CANADIAN WILDERNESS.

Auckland Star, Volume LXI, Issue 33, 8 February 1930, Page 18

CANADIAN WILDERNESS.

■ CONQUEST FROM ? THE AIR 'PLANES REPLACING DOGS AND CANOES. GOLD SEEKING UP TO DATE. (By E. J. DAVID.) The bell on the little Indian chapel at Norway House was ringing franti- ' cally.'The padre,, with; the Hudson' Bay factor, his wife and - a couple- of dozen Indians' standing on the rocks near * by waving their arms-"back as one of the Manitoba- fire patrol flying ' boats came into; sight just above the blue waters at the extreme northern end 1 of Lake Winnipeg.: v- i ' ■ They, knew the pilot could not hear 1 the ringing' of the bell unless he'throttled down iiits motor for some _ reason, but they knew he would be looking over the fuselage to see how tilings were at this tiny village as lie made his patrol over, these thousands of miles of bush, forest and muskeg looking for the telltale smoke of* an incipient fire. Soon the 'plane grew larger. Then, it began to circle around like a great eagle and come closer and closer. They gave a shout of joy as the floats struck the water with a splash and the 'plane taxied up to the wharf- float. They told the pilot that a little Indian boy. had gone out to- pick berries live days before and had failed to return to his home. Tliey knew he was lost somewhere in that tremendous area of spruce, water and muskeg. Would he try to find the boy? He would. For hours the pilot and the observer skimmed the tops of • the spruce with droning motor full on, peering into every opening between the trees; scanning every open stretch of water, weaving back and forth like a shuttle, square mile after square mile, in constant danger of going into a bad forced landing from their low altitude. Still they kept it up, hour after hour, far into the night—for the midnight sun wa« moving around the horizon like the finger of God and dipping below the tree? for only a few hours which brought v .ilight, but not darkness. A Striking Example. At last, about 10 o'clock, the observer looked through his powerful glasses and saw something white lying in an <.pening. In the twilight it looked almost like a rock, but as the flyers circled around it moved. Dropping lower, they saw that it was the boy, waving his shirt feebly. . The two aviators dropped the lad some food, to which they could see hira crawl. Then they flew toward the nearest opening in the woods and found water, as they had expected. Returning, they flew back and forth until they saw the boy get up and follow the course the 'plane was threading in the sky. The pilot finally brought the 'planeit was a land machine equipped with pontoons —down on the surface of the lake. The observer stripped and swam ashore, and carried the lad out to where they could bo picked up. When they got back to the village the bell was _ rung again and guns were fired to call m the searchers. ' The rescue of this Indian youngster was a striking example of the manner in which flying has entered the lives of those in the great forests and barren lands of northern Canada. Life and property in this gi'eat wilderness to-day are guarded from the sky by members of the Dominion's aerial fire patrol and aviators of private companies, which operate air'lines to northern-points that otherwise-are all but inaccessible. In recent years many 'planes hare been engaged in Rushing the search for the deposits of gold, silver and copper in this region. Prospectors are flown to the interior and left, usually in pairs, to explore the section to which they are allotted.' Early in the autumn the flyers return to the prospectors' • camps to bring them back to civilisation before winter sets in. v - A Desperate Chance. «' Last spring two such prospectorsTom Cowan and Joe Rutherford, who canoed and mushed for gold all over Canada in the days before the aero'plane—were flown to one of the many small bodies of water, near Baker Luke, 1000 miles north of The Pas, the most northern town in Manitoba, aud set down with their tent, a grub stake and some prospecting tools to seek minerals. They were to be picked up agaii by this 'plane in the early autumn. - Baker Lake is nearly 1000 miles into the Barren Lands, and about 500 miles west of Hudson Bay—almost under the Arctic Circle. Not a tree or bush grows in this desolate stretch of thousands of square miles of land and water. In fact, caribou moss is the only vegetation in this land where Cowan and Rutherford were to spend the summer months. The freeze-up came early in September last year. Without warning the first bad storm of winter arrived, the wind attaining a velocity of eighty miles an hour and driving the enow into huge mountainous drifts. Nevertheless, Captain Mat Berry and Arthur Lowe took off in the storm to pick up Cowan and Rutherford and the . other prospectors who had been left in the wilde the previous spring. Reaching the lake where they had left the two men, Lowe crawled out on a frozen pontoon, with the thermometer at zero, and got ashore to the tent, which was piled high with snow. He crawled inside and there found a note saying: "Walking back, grub giving out." The flyers then went on to another prospecting camp. The men there were more fortunate. They had shot a caribou and so were not out of food. But they had run out of. fuel and there isn't a stick of timber anywhere, in this barren land. They had whittled the tent pole till it was no thicker than a cane, burning the splinters to keep warm. Berry and Lowe succeeded in flying' out to the main base at Baker Lake, all the men they reached except Rutherford' and Cowan. Day after day the flyers searched for them from the air, but the men seemed to have been swallowed up by the snow. Finally an Eskimo trailing expert and William Storr, a \ great musher, were flown to the deserted , tent and set out to trail the men. They finally came to the trail of one man and followed this until they found Cowan in a makeshift lean-to, with both his feet frozen. His companion, Rutherford, had fal l m by the wayside and had frozen to death. J Now. came the problem of getting the ! injured man back to civilisation. More i than 1000 miles to the south lay The •' Pas—looo miles of vast, snow-covered 1 wilderne?3. It was a desperate chance, ' but Mat Berry undertook to fly Cowan 1 there. They took off .'.'oni Baker Lake J in zero weather, i ' * ' .'Plane and Mail Lost. i Five hundred' miles further south Berry landed at Fort Churchill. To-day this, town'is . th& terminus of the Hudson rail way,'but last year the "end of <3 steel" ;.was 'still many miles to the £ south, and Fort Churchill a few! (

| houses at a river mouth. ' Berry refuelled here, but when he tried to take off again in the heavy seas the 'plane's pontoons, already weakened by rough work in the ice,-gave way entirely. A boat succeeded in taking Berry, his mechanic and the injured Cowan off the sinking 'plane, but the machine itself was lost, together with a bag of valu-| able mail. Then another modern marvel which is helping to take away some of the terror of this arctic wilderness called into play. A radio message was sent to The Pas, and at once Captain H. A. Oaks took off for Fort Churchill. He il arrived safely and flew the injured man . back to civilisation and medical aid. ; At one time: the company which ' engineered this prospecting venture sent n t a schooner from the St. Lawrence up r through Hudson Straits and then down s into the bay to cache drums of:petrol, ? canoes, coal, lumber, food, oil and other 8 supplies at various places from which 1. planes and miners could operate. ! Owing to the lack of accurate charts r ! of 'the west coast of Hudson Bay, the " Schooner piled up on a rock. For five v days > it was aground here in a gale which blew r a hundred miles an hour. t When the boat did not arrive at the 1 Baker Lake base, Berry and Lowe flew five > hundred miles out to the bay and found it marooned on the rock.' Finally, those on board succeeded in rigging a raft and making the shore, but the schooner was a total wreck. As the men could not winter on that barren coast, the 'plane flew them out. Besides the Northern Minerals Exploration Company there is another concern using aeroplanes to crack open the ' Frozen North and obtain the precious 1 metals that may lay hidden there. That is the Domininon Explorers Company. ' This company also sent a schooner, the Morso, from Eastern Canada up through the straits to establish flying bases on Hudson Bay. Speed and Economy. Still another company operates 'planes ' to any part of this frozen land, winter 1 or summer —the Western Canada Airways. It will fly—and has flown —any- - body or anything up to half a ton into any section of the Frozen North for so ; much a head or a pound. This company is a privately operated enterprise owned by James A. Richardson, of Winnipeg. It is one of the few air lines which have been operated in Canada without a subsidy of any kind. It started with two 'planes in December, 1920, and now has thirty. In the autumn of 1927 the SherrittGordon copper, gold and zinc claims awaited the beginning of mining operations. But the claims were 103 miles through the timber, the bush and the muskeg, far from the end of steel, without a road of any kind in that whole area. The men, tools, food, clothing and luxuries ordinarily would have been taken in either by canoes in suipmer or sled in winter. At that time the Western Canada Airways only had one 'plane —a Fokker —in service. But at the request of the owners of the Sherritt-Gordon claims they equipped it with skiis and in six weeks' time, despite blizzards, with gales blowing a hundred miles an hour, they flew in twenty-five tons of diamond drills, dynamite, tools, food, blankets, stoves and fifteen men all the way from . the Pas. This was done for a shilling a pound, or £80 a ton. And, surprising ' as it may seem, this was half-a-crown cheaper than if the goods had been hauled in by water. Besides, a one-way trip was mado, in an hour and fifteen minutes, compared with a two weeks', trip by canoe. It saved a year in the development of the Sherritt-Gordon mine. Shafts have been sunk on these claims, ,houses are being built, a smelter is being constructed, •and no railway has yet been laid to it. In fact, the whole rilining community has been literally dropped from the skies.