The Bush Pilot, Goodbye, & Life in The Polar Bear Capital of the World
25th August 1999
The highlight of the day was using the satellite phone to call Steens. The first try I only got the answering machine, and the sound of my own voice made missing her doubly frustrating. When I did get her the second time around, she burst into tears upon hearing my voice, and that triggered me. I was standing on the end of dock looking out across the Bay over the spit of land which separated the lake and the Bay and the wind was blowing hard, and after I hung up I stood and opened my eyes as wide as they could go feeling the sting of the wind and my tears.How fresh these feelings were after 19 years, never to be taken for granted. All those thoughts while I was paddling, silently mouthing Steens, Steens with each stroke.
Instead of just sitting around the rest of the morning, I helped Evan, a young guy putting up some siding (though I messed up the first rip on the table saw and probably did him more harm than good.) He was studying to be a teacher, following in the footsteps of his father, and was a genial guy.
We had another delicious lunch, caribou soup, cheese, pickles, and bannock bread. At five o'clock, Doug arrived as promised in his Beaver floatplane. He strapped a canoe onto the pontoons. We had cut cards to see who would go first, and Pete and Gary had won. Somehow it was only fitting that the Three Musketeers, Randy, John and I, as well as Dexter, veterans of 30 years of various extravaganzas, would remain behind. Gary and Pete went along with a hunter and his wife who were staying at the lodge. The canoe was loaded with the aid of a Dene Indian who worked for the Webbers, a broad shouldered affable fellow by the name of Johnny Bright Nose. When I asked Evan why he was called that, he tipped an imaginary bottle to his lips. Whatever Johnny's predilections, he was as strong as an ox, hefting a fully loaded propane tank that I could barely tip, much less lift. The remaining four of us sat around waiting for the second trip, drinking more of the delicious coffee.
Evan and Doug
The wind was staring to pick up and the Bay had whitecaps in stark contrast to the mirrored surface of the previous day. Suddenly bad news over the radio telephone in the kitchen. The Beaver had a battery problem. Doug would try to jump start it and wanted to get back over that night because the next day the winds were forecast to go up to fifty knots. Two hours later Doug showed up. Getting the canoes secured in the chop was difficult as the boat bucked up and down. He spent a long time tying them down, and our rapidly sinking confidence was not helped when we overheard him say "I'm worried about this one."
The four of us, including Randy in contrast to his bravado in the rapids, told Doug he didn't have to go even if it meant staying an extra day. He said not to worry. We did worry however, and as I watched the wind whipping over the lake I thought just how precarious our little venture was.
Doug told us later that we were the last canoe trip of the season (out of 20 the whole summer, since he has a monopoly in picking them up). We were also the only ones to go down the North Knife, most of the groups favoring the Caribou or the Seal.
The change in weather was no joke. By the end of September it gets cold in these parts, and nature turns mean.
Eventually we were ready to take off. Laden with the two canoes strapped to the pontoons, Doug said the Beaver flew like a barn door, yet the power of the Pratt & Whitney radial engine was awesome. We all wore headphones against the noise.
Once in the air the trip only took 15 minutes, highlighted by numerous sightings of Beluga whales swimming in the mouth of the Churchill River. For some reason they seemed to swim in threes, and far below the plane I would suddenly see a trio of white figures surface in an arc and disappear again.
Crossing over Churchill I saw the railroad line heading south as far as the eye could see, one set of tracks and two adjacent powerlines the only break on the horizon and the only land link to the rest of the world.
Churchill, Polar Bear Capital of the World
Churchill, Polar Bear Capital of the world, is truly the back of beyond, home to 1300 or so hardy and self-sufficient souls who must have enormous reserves of self-discipline to withstand its essential bleakness.
Over dinner at the Lazy Cub Café, built single-handedly by the owner from hand hewn logs dragged over by snowmobile (you get what I mean by self sufficient souls?), Doug regaled us with local history, politics, and flying stories.
He had just finished a long stint as mayor, which he said had taught him a lot about both the good and the bad side of politics. He was, as are all entrepreneurs, fervently anti-socialist and made no bones about it. He was also against tree huggers, as he called them. He gave a persuasive argument how the anti-fur movement, the outlawing of baby seal killing, and the recent protection of snow geese had adverse knock-on effects in far greater proportion to the number of animals saved. I said persuasive, not politically correct.
The loss of the fur trade over time which had been the reason for Churchill being founded had had a devastating effect on the local economy and more particularly the Indians. Any attempts he made as mayor to replace this source of revenue, either by making Churchill the logical port for exporting Saskatchewan wheat via the rail link, or by renting the missile test firing range (a relic of the Cold War to commercial satellite launches), had been blocked by the "Eastern" powers that be. As a community that represented a tiny constituency in Ottawa he had had little luck in pushing his logic, and so had decided to call it a day.
He struck me as a real giant of a man, not in stature (he was pretty short) but in that old style strength of character and pioneer spirit kind of way. A real swashbuckler.
He also had some great plane stories. In one instance, he had left his plane running due to a weak battery (sound familiar?) while on a remote lake, and when he turned his back the plane had broken the mooring and was starting to head away. He ran and dove in, catching the mooring rope and was dragged halfway across the lake before managing to clamber onto the pontoon and get back in the cockpit.
On another occasion he was acting as guide for a group of six Americans, three lawyers and three judges. Having to make a run into town for supplies, he was asked by one of the more obnoxious lawyers for a ride.
To his regret he agreed. On the way back (this was before he had a floatplane) the lawyer, upon seeing the tiny airstrip at Dymand Lake they were trying to land at, asked Doug if it was possible to land on such a small area in such a wind.
"No problem", said Doug, who then proceeded to drop the plane thirty yards short of the runway in the bog, hitting the nose undercarriage first and flipping the plane.
The lawyer, who had minor injuries, made noises about suing until one of his judge friends pointed out to him that it was he who asked to go along and he would stand no chance in a Canadian court.
His harumphing about lawyers and politicians here in the northern wilderness so far from them spoke volumes about the modern world.
After spending a solid week discussing how good our first beer would taste, we were disappointed to find there was no alcohol at the restaurant. Oh well. We didn't need it really, and we certainly didn't need it to fall asleep at the Aurora Motel, where lodging was helpfully provided by another of Doug's relations.
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