going to make it a grader came out of a side road and he had to flip up his right wing to miss it, the left wing touched and it crashed down over the granite rocks immediately both engines burst into flames and it went skidding out several hundred feet across the muskeg.

This was so soft it was impossible to walk on and we had no means of getting to the pilot, for a few moments there was no movement until suddenly the cockpit cover opened and the pilot flopped down onto the ground and proceeded to swim across the muskeg all this time the plane was burning fiercely, soon he got near to us and we pulled him out, then whipped him back to camp. The plane burned for quite a while until even the engines burnt away with just a few bits of the frame left. We never heard the reason for the crash but it certainly was not lack of fuel on board just a lack of fuel to the engines, it soon became apparent that crashes like this were a fairly regular occurrence.

By June our contracts were nearing the end and Doug went home, Canadian immigration had contacted the company and told them I must leave within the next four weeks, but the company said they could not manage without me and that immigration must supply someone with my skills or extend my visa, happily they could not, so gave me an extra six weeks. The Canadian’s were really switched on as not only were work visas company specific they were also site specific and this was before computers had taken over, not like our lot currently who appear to not have a clue who comes into or leaves Britain. The Co-Operator