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Fwd: UNFORGETTABLE SUMMER OF 1960: URANIUM 235, CAN MET MINE, ELLIOT LAKE, ONTARO





THE UNFORGETTABLE SUMMER OF 1960


( HOW DOES A SUMMER JOB  CONNECT TO A U.S. AIR FORCE B 52 NUCLEAR BOMBER AND

AN ABANDONED MINE IN ELLIOT LAKE, ONTARIO?…AND, PERHAPS CANS OF TOMATO SOUP?}


Note:  Answer the short question at the end of this  article…re  tomato soup





ARMED United States SAC (Strategic Air Command) B 52 nuclear bomber in flight.



Pebbly Conglomerate pillar preventing the ceiling of Can  Met Uranium Mine from collapsing…Elliot Lake,  Ontario 1960




alan skeoch
march  2019

Monday May 9, 1960

Reported  to the office today…long TTC  trip from west Toronto to 1490 O’connor  Drive.  Another summer in the bush no  doubt.
Last year in Western Alaska was a real adventure .   Two Sikorsky S52’s,  a 30-06 rifle and expected to know  how to run
a Turam Geophysical instrument.   Three big events that bowled me over.  

Where to this year?  Barrie Nichols told me over the phone to prepare for Arizona.  Hot place, I  thought. Full of snakes was the
next thought so I hot footed down to the library to bone up  on rattlesnake bites.  According to a  book if the rattlesnake sinks his
fangs into a leg, then encourage bleeding.   Suck the venom and  blood  out of the wound  right  away.  Yuck!  How can I suck
the blood  out of my  own leg.  Only some wiz bang yoga  guru can do that.   Got to get a snake bite kit from the company if
they expect me to go  to Arizona.    Nice part about Arizona would  be the absence of black  flies, moose flies,  deer flies…maybe.
Certainly will have lots  of these blood  sucking bastard  mosquitoes.  Malaria?  Wonder if they carry malaria.  Look  on the up
side,  Al, they made a lot of good western movies in Arizona  with John  Wayne.  Hi-yi-yipppy-yi-yay.  Arizona here I come.

“So, Barrie, I am all ready for Arizona…got big hat like John Wayne.”
“Change in plans, Alan…”
“Change?”  (not another Groundhog River ordeal…no, no, no!)
“Ireland, Alan, get your bag packed  for Ireland.”
“What about my snake bite kit?”
“No snakes in ireland, Alan.”
“Right…funny that I spent last night in the library checking out rattlesnakes.”

Spent the rest of the day getting my papers ready…passport, etc. then phoned
Marjorie and mom to let them know about this Ireland  adventure.

Tuesday ,  May  10, 1960

“Alan, hope you remember how to use the Turam, Ronka and an electrical resistivity outfit?”
“Think so…yes!”


But deep  down I was not that confident.  Last summer in Alaska, there  were five us running
the Turam.  I was just a helper to Bill Morrison who knew  everything about the Turam.  We were
a  two man field  crew…the other two man crew were Don Van Every and ian  Rujtherford…the three
of them seemed to know all about the Turam.  I  was just learning. But I made good  notes and watched

      the set up system.  Now a year later those guys

are gone and suddenly I  am  top  man.   I thought it was  only in war time that a private gets boosted  to
an officer because all the officers are dead.

“Crate  all the stuff up…we’re shipping it by boat to Dublin today.”

So we weighed, measured,  labelled, itemized a pile of stuff.   Enough to fill 8 crates…then had to get
stronger crates.  

Eric  and I  went to a movie show that night after I got Rev. Currie to sign my passport papers.

Wednesday May 11, 1960

Picked up the Turam from Charley Houston and  had new crates made.

Then Dr. Paterson…Norm…said, “Alan, get ready  to go to Blind River tomorrow…you will be  going
underground at an Elliot Lake uranium mine…mine has  been shut down…you will be  the last human
beings down in the cage.”
“What about Ireland?”
“Still going there  so make sure you fill out that list for Irish  Customs.”

Phoned Marjorie in North Bay…We are a couple…love her…but no time to
stop in North Bay on way  to Elliot Lake.

Thursday  May 12, 1960

Nailed  the top on the last crate.   Found a Ronka EM manuel to study.  No time for lunch  or
even  a cup of coffee.  Packed draughting supplies and resistivity outfit for the Blind River/Elliot Lake job.
In evening I went to Scout meeting and the Rover Crew gave me a  Rosary for protection in Ireland.

Mom and Eric dropped me off at the West Toronto train  station for Blind River.


Wednesday  May 13, 1960

Wonderful night sleeping in a birth on the train…even better waking up to a sumptuous breakfast as a panorama of
Canada whirled  by.  Sudbury appears like face of the moon…depressing.  Studied Ronka manual…best to know what
I might be expected  to know.  Got off train in  Spragge, a place that looks  like it sounds, then took taxi to Elliot Lake.
Impression?  Bad.  Abandoned  trailer camps, repossessed vehicles in car dealers, even more cars stripped naked.
The boom days  of Elliot Lake are over.  Is  it a good thing that the need for uranium has  tapered off or a bad thing?
Either way Elliot Lake is no longer a  boom town…now a bust town…heading to become a  ghost town.  We will live
in a CanMet guest house, very modern. CanMet mine once employed  1,000 men  but has now been stripped to a  workforce 
of 70.  We only saw less than 10.  Apparently the mine has  just been kept open long enough for us  to complete our survey.
We will eat our meals  in an immense empty dining hall once  operated  by the caterer Crawley and McKraken.  One of the
men assigned to us, Harry McGinnis,  said waitresses were expected to do double duty as hookers.   Probably another mining story that has
been inflated. Suppose the prostitute story could  be true though.  Which reminded me of an  age old  comment about
successful mining ventures.  “If the hookers arrive, you know the mine is going to open.”



We  tested the Ronka  on the beach of a lake above the mine.  Apparently the lake is now leaking into the mine stopes and shafts.
We will see if that is  true as we will be going down the shaft in the case tomorrow.   Abandoned machinery here and there.



Dateline  Friday  May 13, 1960

 “What is  happening here?”
 “Do  you mean what is  happening to Elliot Lake?”
 “Yeah…This was supposed to be a boom town…instead  I  see a  lot of stripped cars and  House For Sale  signs…and  not many  people wandering around.”
“If  you read  the papers or listened to the news, you  would  know what has happened?  
“Too much Uranium  235 around?   Radioactive town?”
‘Don’t be silly…that U 235 is rare…maybe only a  few of those atoms  in a  pound of  uranium…No danger here except maybe the tailings  ponds.”
“Town feels depressed.”
“Population moving out…once  had 24,000 people…dropping…lucky if 7000 will remain.”
“How  come?”
“The Yanks just said they would not renew the contract after 1962.”
“Why?”
“Cheaper uranium;m in a Saskatchewan mine”
“Maybe, the  Yanks already have 18,000 nuclear weapons…ought to be enough…”
   (NOTE: Not So, by 1965, the US nuclear arsenal reached higher than 20,000…since then it has been markedly reduced)

Atom bomb testing  was in full swing in 1960.  Many detonated  on the deserts of the American Southwest.  All  of them
using enriched uranium from the mines located at Elliot Lake, Ontario…nicknamed  our ‘Atomic  City’


“Who knows he truth?  I know one thing…”
“What’s that?”
“The Cold  War is still on big time.”
“Right…get reminders every  day…”
“Yep, those  Christly  big B 52’s are over us every day…way up high…can see their con trails across the sky.”
“And they are carrying Atom  bombs using  Elliot Lake uranium 235.”
“Why do you always but that 235 in the conversation.”
“Because that kind of uranium makes the bombs…U 235 is an unstable uranium atom…easier  to knock around and  loosen some neutrons…that’s what
makes the atom  bomb work, you know that of course.”
“Heard it often  but cannot understand how a few fractured atoms the size of peppercorns let loose enough power to blow  cities like Hiroshima and Nagasaki  off the map…kill thousands.”
“Apparently there are 100 pounds of uranium in each atomic  bomb but only 1 pound is fissile…”
“Fissile?   New  word to me.”
“Means it is  capable of  nuclear fission…capable of the big bang you might say.”
“What happens to the rest of the uranium.”
“Turns somehow to radioactive  dust…nasty stuff…lasts forever.”


Deep underground  at Can Met mine was eerie.  Absolute silence.  Absolute darkness…except
for the  occasional  explosive release of a roof bolt and  collapse of  a piece of the rock  ceiling
somewhere in the blackness.   The rock/ore was quite beautiful as you can  see in the glare
of my flashbulb.


“Have you ever seen uranium?”
“Nope.”
“Well, we are about to see a lot of it at Can Met.”
“I thought the mine was empty.”
“No  mine is ever empty.”
“Why not?”
“How do you think the roof of  mine  is held up?”
“Wooden timbers?”
“Long ago that may have been the case but not now.  Roof of the mine
is  held  up  by great thick pillars  of rock….most of which contains  ore.
Pull those pillars and the whole goddamn mine  will collapse…as  you will see.”
“As I will see?”
“Yep, a lot of the pillars in Can Met have already been pulled.  The mine is finished…you will likely
hear parts of  the mine imploding…bloody dangerous  place.”
“Why are we going down there then?”
“Beats me.”
“Looking for minerals in a mine that is  collapsing…makes no sense.”
“I think  we  are just going down there to test the Ronka E.M.  unit…to see how it works  when
surrounded  by mineralization…maybe not…to tell the truth I am just following orders … not sure why we are going down in the cage.”
“Too modest, Alan.”

 “Not so…do not get some  kind of inflated idea of my role…I was just an instrument man…not a decision maker…best image might

be a “fly on the wall”  but there were no flies down at the bottom of the mine…could not see one anyway as  it was pitch black…


This is our crew getting ready to do a  Ronka EM survey deep in Can Met Uranium Mine.  A mine engineer
whose name I have lost is giving directions so we would not get lost in the darkness.  That might be me
wearing the Ronka hoop which was composed of tightly wound copper wire.   


IS ELLIOT LAKE A DANGEROUS  PLACE..RADIOACTIVE?

Elliot Lake was the poster boy of a boom town.  In 1953, uranium was discovered…lots of it.  More uranium than anywhere else in the world
just a few hundred feet below the network a sparkling clean lakes and  rolling forested hills of this Shangri la of  Northern Ontario.
Lots of uranium found just at the time  when  the US was about to feverishly build atomic bombs as defence against a possible World War III against the Soviet Union.
By 1960, when we  were dropped deep into the stinking depths of  Can Met Uranium mine, the United States  had built over 18,000 atomic bombs using Elliot Lake
uranium.  The population zoomed to 25,000 by  1959 with 9 mining companies in operation.  

This is the ‘dry’ at Can Met, a hot air room in which  miners  hung their mine  clothing on hooks
that were then drawn to the ceiling.

Can Met Mine  had a short 4 year life, 1957 to 1960, and in that time  processed 2.5 million tonnes or with a uranium content of  between 2 and  3 lbs per tonne.
Early  atomic bombs  contained  10 pounds of enriched uranium 235…only 1 lb of which detonated.  The blast from an atomic bomb was created when the unstable  Uranium 235 atoms were split thereby  releasing
a  vast amount of energy by a chain effect atom splitting.  I know that is hard to understand.  How can such a small knocking around of Neutrons release  such a vast amount of energy.
Even scientists in the 1960’s were nonplussed.  “I am become death, the shatterer of worlds,” quoted scientist Robert Oppenheimer.
“The unleash  power of the atom has changed everything save our modes of thinking and we thus drift toward unparalleled catastrophe,” said Albert Einstein. They
were both correct.


IN 1960, I was just a kid with an exciting assignment.  A chance to explore an empty and  collapsing mine deep down in the bowels  of the earth.

Now  how many people get a chance to do  that?   In our case  there were only five of  us decending in the battered cage at Can Met uranium mine.  After us The mine
was to be totally abandoned to the forces  of nature.  Gravity would cause the mine ceilings to fail…to implode.  Water was seeping into the nooks and crannies
where collapse had not or would  not occur.  The mine was dead and dangerous.  And,  God it was exhilarating to be down there.  An adventure to last a 
lifetime.  I slipped a small chip of uranium carrying ore into my pocket and still have it 59 years later..  Very  pretty.  Perhaps a little  radioactive
as well.  Only 1% of the uranium ore  was the unstable  U 235 so he danger was minimal.  And we would only be underground  for a few days even of
the radioactivity readings were three times what is considered safe…i.e. a count of 293, far above the 100 safe level. Or so I was told.  Sounded like bull shit
to a 22 year old optimist.

Exposure proved far more dangerous to the men whose jobs involved  8 hour underground shifts five days a week for years and years.  Little was said
of these dangers at the time.  Miners, most of them, did not think long term. Paycheck to paycheck.  Good pay checks. The need  for raw uranium to feed  the military needs
 of the Cold War trumped  any protest.   The atom bombs were more
important than human health.   And the mining jobs paid well.  Elliot Lake was a boom town for a few years…miners flocked there by the thousands, many
of them new  Canadians.   Some renamed the town “Atomic City”, a name that had  no tragic overtones.  Houses were built as fast as  possible many of them
using the rock  waste from the mine itself as foundation  stone.   Houses whose  foundations were so  radioactive that large  air  conditioning fans were eventually installed  beneath
the floors.  Worse, however was the discovery that Elliot Lake miners had twice  as many cases of lung cancer deaths than average…81 deaths as opposed to
45 in a control group. “It is certain that exposure to radon leads to an increased risk of  lung cancer,” wrote investigators. It was the Steel Workers Union of America
however that took action in 1976 when their man, Paul Falkowski, stated, “If anybody does not like  to go to the hospital with lung cancer, he should have  a 
very  close looks the Elliot Lake situation before he signs  on.”

High pay muted any concerns.  Mining was a dangerous occupation where risk of injury or  death was just accepted as normal.  So why
get worked  up over high levels radon gas?   There were no government warnings.  It was only late in the life  of  Elliot Lake that Mr. Falkowski, the union activist, came to
town with dire warnings about long term lethal consequences.  

 Better to revel in life of the boom town where a car salesman could sell  13  cars a day, every day.
And if the  dealership stayed open at night the sales could double.

As  with all mining boom towns, men far outnumbered women in Elliot Lake in the late 1950’s.  Ten men for every woman.  Pimps were  fast to see  opportunity
in that imbalance and  prostitutes  were moved into town as fast as the cages full of young miners went up and  down.  The prostitutes were housed in trailers that
could be moved around whenever police seemed troublesome.  Even trucks became moving brothels. Hookers activity was  so blatant that on mine payday trucks  would back right up to the 
mine buildings offering sex services without delay.   And if the police  showed up, the tail gates were swung up and the truck driver would look for another spot.
Elliot Lake was the reverse of the rock tune “I don’t get no satisfaction…”  Quite the reverse song  might have been hollered…”We all get our satisfaction at 
the cage  door.”



Then in 1959, just a year before we arrived for our short visit,  the winds  of  change began to blow.  The United  States announced  it would buy no more uranium from Elliot lake after 1962.  Elliot Lake’s boom became a  bust almost overnight.  Hence the Trailers abandoned along with cars stripped of anything valuable and left as hulks began to appear.

Elliot Lake did  not die completely.  There was a  short need for uranium for CANDU reactors and Ontario Hydro nuclear electricity installations.  But not enough.  By the 1990’s the last two operating mines in Elliot Lake
Denison Mines  and  Rio  Algom also closed down.  The uranium ore had  been depleted and the demand  for uranium was no longer strong.


Elliot Lake avoided becoming a boom  town when the community 
attracted retired  persons that move to the town by the bargain prices for the former mine community homes.
Back to my journal now…
May 14, 1960

Can Met Uranium mine is almost abandoned   We  will be the last human beings to enter the bowels of the earth and see the gravesite of a uranium mine that cost 25 million dollars to open in 1957 and  closed this
year,  1960, never having made enough money to cover costs.  Four years.  I wonder  how many atomic  bombs were made from the  2.5 million tonnes of  raw uranium ore  blasted and  scraped  from the walls?
Apparently 2 to 3 kg. of raw uranium were  recovered per  tonne of ore.   Estimates are that each atomic bomb contains 100 lbs of uranium so there was enough 
uranium to make many  atomic bombs.   Why did the United States not renew the contract?   Not because pressure to end the madness of the  Cold  War, that’s for sure.  Cheaper uranium mines 
were found in Saskatchewan was the big reason.

Can Met Uranium Mine had passageways that were wide and high.   Enough room
for front end loaders  and Tip cars  to function with ease.  All passageways had  once
been lit with electric lights.  These were gone when we went down. But lurking in the darkness
were many abandoned  vehicles like  those picture above.  It was a bit frightening when
the  cones   of light from our headlamps  suddenly revealed these  machines



The cage was just that…a big cage capable of carrying small bulldozer down or a shift of  miners up.  Except for us it was empty.  Harry McGinnis was our cageman, guide, and entertainer..  Decending was

disconcerting but not nearly as  scary

as the mine runways and stopes.  Today We descended at 8 a.m. and did not resurface until 12 p.m.  The  last scoop mobile ferried us from one point to another eventually
we completed 293 determinations  with the Ronka E.M. unit.  Our head lamps shot out cones of light that made  the blackness quite sinister.   Every sense was disturbing.  


Sight?  We saw walls 
black  with carbon beneath which was the pebbly conglomerate that held  one or two percent Uranium.   Once in a while. two or three large machines were revealed.  Hulks.  “Too old to be
saved…they…stay  down here as she fills with water. Quite  frightening really when a cone of  light suddenly reveals an immense yellow mine machine.

 

Sound?  Most of the time no sound whatever.  Then there would be a loud bang as a roof  bolt gateway.  Or, worse, a dull but powerful boom as some roof collapsed in s stope.  Some sounds were
close  by  but most were  distant.

Smell?   There was a damp smell of water mixing with spilled oils or other unknown chemicals.

Taste?   Might be imaginary but there seemed to be a metallic mouldy taste in the  air.

Touch?   A kind of wet slime on the walls as the  water from the lake  far above  us was working its way  down into the mine.   Some  low spots were now filled
and we had to wade our way along.


Some  of the mining machines were brought back to the surface for use by the nearby Denison Mine.
I have no idea  what this  machine did underground but note two points:  1) It has a  very low
profile which suggests it worked in the stopes and  may have been a machine that helped loosen ore.
2)  Imagine this  machine fitting into the ‘cage’ that took miners down.    Much too big for the cage
we used so  how this machine got down the mine is a bit of mystery.   Probably lowered in parts and
then put back together.  If  this was so, why did it come back up in one piece?

May 15, 1960


Our temporary home is the former staff and guest house intended for high company officials.  Luxurious.  But never used much and now  vacant.  Can Met built this guest lodge, a large bunk house for
single males, 22 houses for families, and a milling complex.   All dominated by  two winding towers for two shafts.  All now  abandoned. “Pearsons” was A  local name for the homes as many felt Elliot Lake had been
abandoned by Prime Minister Lester Pearson.

This is  the Can  Met Exective Lodge.  A building that had hardly be used…fully filled with period furniture of the 1960’s.  Buildings like this were built for miners 
with families while  single men lived  in larger bunk houses.  In 1960 a great many of these homes were boarded up with sheets of plywood.  In the town of
Elliot lake there  were many homes that had been built privately by residents.  On the hung For Sale signs  but there were no bidders.  Many people lost much
when the town mines  closed.

We went underground again at 8 a.m. today.  Five of  us.  Bob McConnell, Alan Peglar, Joe Weber, Harry McGinnis and me (Alan Skeoch).  The mine is quite  spacious, enough room for scoop mobiles to pass each other
in the main passageways.  One  of these scoop machines was provided for us to travel on  he  main haulage way to the  eastern border of the mine.   This scoop was the last moving vehicle in the mine.  There were
many other machines  stuffed into the stopes on each side of the haulage way.  Dead machines.  Seemed like  driving through a graveyard, underground,  with coffins on all sides.  Absolute silence broken
occasionally by loud BANGS!

These roof bolts  are  much smaller than those in Can Met and the  wooden pieces were iron slabs in
Can Met.  But, as  in all modern mines, roof  bolts like these helped hold up the ceilings.

“What was that?”
“Roof  bolts giving way…she’s collapsing you know,” said our guide  Harry McGinnis.
“How come?”
“They pulled a lot of the pillars as they  moved out…got as much high grade as they could.”
“Thought we were down here to see if the mine could be saved.”
“Where  did you get that idea?  No mine  can be saved  if the pillars are pulled.”
“Nothing to hold  up the ceilings in the stopes?”
“Not a damn thing…maybe I  can  get my mother in law  down here to do  that.”  (Harry had
an  odd sense  of humour, more of which we would hear.)
“Look over there.”
“Pile of rock?”
“Yep, that’s where one  of  our shift bosses got telescoped.”
“Telescoped?”
“Yeah, the big chunks just folded him up  like a telescope.  Dead.  Stone dead.”
“Was that common?”
“One  of  the cat drivers drove right into the “grizzly”…mashed  him to a pulp.
“What’s a ‘grizzly’?”
“A crusher…takes or ore  and smashes it into little  bits that go up top on conveyor belt.”
“Grizzly as in grizzly bear, right?”
“Harry has his own names for just about anything.”

I slipped This tiny piece of ore into my pocket in 1960 and  have kept it ever since to remind
me just how surreal this  Elliot Lake job became.  I was never sure why  we went down in that mine.
The uranium is hidden  away in what is called a  pebbly conglomerate. Shiny.  No, you
cannot see any uranium.   To get uranium  it would be necessary to give this chip  a bath
in Sulphuric  acid to dissolve the mineral…and  then a secondary bath in ammonia to precipitate out
the uranium only 1% of  which would be U 235…radioactive form.  But it is from pieces
like this  in my hand that atomic bombs are made.

Note: What does ‘fissile’ mean?   It means that this rare  U235 of uranium will explode
in a nuclear chain reaction when brought to a critical mass.


We had our lunch on a big flat piece of rock in a stope that was sealed off by a sign, “Dangerous”.
Lunch was gritty…or seemed  so.

May 16, 1960

A motor generator for the Turam was scheduled to arrive in Sprague this morning.  So we did our drafting
while Harry entertained  us  with stories about Can Met.  He spoke with humour and emphasis.
Whether truth was present as well was not clear.
“Can Met spent $36,000 on air conditioning that never worked.”
“There are  $50,000 jumbos that sat underground  and were never used.”
“The haulage ways and stopes are filled  with abandoned mine  equipment.”

Mac, Joe  and  I set up our motor generator and laid  out our spread wire through the mine into
parts were we had to crawl through piles of rubble from roof bolt collapse.   I am beginning to
think this Can Met adventure is meant to show the people from Denison Mines that our Tram
EM units are trustworthy and  can discover underground conductors.  So there may be a connection
to the  upcoming job in Ireland.  Maybe Denison execs  just want some kind of  proof. But I have
no idea why we  are down here.

Joe  Weber is a former Nazi released in 1953 from some sort of prison for war criminals. He loved
telling me stories about expensive errors made by Can Met Executives…called  it a company founded
upon greed.  Strange he would do this as  Can  Met is his employer.  Then again he would soon lose
his job as  happened  to most Can  Met miners.  I suppose some of them were transferred to the main
Denison uranium mine which  was nearby and still functioning. While others were just let go.

We continued to be entertained  by Harry McGinnis who nicknamed the Can  Met warehouse as
“the whorehouse” since  “each time you go there for a  part or machine, you get screwed.”
“There are  $50,000 worth of spare parts for a nonexistent machine.”  True or not?  I do not
know but find it suspicious that the figure $50,000 is used often.  “Stealing gas is common to the
tune of $1,500 a  month.”   I wonder if these stories are just being said for my benefit.

May 17, 1960

Harry McGinnis was very drunk today  when he arrived at our cook house.  “Spent all night at the
Legion.”  The Legion turned out to be a shack built by his friends somewhere in the nearby bush.
We  went down in the cage at 8.30…rattled all the way down.  Took some readings with the
resistivity unit.  Quickly finished and began  hauling in the grounded cable.  Walking  alone
in the  blackness to the far corner of the mine is a bit frightening but also triggers curiosity.

Joe  Weber does not have a good word to say about anything or anybody…likely a result
of  his war experience.  We never probed that very deeply and he never offered  an explanation
as to why he spent the years from 1945 to 1953 in some kind of military prison.  Best not known I guess.

When I took a picture of the boys on the scoop, the flashbulb exploded.  Somehow  the walls of 
the mine amplified the noise making it soundl like a  cannon or, worse, a roof bolt giving way
above us.   

Harry spent some time criticizing the pope today and then turned back to his favourite subject, his
mother in law who he described as having a personality ‘harder than a whore’s heart’.
We ate lunch  on top of what Harry called a  ‘Portugeser’…a name that made no  sense
initially.

“Why is this large slab of rock  called a Portuguesor?”
“Good reason…see where it fell from the ceiling up there.?”
“Yeah, big gash.”
“Well, it fell down on a Portuguese … lots of them worked here … some
of them are under these big pieces of  rock…so we  call them ‘Portuguesors’
Truth or fiction? Hard  to say.

WHAT HAPPENED TO BEAR CUB LAKE?

“WHATEVER HAPPENED TO THOSE LITTLE LAKES?”
“What little lakes?”
“Surely you remember them…lovely lakes…Williams Lake, Bear Cub  Lake, Stollery Lake, Smith Lake and Long Lake?”

“They still exist in a way…but not as  they were.”
“Why?”
“They became the Tailings Ponds for the chemicals used to get the uranium.”
“Do  you mean the Sulphuric Acid and  Ammonia.”
“Precisely…so  much acid in the Tailing Ponds they  need lots of fresh water.”
“How long will that be”
“Long long time.  The  Ponds are checked  regularly for leaks but some treated effluent
does drain off into Serpent River and then Quirke Lake.   Tailing Ponds are one of the
down sides of  the mining industry.”
“Can people swim or fish in those lakes any more?”
“Are you kidding.  They are fenced off from the public even today…NO GO ZONES.


Here is another mine machine rescued from Can Met.  Behind it is a lake that was slowly percolating down
into the mine passageways and stopes.   Not far away are other beautiful lakes which became less
beautiful as more and more ‘tailings’ were piped into the waters.  These Tailings ponds remain dangerous
and  have to be tested every year in case  of leakage.  Sulphuric acid washed to dissolve the uranium from
the crushed ore.  Then ammonia was used precipitate the uranium from the sulphuric acid  solution.  Once
this was done and the uranium recovered the soup  of sulphuric acid  and Ammonia and other pollutants
were deposited  in the tailing ponds resting there for all time.

Is this Bear Cub Lake today?   



CONCLUSION


Our job is  over.  Still not sure why we were working underground in a  mine that 
had no future.  It might have been a double kind of test.  First, to see if the Turam and Ronka
worked…i.e. registered high readings in a place  where high readings should 
be expected.  And second,  maybe the Denison people wanted to see if I really  knew
what i was  doing…i.e. they needed some kind of  assurance before sending me
to Ireland.   Truth?  Someone must know?

Next stop was the village of Bunmahon, County Waterford, Southern Ireland.  Above 
is a picture of  Denison Mine Geologist John Hogan enjoying a pint of Guinness with
me in Kirwin’s pub where  we spent many evenings.

No one will ever walk through these dark passages  ever again. Can Met is a grave.


alan skeoch
April 2019

A POST SCRIPT THAT MIGHT SCARE YOU…AS IT DOES ME

TORONTO STAR, APRIL 11, 2019

“IN his recent book, The Doomsday  Machine, Daniel Ellsberg argues that probably the greatest nuclear threat today is ACCIDENTAL nuclear war— that is, a false electronic
alarm  triggering a pre-emptive strike by either the U.S.  or Russia.   Over the years there have been a  number of chilling close calls.”…”Trump is  now heading in the opposite 
direction, embarking on modernization of U.S. nuclear weapons.”

Linda McQuaig, 
Toronto Star Columnist

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The B 52 Stratofortress heavy bombers first rolled off the Boeing assembly line in 1953 and  since then 744 have been made.   In 1960, the year we were working for a few days underground in  Elliot Lake, Boeing delivered
106 brand new B 52’s to the American Strategic  Air Command for service as a nuclear armed   strike force should America be attacked by the  Society Union.  B 52 bombers were in the air all the time…i.e. some bombers
were always ready to strike back should a nuclear war be  triggered.  The B  52 could fly  85,000 miles in one mission.  Really the only limit on the B 52 was the possible fatigue of its crew.  Boeing eventually delivered  
744 of these heavy bombers to the USAF of which 76 are still operational today, many based  in Minot,  North Dakota.  At the peak of the Cold War we could see B 52 contrails every day as they overflew Toronto
at 50,000 feet.  All were armed  at that time with nuclear weapons  many of which  contained  Uranium from  Elliot Lake.

The con trails  of these B 52’s that caused us to build an air raid shelter in our cellar.  And stock it with a dozen cans of tomato soup and one old studio couch and a potential pair of laundry tubs  filled
with fresh water providing mom had time enough to fill these tubs.  Silly?   Pointless?  Comforting?  All of these.  Would  we let the neighbours and  friends into our shelter in the event of nuclear war?’
That was a big moral  question at the time.

“The B-52 is an Air Force plane that refuses to die. Originally slated for retirement generations ago, it continues to be deployed in conflict after conflict. It was the first plane to drop a hydrogen bomb, in the Bikini Islands in 1956, and laser-guided bombs in Afghanistan in 2006. It has outlived its replacement. And its replacement’s replacement. And its replacement’s replacement’s replacement.”  New York Times

1) POST SCRIPT #1

HIROSHIMA   1945

When that Atom Bomb was dropped by the B 29 named Enola Gay on  Hiroshima  in 1945 the destruction of  global civilization became a possibility as the United  States
and the Soviet Union began to mass produce nuclear weapons.  Hiroshima and Nagasaki became familiar to all.  When the first nuclear atom bomb exploded over Hroshima about
99% of the uranium that was supposed to undergo a chain reaction did  not do  so.  A very small percentage  of the explosive (fissile) uranium, maybe 2% exploded while the
remainder became radioactive  dust.  Deadly dust.  How  big was the explosive material?  About the size of a  peppercorn…7/10 of gram…the winght of a five dollar bill.  That was 
enough to level a two mile radius and kill 80,000 people.  Did the uranium come from Elliot Lake?  No.  It was the sudden need for uranium after Hiroshima that made Elliot Lake
the uranium capital of the western world.

STRONTIUM 90 AND THE 1950’S

Enriched  Elliot Lake  uranium was used in the bombs that blew  apart some  islands in the South Pacific Ocean  after similar explosions polluted parts of the American  southwest.
This  ended  when scientists such as Canadian Ursula  Franklin detected  Strontium 90 in her son’s baby teeth…radioactive fallout from above ground nuclear testing.  The result?
 U.S. President John Kennedy negotiated with the Soviet Union a Nuclear Test Bomb Treaty banning above ground testing of nuclear weapons.

The Test Bomb treaty did not end nuclear testing nor did it prevent the squadrons of B 52 bombers loaded with nuclear bombs from taking to the air each day so that in the event of
nuclear a surprise nuclear attack by the Soviets  the airborne B 52’s could deliver a return devastation as so graphically portrayed in the film Dr. Strangelove.  Elliot Lake was involved
in the bomb  business until 1962 when the US found a  cheaper source of  uranium  in Saskatchewan.



As a high school kid in the 1950’s I can still remember the con trails of those B 52’s that regularly overflew Toronto high up in the sky.  Like many other Canadians, I built an air raid
shelter in our cellar…one old studio couch, a dozen cans of tomato soup and  other cans pilfered from mom’s supplies.  “Mom, if an A bomb happens, run down  cellar and turn
on he ware in the laundry tubs, fill both of them…we will need that water.”  It was primitive effort. How could all  four of us  sleep on one narrow couch?  What if  a  neighbour waned
in as the city burned?  Where would we go to the toilet?  What would we do when the water ran out?  How could we cook the tomato soup?  Where would we go to the bathroom?
How could we be sure radioactive dust did not blow in from the cellar windows?  Sounds silly, but in the 1950’s fear of nuclear Armageddon was as real as the nose on your  face.
 As fate would  have it, one summer job with Hunting
Tech and Exploration Services sent me as  an instrument man helping Abul Mousuff do a  seismic survey up and  down the St John River Valley.  One of our base lines passed right through
the wooded area near Andover, New Brunswick where a B 52 crashed killing all crew except one who mysteriously was able to parachute.   On that crash sit I picked up this small
piece of melted aluminum that was  once part of the B 52 fusillade.  Fortunately that plane was on a  training flight and  was therefore not carrying nuclear bombs.  Or so we were told.
Other B 52’s also crashed in those years, one  of which crashed  in the eastern USA and the failsafe blocks all failed save one on a  nuclear bomb.

2019…PRESIDENT OF U.S.A. AND THE NUCLEAR BUTTON

I put my fears on the back burner for the last 50 years.  No one in his or her  right mind would  start a nuclear war?  Right?  And the main enemy during the Cold  War had  collapsed  and
morphed  into Russia and a whole mess of  splinter states.  So what’s there to worry about?  Worry?  I think a stronger term is needed…FEAR.  Every time I see the President of the
United States walking or talking, I cannot help but notice the man behind him.  You’ve seen  him as well no doubt.  He  is in a  military uniform and  carries a brief case.  Ever wonder
why he shadows President Trump so  closely?  Inside that brief case is a button.  By pressing that button the President of the US can launch a massive number of nuclear rockets aimed
at specific targets.  At the same time 80 or more B 52”s crews will scramble and rumble down  runways from bases in the Western defence perimeter.   Then, perhaps a  little later,
nuclear submarines roaming the oceans of the world  will launch another bevy of nuclear rockets.

No one  would be that stupid?  How long does  a US president have to make such a should  destroying retaliation?  Five Minutes!  Let me  put that in big type…FIVE MINUTES!
The final decision rests with him alone.  And that is major worry today since President Trump takes pride in being unpredictable,  impulsive and often unable  or unwilling to listen
to advice.  My fears are not just mine.  In an article titled Nuclear War Should Require a Second Opinion (Scientific  American, August 1017, P.8)  the editors wrote 
 “In just five  minutes an American president could put all of humanity in jeopardy…that’s how  long would  takeoff as  many  as  400 land-based nuclear weapons the US to loosed…after
an initial  ‘go’ order.” Once  launched there is now way to stop them for there is no self-destruct switches.

One man, the  President of the US  decides.  And  he has five minutes to do so.  All other aspects of this  nuclear arsenal has checks  lest  a lunatic goes nuts.  Long years  ago we took
our boys to  a desolate place in North Dakota.  “Boys, behind that barbed  wire fence where that concrete bunker noses above he ground, there  are nuclear rockets encased in cement silos.
Extremely dangerous.  Somewhere nearby, invisible to us, are  two men in a control room.  Those  rockets cannot be launched  unless both get a “go” signal to do so.  Two men who have been
checked  as mentally stable and  responsible.”  That fact is some comfort.

Why then cannot the president of the United States  have a failsafe scenario where he must consult some other person before pressing that Armageddon button?  Get a second opinion in other words.

This article by the  editors of Scientific  American is concerned because Donald Trump, President of the United States “aspires to be ‘unpredictable’ in how he would use nuclear weapons.”

Now here is the big question.  Should our family start buying cans of tomato soup?



POST SCRIPT 2:  B 52 CRASHES  IN NEW BRUNSWICK IN 1957

While we were doing this seismic survey across  the soil where the B 52 crashed we  heard several very strange stories
about the crash.  Was it an accident or was it madness…i.e.  deliberate.  How did  one man manage to bail  out?   The final
report on the crash  is reassuring but is it correct?  

Andover, NB Bomber Explodes In Flight, Jan 1957

Submitted by Stu Beitler
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  •  | 
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B52 EXPLODES IN FLIGHT; SEARCHERS FIND 7 BODIES.
PILOT’S EYES SHIELDED IN TEST.
Andover, N.B. (AP) — Frozen woodlands near here were searched today for one Air Force man still missing from the crew of an eight-engine B52 bomber which exploded in flight yesterday. Seven bodies were found and one man parachuted with minor injuries.
Hundreds of Air Force men, Royal Canadian Mounted Police and French – Canadian trappers and guides, warmly garbed against temperatures which went far below zero, hunted for the missing man.
A spokesman from the jet plane’s Loring Air Force base at Limestone, Maine, said the man may have parachuted. He said two parachutes were reported seen by residents of the area but that “they lost sight of one of them.”
The spokesman said Capt. RICHARD A. JENKINS, the commander of the craft and one of those killed, was at the controls, his head partially covered by a visor-type hood used in reflex tests. With the covering the pilot can see the instrument panel but cannot see outside the plane.
Six bodies were recovered in the wreckage or the deep snow yesterday. A seventh was found in part of the plane early today by searchers carrying portable lamps.
Several hours after the crash of the B52 jet bomber, an Air Force B29 crashed on landing at Bergstrom Air Force Base, near Austin, Tex., killing six crewmen and injuring three others.
The public information office at Loring identified five of the seven victims of the Andover crash as:
Capt. RICHARD A. JENKINS, the aircraft commander, Huron, Ohio.
Capt. WILLIAM C. DAVIDSON, Stockton, Calif.
Capt. JOHN E. McCUNE, Hayward, Calif.
Capt. MARQUID H. D. MYERS, Tracy, Calif.
T. Sgt. RAY A. MILLER, Racine, Wis.
All were married and all but DAVIDSON had children.
The only known survivor was:
1st Lt. JOE L. CHURCH, Charlotte, N.C.
A spokesman at Loring said a team of Air Force flight safety experts from Norton AFB near San Bernardino, Calif., and officials of the Boeing Airplane Co., would take part in an investigation of the crash. Boeing builds the eight-million-dollar, swept-wing B52s.
Brig. Gen. William K. Martin, Loring Commander, said in a statement “an unusual maneuver may have resulted in exceeding the flight limitations of the aircraft.”
In Washington, the Air Force said the pilot was undergoing a reflex test wherein the flyer’s eyes are partly shielded and the plane put into an “unusual position. The pilot then must right the craft.
The Washington spokesman said the plane apparently had been “placed in a position beyond its capability.”
The plane was the fourth B52 lost by the Air Force on training flights since February 1956.


















Posted on

1958 BUSHMAN’S THONG…: GROUNDHOG RIVER JOB 1958

Thanks  Jeanette…left handed scrawl others call it.


Re:  Speech of 20 women I admire…giving  it on April 4 in afternoon while
you are at work…speaking to a church group (free), original speech  given
to large teachers  group last fall (and they paid me which was a  surprise…I gave
part back to support their charities)

Marjorie wants my name to stand for Martys…but I  think that would  be rude as
we will take off for England that morning.

Thanks  for reading the long story of the Groundhog River…I have been  wanting to 
write it for decades  but never had time…so  I  made time this winter.

All these stories go to a blog my cousin set up…   Alan Skeoch …see address beside your name above…
I never look to see the blog … Our sons want me to put stories  in some kind of  book form but that
seems to be a pain  in the ass … wrote and  co wrote a bunch of history books…an ordeal for sure.

And,  yes, the company I worked  for in the summer had  a military like character…some
science guys  were veterans at the time…you would have liked  them.

alan


On Mar 29, 2019, at 10:20 PM, <jchau@sympatico.ca> <jchau@sympatico.ca> wrote:


You were right.  This was a very long one, but well worth it. 
Fascinating.  Quite like the military. Tough, but great experience.
You have very neat handwriting in your notebook pages.
Cheers.
Jeannette
 
From: SKEOCH <alan.skeoch@rogers.com> 
Sent: March 28, 2019 9:03 PM
To: Alan Skeoch <alan.skeoch@rogers.com>; Marjorie Skeoch <marjorieskeoch@gmail.com>
Subject: 1958 BUSHMAN’S THONG…: GROUNDHOG RIVER JOB 1958
 
 
 
ALL I WANTED WAS A  ‘BUSHMAN’S THONG’
(What is a Bushman’s Thong? That, my friends you will find at the very end)
 
 
LOCATION: GROUNDHOG RIVER:  SUMMER OF 1958
                    WILDERNESS NORTH OF  TIMMINS AND  SOUTH OF KAPUSKASING
 
image001.jpg@01D4E67D.AED56C70“><image001.jpg>image002.jpg@01D4E67D.AED56C70“><image002.jpg>
 
PURPOSE:  TO  CHECK OUT ANOMALOUS SIGNALS PICKED  UP BY A CANSO FLYING BOAT DRAGGING A MAGNETOMETER
                     TO DO SO  AS  SECRETLY AS POSSIBLE
 
alan skeoch
March 22, 2019
 
Three men I will never forget…Floyd, Bob and  Walter.  We  were  thrown together by accident in that summer of 1958.
Floyd Faulkner was our crew chief.  Bob Hilkar was our instrument man.  Walter Helstein, was our soul.  I think of his sad ending often.  
 Me?  AIan Skeoch, a 19 year old blank slate, just a few days out of high school.
 “So you are a Boy Scout, let’s see how you handle a  real  wilderness.  No badge
for this job, Alan.” jeu said/  “No, you are wrong, there is a  badge.”  And we all laughed.
 
 
 
image003.jpg@01D4E67D.AED56C70“><image003.jpg>
 
Floyd Faulkner
 
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Bob Hilkar
 
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Walter Helstein
 
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Alan Skeoch
 
 
July 2 – 5, 1958
 
And so the adventure begins.  I reported  to company HQ at 1950 O’Coinnor Drive with my bag packed  for the summer.  Never knew how long…did  not know
where I was going…had no idea who I was going with…had no idea how we were to get there.  Did not really know why I was hired in that summer of 1958.
“We needed a Boy Scout to baptize into the real  world,” commented Floyd or Bob. One of them. They intended to make a man of me.  And I think they did
that.  The events of that summer are still crystal clear in meh mind now…61 years later in my 80th year.  
 
 Mom and dad were a  little concerned as  the whole plan seemed
sort of loosey goosey  Who were these men that called  themselves  ‘geophysicists’?   
Right from the get go there were problems.  Our Land Rover had not arrived nor had the canoe which was to be strapped to the Rover’s roof.   And the two way radio was
still being overhauled.  If we needed a two way radio that meant we were heading into the wild unknown.  No telephone booths.  
 
“Go back home, Alan, gear not ready quite yet.”  Fine, I thought, for  I was already on the payroll.
 
  Floyd Faulkner and Bob Hilker  Both seemed  nice but a little distant .
They were veteran  bushmen.  I  was just a  high school kid.   First day we drove to Oshawa where the company  had a fleet of Canso double engined aircraft.
Vintage World  War II submarine hunters.
One of the Canso’s had  already overflown our target dragging an  airborne magnetometer.  The mag readings  indicated several anomalies worth detailed  ground
mapping.  We were that three man mapping team.  “Keep your mouth shut about the job, others are interested.” said our big boss, Dr. Norman Paterson.  He
made me feel like a military hit man  being sent on a mission.   
 
Dr. Paterson gave us a  final briefing on July  3. “This is  a  rough job, you will be  dropped  by  aircraft as  close as  we can  get to the anomalies.  Virgin forest.
No people, no trails, no transport except the canoe and your feet.”  Dr. Paterson was a  bit intimidating…long and lean…a serious  scientist who had  been
a student under Dr. Tuzo Wilson…the man who put the expression Plate Tectonics  in the dictionary.  I felt we were doing something important…something
that would change the world.  I was part of the  team… on the bottom rung of the geophysical ladder.  “What is my role?”, was  a question that I was afraid to ask.  As thing turned  out I should have
known when Dr. Paterson mentioned a blazing axe.  A blazing axe differs  from a  regular axe. It is smaller, lighter and is used to blaze trails  through virgin forest.
the idea is simple…lop a chunk  out of both sides  of trees ensuring that the line of blazes makes sense…i.e. going somewhere.  Why both sides of the trees
are hacked  should be obvious…one way into the wilderness  and to get back out follow the alternate blazes.  That was to be my job.  It was  never fully explained.
As things turned out all the jobs  were shared.  This  was to be a real learning experience.  Could I handle the job?  I thought and  was comforted  by a line
from Mr. Fred Burford, our football coach at Humberside  Collegiate Institute…”When the going gets tough, the tough get going.”  That line was called  upon
many times  in the following two and a half months.
 
July 6, 1958
 
“Al, meet us  at the corner of Bloor and Jane…bring what you need for three months…but all in one bag.”   Mom and dad  got a little worried.  Who were these
strangers?  They were not even coming to our house but asking Alan to meet them on a street corner.  So dad  came along.  My dad is a tough customer so he
planned to check ‘these assholes out’ before allowing me to crawl into the Land Rover.  Dad knew the difference between normal  assholes and  dangerous assholes.
Floyd, my crew chief, was gruff but solid.  So  dad  helped  stow my rucksack in the back of the Rover and waved me off for the summer.  This was  a  rite of passage.
 
We headed  north to Gravenhurst where we ate a huge dinner on the expense account.  The Food was heartburn hell but cost was on the company tab.  Then we carried
on northward to South Porcupine.  Floyd  and Bob knew  each other so they gabbed  away.   At some point Floyd gave me a nickname that stuck like a turd on a boot.
“Fucking Al will do the blazing…ever blazed a  trail Al?”   Conversation ebbed and I got a little tired of straddling the gear shift.  “Floyd, could you stop and let me crawl
in the back on top of the gear…that would be more comfortable.” “Fucking good idea.”  I learned  that Floyd  used fucking as  an adjective for just about everything including
me…as in Fucking Al with a grin.  It was not a term of derision…sort of a term of endearment.  Sort of.   So I spent the rest of the long  long journey folded like a jackknife on our tents and rucksacks.
I even slept a bit.  I was a little scared.  Wondering just what the hell I had gotten myself into.  At North Bay we got a  canoe and  strapped  it to our roof. Lots of rattling.
I was determined to make the best of it…something to remember.
 
image007.jpg@01D4E67D.AED56C70“><image007.jpg>
 
July 7
 
In Schumacker we visited our contractor, McIntyre Mines, where the geologist handed over a large sheaf of aerial photographs that pinpointed the anomalies  we were
to find and map.  “You guys will be the first mining persons ever to explore the wilderness northwest of the Groundhog River.”.  Was that true?  Wow…real wilderness.  We rented 
a  Beaver float plane from Austin Airways in South Porcupine for a flight on July 9 at 8 a.m.  McIntyre Mines  did not want us to use their plane lest other mining people
got wind  of our project.  Mining is super competitive.   The cloak of secrecy made the job  seem all that more important.
 
Floyd drove us to Timmins  where he handed  Blahey’s Food  Market a grub list that was to last three weeks. After that our food  supplies wold  be replenished b Blakey’s and
Austin Airways..  The word  “grub” or to use a more familiar ‘maggot’.   We would se lots of them on this trip, maybe even eat a few by mistake.
July 8
 
Today  we hired Walter Helstein to help with the line cutting.  Walter seems  a little too fat and a  little too old for what we are about to face.  I know that seems unkind.  Sorry
to say that but he has  a fatherly…even grandfatherly manner.  He speaks of the Great Depression and the Dirty Thirties as events  he has experienced only yesterday.
  Hard to say why he was hired.  Then again I have no idea why I was hired. For the rest of the day
we lounged  around South Porcupine…in the bright summer sunshine.  Then in the evening we went to a  small circus in Timmins.   
 
July 9
 
In the morning We  loaded  the Beaver float plane with all our gear and our instruments.  We had  so much gear that we needed two trips as the Beaver could only
carry 1100 pounds.   Walter Helstein and Bob Hilkar went with the first load. “Fucking Al and I will come later.”  My seat for our flight was  a crate of oranges some 
of which got crushed since we had  a rough landing an hour or so later on the Groundhog River.  The river is tough for a float plane because it is so muddy that
obstructions cannot be seen.  We bounced hard a  couple of times throwing huge chevrons of water as we powered  down.  “Water’s high this time of
year, but water level will drop fast.  Future landings will be difficult.”, said the pilot.
 
image008.jpg@01D4E67D.AED56C70“><image008.jpg>
 
We  parked our Land  Rover beside the South Porcupine hotel for the summer.   Entered the bush  in early July, returned
on September 10.   Naurally, The spare tire was gone as was any loose  item after all this was Timmins, a tough mining
town.  I guess we should  have expected that.
 
image009.jpg@01D4E67D.AED56C70“><image009.jpg>
 
Strapping our big four man canoe to the Beaver pontoon seemed  a  trifle dangerous  to me but normal to Floyd and Bob…and the Austin 
Airways  pilot.  Bob,  Walter and the canoe would  go first . A lopsided takeoff.
 
image010.jpg@01D4E67D.AED56C70“><image010.jpg>
 
Floyd  and  I were wedged in among our gear and food supplies.  Not much spare room.  I wondered  how the pilot would know
we had reached the 1100 pound limit.  He had  no  scale. Just guessed.
 
image011.jpg@01D4E67D.AED56C70“><image011.jpg>
 
 
 
 
 we began Erecting two tents even before the Beaver took off on its  return flight…. first our sleeping tent and next our cook tent and then Floyd looped a  long rope over a high tree branch on which would hang our meat supply “because otherwise the fucking bears  will get it.”   We did not know that a  bear was watching us.   He gave  us the  once over and planned a visit.
The little ‘bite ums no see  ups…sand  flies…are  really ferocious.  I get the feeling that we will be fly bate this summer.   Later in the evening Floyd and Bob showed  me
how to use stereo scope  on the aerial photographs.   Suddenly a flat surface become  three dimensional.  And our trip took on a cloak and dagger character.  We were
commandoes on a mission.
 
July 10
 
We  cut trees today and lashed a dock together.  Banks are very steep and  we expect water level to drop significantly.  Currently the river is
about 300 yards wide.  Seems immense.  We also erected  our radio antennae.  If anything goes wrong this will be the only way get help…if the radio actually works.  Floyd and Bob took the canoe down river and were caught in a terrible storm…drenched.  Then we had  our first big camp supper using our most perishable food.   As  dusk settled I wrote a  letter home.  Do not know why… the letter 
won’t get out for at least three weeks.
 
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July 11
 
Rained all  morning so survey start delayed until afternoon when we piled in the canoe…four men in a single canoe is a challenge.  River current is  super fast. Drove us  at speed into a rock which 
ripped the canoe open but not fatally so.  Two of us bailed  while the other two frantically paddled us back to camp.  Patched the canoe with a piece of  canvas.  Then Floyd gave me a lesson
on setting a  survey line.  That was going to be my job. 
And this, Al, is blazing axe…smaller, lighter than a regular axe…Don’t cut your hand off with it…that float plane costs money, you know.”
 
 Flies are voracious.  Hard to say which  is worst.  The little black flies  that crawl in our ears  or slip behind our belt bands and munch.  Or the Moose flies  land  gently and tear a piece of skin if they have time.  These moose flies  are big yet able to make silent landings on exposed skin then chew holes.
 
July  12
 
Another day of heavy rain so we did  what we could to improve our campsite.  We  have chosen a Rough spot really quite high above the river.  Stupidly decided to test our Mae West life jackets  in the river.  That was like swimming 
among ice cubes…noted that the Groundhog River flows north to James Bay.   In other words this river was not like the Humber or Don  or Etobicoke creek…sweet and warn, We then took the canoe, hooked on the outboard 
engine, and  motored down  river for a  spin.  No sign of  human habitation.   Slight concern that our two way  radio was not working.  Who gives a damn?  Good to be alive and young and healthy … watching a beautiful sunset.
 
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Some of our camps and anomalies we tried to locate…last camp was Kapik Lake
 
July 13
 
Nice sunny day…motored  five miles down the Groundhog River to check out our first anomaly.   Walter Helstein and  i set and cut line while  Floyd and Bob followed with the EM…principally two great hoops  of
tightly worn copper wire…looked like a hoop skirt without the underwear. Heavy.  And  a console with earphones to pick up the signals  sent from one to the other.  Coils had  100 foot separation each attached
to a heavy cable.  Walt and I had
to mark these separations  with pickets.   As mentioned earlier, this job was for the young.  Walter was about 59 years old and by five o’clock he was exhausted.   Don’t get me wrong, I really liked Walter but
did not expect him to keep up.
 
When  we got back to camp and made preparations for supper we found that others had  been in camp.  Blow flies had laid  their eggs in the meat a few days earlier and the maggots were hatching.  We cooked 
the meat anyway…and  ate what we could.  Boiled  maggots tasted  okay if they were eaten unseen.    Our radio is still not operating so any crisis will not be known to the outside world.
 
We  cut 3,000 feet of  trail for the E.M. unit today.
 
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Bob and Walter with loaded canoe on Groundhog River
 
 
July 14
 
Hot and windy day.We motored back to the River anomaly.  Walter and  I blazed another trail for the E.M. unit…North East compass reading.   Walter having a very tough time.  Blazing sounds easy but that is
not the case.  There is  always  dense brush that has to be cleared so the compass shot will be straight.   Best to blaze trees that are on the compass  line but that is not always  possible.  The line must be straight.
Big obstructions  must be climbed over, waded through, or slashed and thrown to the side.  Today  we cut and marked 8,000 feet of line.
 
July 15
 
Today we checked out another anomaly whose  location was  confirmed  by aerial photographs.  Our base  camp is  located at the junction of a smaller creek or river where it joins the mighty Groundhog River.
We travelled  by canoe westward along this tributary to get as  close to the anomaly as possible.  Not easy.  The canoe bottomed out regularly as the creek was quite shallow.   A giant bull moose startled  us
as we came around a bend.  Or did we startle him?   We were more surprised I think because he just stood there for a few moments looking at us and then wandered  leisurely out of the water and into
the forest.  His antlers were so large that they spanned the creek.
 
Really tough day blazing trail into the anomaly and then cutting formal lines for the EM (Electro Magnetic) unit.  Nothing worse than a cedar swamp with tag alder shrubs. So much slashing that the blisters on my hands are getting
blisters beneath blisters.   To make matters worse we we’re unable to find the anomaly.
 
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Our crew…living together for the duration of the job.  Lunch  break in the bush with pot of tea…see if  you can find the billy can.
 
When we stop for lunch there  is a danger that few new people in the bush  know.   The danger is piles…”your ass gets pulled out…the  sphincter muscle bulges…bloody painful”  “So, Al, do
not sit on those lovely soft spongy piles of moss.  Wet.  Wet underwear can cause piles.  Sit on a dry log or anything other that wet moss.” “You can get piles from constipation so keep the greasy 
food coming.”  What about heartburn?  “We have some  tummy pills.  Lots  of things  can go wrong on these jobs, Al”  Nice to be on a 2.5 month camping trip with know-alls that tell me  after the fact.
 
July 16
 
Tough day.  We went back up the tributary then followed  our previous  trail and extended it in a  vain search  for the airborne anomaly.  Half of  my time was  spent working with the E.M. transmitter
which was nice.  Creek is getting more shallow each day.   Canoe struck  bottom often today whereas yesterday we hit bottom only a few times.  We  startled a  family of  hell diver  ducks who submerged as 
we got close then popped  up some  distance away.   we blazed and traversed 18,000 feet of line criss  crossing what should be the anomaly.  The bush is  incredibly dense with cedars  and tag alders…and
swamps.  Cutting through cedar swamps is like trying to cut rubber bands…the branches  seem to be elastic and cause the axes to bounce back…must be careful.  Much of  the time we are standing in 
shallow  water.  Boots tend to leak.
 
Radio is full of dire news suggesting chance of another world war since the United  States marines have landed  in Lebanon.
 
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Gum  Rubbers tend to leak which means wet socks which means  boiled feet which  mean white pock marked feet.  Not nice
I could peel skin from my feet as they  were pomogranates. (sp?)
 
July 17
 
Wildlife is sure abundant.  Just  today  we startled moose, mink, ducks, hawk, partridge and lots of little red  ground  squirrels.  These creatures  were the only nice thing about our day.  Hard cutting but
no luck finding the anomaly.  The creek is so low now that we decided to give up the search for the anomaly.  We did our best.  And there were many more blips picked up by the airborne magnetometer
and only so much time to confirm wether the blips were real or just a mistake.- Finding these anomalies will be no easy task.
 
I am bothered  by Heartburn often these days likely due to too much fried food.  Sickness has to just be accepted  as getting  to a doctor or even a drug store is impossible.  I dread  having a  toothache.
 The black flies  seem to love crawling through my hair just to get a little blood with a bite of my flesh.  Maybe I should shave…easier to crush the little devils with a  clean face.
Of course  escape from the flies is impossible.  Seems  they  love tight places such as under my belt.  That’s where most of my welts seem to be.  Keep clothing as loose as possible.
 
We spent an hour or so burning maggots in our garbage pit…thousands of them infested  our rotten rolls of bologna.
 
We changed the position of our radio antennae in an attempt to establish  contact with Austin Airways.  Radio silence.
 
Even though we blazed and surveyed 20,000 feet of line we still had no luck finding the anomaly.
 
July 18
 
We followed an old  blazed trail westward from our camp re-blazing as  we went.   Mystery who blazed original trail, perhaps some mining sleuth or maybe a trapper.   When the trail petered out we blazed a new trail
in North West direction for 6,000 feet.  A heavy rainstorm struck around three catching us several miles from our Base Camp. Arrived back about 6 p.m. soaked  to the skin. Depressing.  Later I skinned  a mink that
had been trapped  and killed recently.   For some strange reason the trapper who spent his  winters here left all his traps set.  Killed animals for no reason.  Floyd  suggested He may have died here last winter. “His
trappers  shack must be somewhere nearby.”  The forest west of us seems loaded with partridge…they show little fear as we approach.
 
Today we travelled 32,500 west from base camp to a beaver  dam we spotted on the aerial photos.  Right on target proving we can pin point the anomalies.
 
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Trappers  Cabin found  on river bank.  Very rough place with heads of small animals  nailed  to logs.  Some skinning method I guess.
 
July 19
 
Ferocious Storm all night and morning prevented trail blazing so we stayed in base camp.  It was my meal shift so I had a chance to make breakfast rather extravagant.   French toast with thick slices  of sowbelly bacon
and lots of maple syrup and coffee.  Each of us has meal duty days in rotation.  In the afternoon the sun came out…an  opportunity to wash clothes and sun dry them on the tent ropes.   We cut a lot more scrub brush 
from around camp so we now have  clear view up and down the river.  Water level is dropping rapidly…down a foot since we arrived and going down each  day in spite of the rain.
 
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Walter Helstein sunbathing in the nude.  He has the ability to ignore the blood seeking flies.
 
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Any notion that our campsite was built with military precision should be wiped away by this shot.   Clean dry socks are the most important
item of clothing but the task to keep them so is impossible.   Wet socks help to boil our feet in wet boots.  As  mentioned earlier,Boiled feet are pock marked
and peeling.   Anybody believing this job was a luxury rich man’s camp has to be daft.  Many days were just constant agony.
 
July 20
 
Today we trekked one hell of a long way to reach Anomaly site Number 3 and the days ahead will be even longer.  Walt and I cut lines
for the E.M. unit to traverse using 100 foot stations  (see map for Sites 2 and 3).  To reach the site we had to cross a big active beaver dam
about 200 feet wide and 8 feet high in places. Six feet thick.These beaver have been here for a long time.
 
At lunch we found the bones of a young moose killed by a bear or hunter…or perhaps a cougar if stories of their presence can be true.  Maybe
it just died for the bones  have been here for some time.  Collected the teeth for what reason I do not know.
 
We returned to base camp very tired and went directly to bed.
 
Eureka!  A successful day even if tough.  We found the anomaly…high readings on the magnetometer and the E. M. unit just north of
the beaver dam.   
 
 
 
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Anomaly site #3:  Eureka, we confirmed the airborne anomaly.  Set up a grid pattern
as indicated above.   Site #2 was less successful.
 
 
July 21
 
We retraced yesterdays’  trails then used compass to cut new trail North.  Very slow progress due to the damn
cedar and alder swamps and their thick vegetation.  I was point man using the compass and made a terrible mistake
having my heavy belt buckle too close to the compass.  We had  spent a couple of hours going in the wrong
direction…deflected.   When we realized our error, Floyd and Bob made fun of my stupidity.  Laughed at me.
So I threw a temper tantrum and began slashing the brush and heading nowhere really.  Which made them
laugh all the more.   Made me  laugh too.  Not my best day but i
guess I provided  some entertainment.   The compass error may not have been my fault for there were 
strong indications of a body of magnetite below us.  Floyd decided we should strike directly east through unblazed 
bush towards  the Groundhog River … far to the east.   “Walter, you go back retracing our blazed trail to Base Camp
then get the canoe to meet us somewhere up river.”  Well, things did not go well when sun got clouded  over
and  we got lost…strange how when lost in the bush we travel in circles.  Eventually we reached the
Groundhog River around 8 p.m. as darkness was descending.  Walter had been on patrol and found us thankfully.
Arrived  at camp dead tired.   Floyd and Bob told Walter about my temper tantrum.
 
As things turned out the errors  may not have been my fault.  The anomaly upon which we stood was likely
a whopping big magnetite find, confirmed by the aerial photo. Magnetite is strong enough to deflect
a compase…even  confuse a compass giving one false reading in one spot and another a few feet away.
Were we standing on a future copper mine?   If we were it was going to be one hell of  a place for mine
families to  live. Swamp…swamp…swamp.  I read somewhere that certain plants like magnetite.  Couldn’t
be  true.
 
Today we traversed  39,500 feet finishing the beaver dam anomaly.  Distance is  a guess though due to being
lost for hours.  Tomorrow Floyd decided to reconnoitre the territory east of the Groundhog River.
 
July 22
 
Today Floyd decreed  we would all have a day of rest.  Wonderful.  To top things off a moose appeared
close to our camp at the rivers edge.  I stalked  him with the canoe in order to get within camera range.
Then towards evening another moose appeared.  Floyd  and I chased him by canoe along the river bank
until he found a gap to scramble up and get away.  Moose around here seem interested in us as they move
away slowly if we approach.   One moose even seemed  to like music for he stuck his head out of the
brush behind our camp when we had cranked up the music as loud as possible.  The moose seem almost
tame.  A shame really for they are easy game for hunters.
 
Walter has become valuable in a totally unpredictable way.  He is our berry tester.  Lots of wild plants
are bearing berries but we have been cautious about eating them lest they are poison.  Walter has no
such caution.  He eats any berry he can find…well not any berry but most berries.  He even has
names for them.   Walter is  colour blind so all berries  look the same to him.  We even named one
berry a ‘Walterry’ as  we had no idea the true name.  If Walt could eat it, then it cannot be poison.
 
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We always carried  a cup or some other thing that would rattle.  Bears do not like humans.  the rattling sound wold alert the bear and he or
she would move away.   Bears were present but I only saw one bear on the river bank.   In the picture above my cup has been filled with berries.  Rather than
a tight hat which black flies loved to slip under and chew my flesh.  I found a bandana with knots at the corners would 
work better since the black flies had no place hide in secret.
 
 
July 23
 
Today we again retraced our trail to the beaver dam and then corrected our compass error and cut a more accurate northerly trail for 2800 feet heading towards what
we called our Arctic  anomaly since it was the farthest north we would be going.  Hardly the Arctic.  Worst kind of trail yet as alder and cedar seem to be interlocked to keep
us from making much headway.  Not sure about he anomaly.   Hot sweaty day…terrible really for the flies zero in on our sweat drenched bodies  to suck our blood.
 
The Groundhog River is falling fast…getting dangerously low.  Maybe even too low for the float plane to land.
 
Two more moose near camp tonight.
 
Walter Helstein if in very poor shape and a source of concern to the rest of us.   We all love him and his stories about the Depression years but a man 59 years  old  should
not be doing this type of work.   Walter won’t knock off though.  He insists on keeping up with the rest of us even if far behind.
 
Distance covered  today was 57,800 feet
 
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We landed on the Groundhog River early in July.  By late July the water level had dropped more than four feet making any landing
by float aircraft a problem.  Look at our dock … what a difference.
 
July 24
 
Floyd postponed the scheduled arrival of our food supplies over concern about river level.  We will do a test of water level
to ensure no dead head logs are lurking where the Austin Airways Beaver must land.   On our way down river we came across a cow moose
with its calf.  Both feeding in the shallows unaware of our presence.  Bob and  I let Floyd off on shore where he would try to scare them into
an attempt at a river crossing.  Both began to swim across the channel.  Bob and I paddled madly putting our canoe between cow and calf 
forcing the calf to turn back.  This was not a nice thing to  do for the mother bawled and bawled and the calf was very frightened.  We took a 
couple of pictures and got out of the way so the calf could make a safe crossing.
 
 
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After the separation of cow and calf we were able to get quite close to the terrified calf.   None of us felt good  about our little game so we
never pressed the issue by getting close  enough to touch the calf.   Momma moose was  bawling throughout.
 
 
July 25
 
Today was  a great day.  The Austin Airways Beaver circled  a  couple of times  and  then set down perfectly. Jeff the pilot announced
however “that he could  not get down again if the river drops  much  more.”  Fresh food at last.  Three days of  fresh  meat before the
blow flies lay their eggs.  Big time trouble though since we will not be in Base Camp for next few days.  The meat will be a gift to
the blow flies.  The cooked  ham  might last longer.  We  stuffed ourselves.
 
Then spent the afternoon packing all we would need  for the next two weeks in pack sacks  with tump lines.  No luxuries as Floyd had
decided  to set up a fly camp two miles  west of our Base Camp.   Those anomalies north of the Beaver Dam could not be surveyed
properly if we had to spend  most of the day hiking.   What ‘luxuries’ had to be  rejected?  Lots.  Take our beds for instance. “We will be
sleeping on spruce boughs  boys.”  Even  then the loads on our backs  were really heavy.   To make matters  worse the skies  turned grey 
and rain began to fall as we lumbered along carefully stepping over windfalls  while keeping our eyes  on the tree blazes which had faded
somewhat.
 
Our new camp is in the centre of a swamp.  Nothing better nearby.  For fresh water we dug a  deep hole and let the swamp water percolate 
down.   The flies are as  thick as ticks on a  cow’s  nose.  Fly nets protect our ears  and eyes but the rest of our  bodies are fair game for
the little and large sons  of bitches.
 
As dusk  began to fall we built a large bed  frame out of spruce logs and then filled it with a huge pile of spruce boughs.  Room for all
four os us … if the lashed bed  frame held our weight…which it did not.  Try sleeping on a corduroy road…same as this bed.  No, we  do
not snuggle together.  Who farted?
 
Distance travelled   10,500 feet
 
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Floyd  and Bob constructed this pine bough bed before erecting our tent.   All four of us were expected to sleep on it.  They lashed
spruce boles together and used the stumps  to keep  the bed two feet above the watery ground.  It worked for one night then collapsed.
 
July 26
 
We made our way two miles  on the new trail to the anomaly north of the beaver dam.  Damn transmitter failed.   Likely moisture in the coil.
Floyd and Bob took it back to Base Camp while Walt and I cut 6,000 feet of new line.   I wonder if anyone understands  just how difficult living
in the bush can be.  Just the simple act of walking is  a chore because the surface is littered with obstructions.   Moss covered windfalls are particularly 
dangerous as  they are tempting to step on yet super slippery.  Falling with a sharp axe is never worth the risk.  Even more lethal are the sharpened 
alder shrubs after they have been slashed.  So the trail is one continuous sequence of sharp spikes capable of going with through a boot, or foot, or hand or
face.   No help available.
 
I managed to bring my copy of ‘Rovering to Success’ which  makes amusing reading. Linked to my plan to get a Bushman’s thong.
 
Distance covered  30,600 feet  (six miles)
 
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This  is our fly camp Number 1.  Very rough.  In the middle of a moss covered swamp.  We dug a pit for our water source.
 
July 27
 
Floyd and Bob got back with new coil and we all took off for the north anomaly arriving in mid afternoon.   Damned  if the E.M. transmitter didn’t
fail again.  Since I was designated to use the transmitter today the boys reasoned I would have to be the person to get it repaired.  Sounds
easy?  Not so.  That meant I had to walk all the way back to our base camp…through our fly camp…about six miles from start to finish.  A long
distance over broken ground.  Of course no reader would ever believe just how hard walking here had become.  Wet socks  and  wet boots made
the walk even less enjoyable.   Then there is the matter of Fear.  Hiking alone in a dense forest can raise the hackles on a person’s neck.  I imagined
something was tracking me.  I would walk then stop abruptly and listen.  Whatever was tracking me did the same thing.  Was it a bear or even
a cougar?  Or was it just my imagination.   Silly.   But try that kind of hiking yourself before you make a fast judgment.
 
Reached base camp in late afternoon.  Took a swim in the river then cooked a good sized meal.   Meat was already becoming questionable.
We had a package of weiners that looked OK except for the gloss of white stuff that had oozed out.  Sticky stuff.  It was possible to pick up
a weiner with one finger and drop it in the pot.  One finger?  Yes, the white glue like stuff was very sticky.  The weiners  did not kill me so I
must assume the white glossy stuff was  some kind of preservative.
 
Packed up the new coil plus some extra food for the boys and  headed back to our fly camp arriving just as the sun was setting.  Scared?
You bet I was scared on that lonely hike.
 
Distance covered  45,800 feet (about 9 miles)
 
The E. M. (Electro Magnetic) instrument consisted of two heavy coils of copper wire as above.  The signal passed from one coil to the
other was an indicator of magnetism below the ground.  Where there was nothing magnetic the signal was  steady.  When over a
magnetic anomaly the signals increased.  That was fine when the instrument worked…not so fine when it did not work.
 
July 28
 
We were all  glad when a full day rainstorm hit us.  What a wonderful feeling to be wrapped up in a sleeping bag for the full day alternately
reading sand dozing.  Floyd slid  a Mickey of scotch from a brown paper bag in his pack.  “Enough here for all of us  to have a sip, boys…that
includes you Al if your Boy Scout training will allow.”   I did not drink up until that point.  The small cup of Scotch  made our lazy day
even better.
 
July 29
 
We used our old trails as much as possible then cut an extension to our northernmost anomaly…the so  called  Arctic anomaly. Once again
a nasty bit of swamp and twisted cedars.   Blazing and slashing brush can be dangerous at best of  times but when the branches  have elasticity then
care is paramount.  Hit where a branch can be cut…solid  contact. Hit the notches.   Hitting free swinging branches is pointless because the axe cannot do a thing except
possible fall in a full arc and cut the axeman.  Gnarled wood is also problematic for it resists the axe more than expected.   
 
Another afternoon rainstorm caught us and soaked us.   Back at camp we lit a  big fire in a vain  attempt to dry our  clothes  for tomorrow’s labour   We only
had one set of  clothing since anything considered  extra  weight was discarded when we packed.  Whatever we carried had to be on our backs and that
included the heavy Ronka Electro magnetic coils,  our food, our tent, our sleeping bags and Floyd’s secret brown bagged bottle of scotch.
 
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These pictures  are not terrific but they clearly show just what burdens  we carried to our fly camps.  This job was no bed of roses and that 
is for sure.  Remember these loads  were carried on blazed trails  criss crossed  with windfalls and bedded with sharp alder spikes from
our slashing.  Another pain in the ass were the swamps whose surfaces were disguised by a thick bed of spongy moss and muskeg.
The job was so exhausting that we vented our discontent with four letter words until even swearing was just too much wasted effort.  
 
Distance today   38,200 feet  (about 7 miles)
 
July 30
 
We were too wet to work  so we sat around the fire in our miserable wet clothing.  I feel dirty but probably not so bad since
the wet clothes gave me a kind of sponge bath. Floyd volunteered to trek out to our 
Groundhog River base camp for some more food.   He made sure we all carried similar weight on the job…and equal responsibilities
including poor Walter who was overweight and seems to have spent a lot of time in Timmins socializing with unemployed cronies.
I give Walter full marks.  He turned out to be a very tough customer…hope he was paid more than the rest of us but expect that
was not the case since he was the least experienced.
 
Our water supply, believe  it or not, is a problem in spite of the rain.   All water we  use is  in our little pit and  the rain did  not
act as a filter so the drinking and cooking water is  cloudy.
 
July 31
 
We had  a real tough grind today lasting a cool 12 hours from seven to seven.   We did,  however, manage to finish work on the Arctic
anomaly…laid  out 6,000 feet of line in three two thousand feet length parallel to each other with four hundred feet between…a grid.  The
area is lively … some magnetite … as my compass was thrown off by 12 or more degrees.   So this  is a really important anomaly
I think.
 
We got a nice fire going and lounged around listening to Walter reminisce about his life as a hobo in the Great Depression years.
Sad at times…comical at others.  “The trains were loaded with men going nowhere…anywhere…hopped into cattle cars.  Police
in towns  and cities wold not let us  out.  They did not want any more welfare problems than they already had…so we had to jump
and run if we could.  Back and forth across Canada.  In  winter we yarded up in freight yards…hobo jungles…with the starving,
the degenerate, the desperate, the dying.  These were not good years…Begging for garbage”.
Floyd had different stories. He had  been a cageman in a Kirkland Lake mine.  Took miners and machines up and down the shaft.
Quit that job when a friend’s cage broke and hurtled down the shaft killing him. “Scraped him of the bottom of the cage’, as Floyd
put it. He decided to stay in mining but work on the surface.
Bob talked about the beauty of the foothills of the Rockies and the girls he had  met.  Then he was offered a job as  a geophysical
technician complete with room and board.  Sounded good until he discovered what that meant really.  Wilderness life. Room is
a tent…board can be blow fly corrupted meat. After
this job he is heading back to a mining college in Michigan.  My life experience was quite uneventful compared to theirs.
 
 The flickering fire made the whole evening very dramatic.
 
Distance covered   38,200 feet plus 6,000 lines…44,200 feet (about 8.5 miles)
 
AUGUST 1, 1958
 
Walt and I cut 6,000 feet of line south 20 degrees west from swamp camp.  I think  we hit our destination within 100 feet of spot 
located on our aerial photo. We struck a creek at the precise place on the photo.
 
In the evening I  patched my clothes with medical  tape and canvas patches (plus some glue).  It’s  getting difficult to distinguish 
pants from patches.
 
Distance   12,200 feet (around 2 miles)
 
August 2, 1958
 
Although the  northern anomaly is not quite as detailed as desirable we cannot spend  another day working there.
 
I caught a baby rabbit this morning and  we placed him in a bag and hung it on a tree intending to keep him as a pet
but while we were away he escaped.
 
As we returned  to camp a hurricane-like storm hit suddenly.  The sun was completely blackened out and then came high
velocity winds strong enough to tear trees  out by their roots throwing them around  as if they were match sticks.  Some
of these new windfalls  blocks our trail.   I have never in my life seen such a storm.  Ferocious.  Nature weeding out the
sick and the dead I suppose.
 
Distance covered    30,000 feet  (6 miles)
 
August 3, 1958
 
The storm railed  all night…including lightning and torrential rain.  Frightening but wonderful at same time.  Good thing too for now
our water supply has been replenished and, more important, the supply plane will be able to land  back at our base camp
on the Groundhog River maybe although not expected  until August 8.
 
In the afternoon Walt and I hiked  out of the swamp camp to our base camp for more food.  So many trees across our trail that
we had to cut new  bypasses.
 
Distance travelled   21,000 feet (4 miles)
 
August 4, 1958
 
Completed Ronka survey of anomaly 18 south of swamp camp #1.  Sure must be something beneath us since the compass seemed
very slow and  contradicted  itself on the backsights.  Probable magnetite ore body as  airborne mag suggested.  We cut 5,000 feet of 
new line.
 
Tired at night but relaxed as we traded stories around the campfire.  There is  a feeling of exhilaration when living this close to nature.
 
Our plotted data profiles showed clear presence of something since both instruments reacted…the X ray magnetometer and the 
horizontal loop Ronka EM unit.  “How did the Ronka get its name?” “Inventor guy…physicist…works for Huntec…his machine.”
 
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The Ronka Electro Magnetic Instrument was the most important part of our survey work.  And it was heavy consisting of two large
hoops of closely wound copper wire (see below) . Both hoops were attached together by a 100 foot electric cable and signals 
were received by a console carried by one of the men.  On ordinary surveys this instrument was heavy.  Our survey work meant 
we had to carry a  hell of lot more than the Ronka…tents, sleeping bags, food, clothes, first aid  kits,  axes, a buck saw, pots and  pans…etc.
 
 
 
 
August 5, 1958
 
Walt and I began blazing trail west 248 degrees but rain began after we had gone 600 feet forcing us back to camp.
 
“Your turn to hike back to base camps for food, Al.” I wonder if the other guys  get scared when they are alone
in this  dense forest?  Do they imagine wild things are watching them?  Do they hear strange noises?  Do they run?
Do they stop and slowly rotate around  360 just in case there is something?  They never say, so I best keep my mouth
shut as well.   Back at base camp I tested  the  radio transmitter  which receives fine  but just will not transmit.  If we
ever have a  serious injury, how the hell are we going to get help?  Since Walt and I are swinging blazing axes almost
every day, the odds of an accident are falling from long to short.
 
Arrived  at base camp about five and  cooked myself a  big supper…2 cans of stew,  1 can of peaches, 1 box cookies and  3 cans
of orange juice.   Then packed  up a lot of dry goods to carry back to Swamp Camp #1.  No  canned goods allowed  as they
are too heavy so the guys will have to make do with a  lot of rolled  oats and  pancakes and my favourite French toast.  One 
heavy item is allowed.  Peanut butter…we eat lots of that.
 
Slung the pack on my back and headed  west again hoping it would not get dark before I reached Swamp Camp #1.
Arrived at 9 p.m.
 
Distance travelled:  22,200 feet (4  miles)
 
August 6, 1958
 
Walt and I continued blazing our trail to Anomaly #16…west 248 degrees from Swamp Camp #1.  This  section of the bush is
woven with windfalls  like a broken box of pick up sticks.  At western edge we struck two creeks needing bridges. Construction
took a long enjoyable time.  Enjoyable?  Yes,  weather was perfect so  we took our time.  Waded in our bare feet.  Then we 
continued to point of the anomaly.
 
That night I collected some very strange luminous wood that we had been noticing all around  Swamp Camp #1.  Eerie effect looking
out of our tent at the pin pricks of light.  It seems to be some kind of fungus  acting upon rotting wood.  Dark nights give our camp
a ghost-like appearance.  My luminous collection was a failure though.
 
Distance covered:  13,000 feet (2.5 miles or thereabouts)
 
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Walt and  I built two of these bridges.  The construction project was enjoyable … especially for our feet.
 
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August 7, 1958
 
Tiring day as usual.
 
Finished blazing grid for Anomaly #16, then did survey with the Ronka which gave us some high readings
that checked out with the magnetometer.
 
Distance covered: 20,500 feet (about 4 miles)
 
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August 8, 1958
 
Big day today.  Austin Airways Beaver arrived.  Floyd and Bob packed out to Base Camp to meet the plane while
Walt and I were left behind to break up Swamp Camp #1 and follow them later.  We had to sort things into two piles…those 
worth taking and those to be abandoned and burned.  
 
We arrived in afternoon and were shocked to find  Floyd  gone.  He was being sent to a new project
in Michigan.  That changes things.  We will be leaderless it seems.  But Bob will take over.  I have been elevated a notch to second  in command  which means darn little.
 
During our absence from Base Camp a black bear paid a visit and managed to get our twenty point ham which we had strung
up high in a tree.  Then for some reason the bear decided to get into the cook tent and rummage around.  He did  not use
the front door of the tent but ripped  a big hole in the side.
 
This was a really eventful day for not only did we get a new supply of food  but also a big pile of mail.
 
Why did  I get so many letters?…huge pile of them.  Most had American stamps and I do not know that many Americans.
Some smelled  of perfume.  At first I thought they had been sent to the wrong person but opening the first one read 
“Dear Alan”.  These were some kind  of love letters…maybe 30 or 40 from all over the United States.   One girl, writing in
pencil, wanted to live  with me if I could send  her the fare to get here.  That was a laugh.  Imagine the shock she would
find.  Perhaps I would have the greater shock though.   A lot were from nurses and  some of them were damn interesting…well written…lonely hearts stuff.
Some of the girls  told horrifying stories about their living conditions   Abuse, poverty, desire to escape no matter what.
How  come?   Why send these letters  to me?  Mystery was solved.  In the mail pack were two letters from Russ Vanstone and Jim Romaniuk…they had  sent my
name and address  to a lonely hearts club in the U.S.   Bob, Walt and  I enjoyed all the letters…read them over and over
again for the rest of the summer.  Most of them made me feel sad…there were strong overtones of desperation.
 
Distance Covered:  10,500 feet
 
 
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Pilot delivering mail and  taking Floyd out of the bush to a new job in Michigan. 
 
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A black bear managed to get our 20 pound cooked ham even though we had  strung it high up in this  tree.  How did the bear do  it?
 
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The bear also  ripped this hole in our cook tent and then rummaged around for food.   He did not pop open the canned goods thankfully.
 
August 9, 1958
 
 Bob Hilkar spent the day reorganizing our targets while waiting for a new 
man to be flown in from South Porcupine.   This gave us a chance to do our washing…clothes and bodies.  We were all covered with
layer after layer of fly repellent along with smoke from our cook fires.  The dirt is  not all bad since it seems to make us less appealing to
the flies…moose flies, deer flies, mosquitoes, black flies, sand  flies, ground wasps, blow flies.
 
What a great day.  We gorged ourselves on the fresh  food knowing it would not last once the bear and the blow flies  got wind of it.
So we had  steaks, fresh vegetables, some bananas and  one whole watermelon.
 
The bear must have been watching close by on the opposite river bank.  There he stood for a moment like a big black rock. 
 I got a shot of him with my camera but he was too far away and
too quick to clear out.
 
August 10, 1958
 
We packed the canoe and headed  downstream…i.e. north for the Groundhog River flows north to James Bay which is part of 
the huge Hudson’s  Bay watershed.  “Another swamp camp, boys, pack lightly.” We cut line eastward  from the river for half a mile
where we struck a  trap line and decided to follow it in the desperate hope we would reach the new anomaly without the work of
blazing.  But we were disappointed for the trappers trail began to angle north rather than east.
 
This must be the trapper who left his traps open for some reason when he took his first out in the spring.  Or he had died.  We were
constantly finding open traps on the creeks and beaver dams.  Some had the skeletons of dead  animals and a couple had
been recently snapped shut on the legs of a  mink and  a muskrat.   Why do this unnecessary killing?  Leg hold traps are really
inhumane for they hold the animal in great distress.   Some animals chew their own legs off to make an escape.
 
We  retraced  out steps and  went back to base camp #1 resolved to try to reach the eastern anomaly again tomorrow…this time
blazing a trail as  we packed in.  No easy task to blaze while  carrying everything needed in huge packs.
 
As we returned up river we noticed  something large and  white on the river shore.  It was  a large moose head complete with
a perfect set of antlers.  “You want it, Al?”  “Sure do.”  So  we wedged the thing in the canoe and I planned to get it back to Toronto
one way or another.
 
Distance covered:   16,000 feet (mostly wasted)
 
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My trophy from the Groundhog River job…a moose head found on the banks of the Groundhog River.
 
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Photo was taken earlier in summer because my hair is short and no beard.  But picture makes point that Walter and Bob and me are now
a three man crew after Floyd was taken from us.  We needed a fourth man and got Hopkins on a return flight.
 
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By midsummer, I was  a darn sight thinner.
 
August 11, 1958
 
Walt and I were sent upstream (southwards in other words) about a  mile  and  half with orders to extend 
the trail we had cut back on July 24.  Almost immediately this became extremely difficult a we hit an alder swamp about 800 feet wide
with water at various depths.  Alder shrubs  are very difficult to slash on dry land  as they are thin and
elastic like.  A swipe with a blazing axe does nothing unless the cut is aimed close to the ground.  And  when severed the decapitated
alder remain as  a giant spike capable of penetrating our gum rubber boots.  In this swamp cutting was super difficult as
the alder roots were under the water.   Swinging an axe for an underwater cut is just about impossible.   To make matters worse
in the centre of the swamp  was open water…a large stream.  So we had to bridge another bridge.
 
As if these problems were not big enough, we came across a number of water snakes of various  length.
 
While  returning to camp we startled up another bull moose.  More moose in here than  people.,
 
Distance travelled:  16,000 feet
 
August 12, 1958
 
Stormy weather until late afternoon when sky cleared and Austin Airways sent in the Beaver with our new man, Robert Hopkins.
First bush  job for him…he is about my age…hope he can handle a  blazing axe.
 
August 13, 1958
 
We packed food supplies and  placed them in a cache using trail cut on August 10.  Then we extended the trail for a  mile and  a half.
Robert Hopkins is  nice enough but has never handled an axe before and keeps swinging at thin branches.  Axe bounces  back…very 
dangerous.  “Hit where the branch joins the tree.”  Wish he would do this as  his actions are dangerous.
 
The swamp apples are ripe…big orange berries  on a small ground  plant in the swamps.  Sweet taste…too sweet really.
 
Water on the river is low  again so many areas have rapids.  We got caught in a cross eddy which turned us  broadside to 
the river flow and then jammed us  on the rocks.   The canoe did  not overturn as we pushed and pulled  it back from the
rocks and shot down a  kind of chute.  Only damage was a punctured bow.
 
Distance Covered”  21,000 feet
 
August 14,  1958
 
Rain again…all day long until 8 p.m. at night.  Spent day reading and talking.
 
August 15, 1958
 
Today we moved our cache of food two miles deeper towards future Swamp Camp #2 then blazed new trail another mile to our objective which is
a branch of Hicks Creek.   The temperature hovered around  35 degrees all day.  Damn cold, especially so since leaves and  trees are still wet from
the rain yesterday.  Absolutely miserable.  Shivered from 6 a.m. to 7 p.m.  End result was  a trail to our new fly camp.   We trekked out to the Groundhog
River and back to Base Camp.  Tomorrow we will pack in our instruments, tent, sleeping bags and cooking gear to Swamp Camp #2.
 
Distance covered     31,500 feet
 
August 16, 1958
 
Packed canoe with essentials and motored north on river to strike point of departure eastward  on new trail to Swamp Camp #2.  Three miles.
We passed by our earlier food Cache in order to set up tents as fast as possible then Robert and  I went back for the food.  Bob Hilkar and
Walter built large elevated spruce bough bed for the four of us  to try to sleep upon.  “Try to sleep” that is.
 
Weather has become much colder. Frost in the morning.
 
Distance covered:  22,000 feet (about 4 miles  plus)
 
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Swamp Camp #2 is miserable
 
August 17
 
Rain and extreme cold  weather kept us in our sleeping bags  all day.  This search  for an anomaly is going badly and will take longer
than expected  so  we decided to ration our food  supply.
 
August 18, 1958
 
This terrible forest collected its pound  of flesh  today as we succeeded in cutting two miles deeper to the east.  Our clothes were soaked
by showers twice.  And we had to wade across a creek once.  Sun came out later thankfully.
 
Compass problems  again as the Brunton and  Silva compasses give slightly different directions.  Our error or compass defect?
 
Distance covered:  24,000 feet (nearly five miles)
 
August 19, 1958
 
Hard  day.  Seems  all the work days  are hard days and  this one is no exception.  We  cut line in a generally southern direction.
Then all work stopped when Robert Hopkins cut his  hand  with a  blazing axe.   Bad cut.  I wrapped  it with a rough tourniquet and stopped
the bleeding.  Will it heal?  Or will we have to get him out by bush plane?
 
Distance travelled   29,000 feet
 
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August 20, 1958
 
Twelve hour trips on our blazed trails are not easy.  No one, and I mean no one, will ever understand how hard this job has become.
We thought Robert’s injury yesterday would heal but today he sliced himself again…right to the bone.   He had  never handled  an axe before
and chose to ignore  instructions  and kept swinging at twigs and light branches.  His  axe bounced back of course and this second  time
cut himself damn close to an  artery.  Looks like some tendons may be severed.  We washed  the blood from the wound and then applied  another
tourniquet made from strips of my shirt…picked  the cleanest parts we could  rip.   
 
By evening his hand  had swollen up and he was in severe pain. Gave him some sulpha hoping that would help him sleep.  Nothing we could
do until dawn and then we must make fast tracks back to the river and motor down to our Base camp where we could radio for an emergency
flight to get Robert out to hospital.  Getting out of this  camp will take all day.   No hope for an emergency flight until tomorrow.
Infection is a big worry.
 
Distance covered   29,500 feet…very difficult terrain peppered  with tag alder and windfalls.
 
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Robert Hopkins was hired to replace Floyd but just did not work out.  He cut himself badly twice when his blazing axe bounced of some light branches
of tag alder.  He was warned not to hit light branches but to aim his cuts at places where branches  joined the main trunk.   Getting him out was a
real exercise for us…Took 2.5 days and by then infection had set in.  Looked like tendons were cut as well.   Our tourniquet stopped the bleeding but
we could do  little to arrest infection.
 
 
August 21, 1958
 
Robert’s hand is now discoloured which  is  a sure sign of infection.   First Aid  kit is little use at this point.  We must get him out.
So began the long hike to our canoe at the river and then motoring five miles upstream to our base camp where we sent an SOS
call.   Plane arrived  and  Robert Hopkins was no longer part of our crew.
 
Walt and I spent day cutting line south 1,000 feet and  east 3,000 feet to a new anomaly.   With only three of us progress  is going to be slow.
 
We were startled to discover an old trappers shack deep in the bush.   About as primitive a building as can be imagined….Pyramid  shape.
The trapper must have used this  as a very temporary home because it was  really only a pile of logs leaning into each other.
 
Distance Travelled   7,400 feet
 
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We came across tis trappers shack in the middle of nowhere.   It must have been used  for overnight habitation.  Hardly liveable.
 
August 22, 1958
 
Bob Hilkar returned by float plane bringing good  news.  I passed  my Grade 13 departmental exams …enough to gain
entrance to University of Toronto.   All the money earned  on this job will just pay for my entrance fees.   
 
Walt, Bob and  I retraced our trail south to the farthest anomaly. Bad news!   Our cable joining the two Ronka coils broke which  meant
that all the walking to get to the site was wasted effort.  We returned to camp and  soldered he broken section back together.
 
Came across an abandoned beaver dam.   Looked like it have been abandoned for a long time but it still managed
to dam up a large basin of water.  Amazing little creatures.
 
Distance travelled   25,000 feet
 
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August 23,  1958
 
Another attempt to run the Ronka over the southern anomaly failed when the big cable got severed  where it joins  the console.
This  was not easy to repair.   The break in the cable meant we had to retrace out steps once more.  Hours and hours
of wasted time.  
 
Walt and I did manage to cut a little more of survey line to the east.
 
Distance covered:  25,000 feet walking and 7,500 feet of new line cut
 
August 24, 1958
 
Rain!  Wonderful rainstorm.  No work on the anomalies.   Our survey situation is getting serious though for we are running out of time.
We plan a big push tomorrow and  will try to finish the entire area in next couple of days.  Must do  so because a relief plane is
due on August 27 when our Base Camp on the Groundhog River will be abandoned and  a  new base camp built on Kapik  Lake
far to the west.  We will get there by air with all our gear.
 
We had a bit of a laugh in the evening when Walt salted all our tea thinking he was  adding sugar.
 
August 25,  1958
 
Somehow between 7 a.. and  7 p.m. we managed to finish the remaining two anomalies.  Not easy to do but then again nothing on
this  job has turned out to be easy to do.   In spite of it all we felt nostalgic  as we sat around the campfire knowing that this camp
would exist no longer.  No one said very much really.  We just sat there feeling we were leaving a home in spite of all the adversities.
 
Distance covered:  44,700 feet  (almost 9 miles)
 
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August 26, 1958
 
If I had  to pinpoint the worst day  on the job it would be today, August 26, 1958, when we abandoned the eastern fly camp.  There were only 
three of  us now…Bob Hilkar, Walter Helstein and me.   When this  camp was  set up there were four of us and we made three trips
into the camp with gear and food from caches along the way.  To get out was going to be difficult so we began to pile absolutely essential
gear in three piles…one for each  of us.  “Discard  everything you can, boys.” said Bob.  So we did…the discard pile contained  rope, food,
Robert’s backboard, books, some cooking gear, even spare clothing.  In spite of that the piles we had to carry were back breaking.
The tent in particular was a load in itself because it was still wet from the rains.
 
I  am not proud of my behaviour this day.  My load  was  so big that each step was a problem.  Would  I make to the river?  I became 
convinced that my load was  much heavier than Bob Hilkar’s and I said so.  “My load  is unbearable while yours  is  light.”
“Why don’t we switch  loads then?”, said Bob.  We switched.   I was wrong…terribly wrong.  His load included the wet tent…heavier
than my load.  He was our point man so I could  not see his face but I felt he was grinning.  He knew how heavy the tent had become and
was glad to switch.  I  could hardly start to whine again so had to grin and bear the situation.  Forget about the word  grin.  The pain
was  excruciating.   The end result was  hard to believe.  My load had been tied  to a sturdy metal pack frame.  By the time we reached  the river
that pack frame had bent into a circle and had to be discarded.  The other pack  frames were also ruined.   Somehow we all lived through
the trek.   Bob Hilkar did not say much but the look in his eye was an ‘I told  you so’ look.   
 
Our bad day was  not over.   When  we finally reached Base Camp  #1, we found it to be a shambles.  The black bear had returned
only this time he ripped  his way into our sleeping tent.   Nothing to eat in there so his or her decision was  a  mystery.   Any food
left in the camp was gone except for the canned goods some of which had been crushed but not opened.
 
Distance covered     15,000 feet   (nearly three miles)
 
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This was  only part of the load.  On top of the rectangular pack was placed one of the Ronka hoops made of wound copper wire…a super heavy load.  what we left
behind will never be found  for no one will return to the eastern anomalies since the readings were low compared with the western
anomalies.  Then again maybe the trapper is not dead and will return to his trap line late in the fall and  find what remains of or  cache.
No, the bears will get there first.
 
August 27, 1958
 
I woke late tonight with a funny feeling.   Did not know why for a few moments.  Admired how the moon lit up the inside of our tent.  Then a cloud passed  by
blotting out the moon.  Only it was not a cloud.  it was the bear…he was on the other side of the tent wall…maybe three feet from my body encased
in my sleeping bag.  His  shadow blotted  out the moonlight.   I held my breath.  Then his  shadow just moved  down the tent wall and out of our
lives.   He stole no food  that night.  Probably he could smell us and I am told bears  do not like the smell of human beings.  Our smell was particularly
strong that night.
 
In the morning we tore apart Base Camp #1 and  packed everything on the dock and  shoreline.  Late in the afternoon the Beaver float plane arrived and was  
loaded for the short hop to Kapik Lake a  few miles to the west where we set up our new  Base Camp.  What a difference.  The new camp is  nestled in climax forest 
of birch  and poplar trees high on a hill where fresh  wind blows.  We were out of the swamps.  
 
A strange thing happened the day we left Base Camp #1..   Something not really  relevant but strange all the same.  Our makeshift dock began  to attract great clouds of
deer flies.  Deer flies are nasty creatures that like human  flesh and human blood.  Chevrons on their wings. They had  been torturing us every day since our arrival.  Yet this
day, August 27, 1958, they were  not biting.  Instead they were clustering in pods under the dock.  Wedging themselves into a great pack of their brethren
and dying all pressed together.  Hundreds of them, maybe a thousand.  Made no sense but it is a clear unusual  memory.  We did not try to dissuade them  from this  mass suicide.
 
We had a new employee arrive to replace Robert Hopkins.   Mack Deisert is  a tough man who is familiar with heavy tools.  For a time he worked  underground
in the gold  mines of Timmins.  Why he no longer was a full time miner became evident as we talked around the camp fires.  “There were all kinds of  ways to
high grade gold from the  Timmins mines.  Lunch pails worked  for a  while but stealing gold that way was a little too obvious…small amounts  under fingernails or in false  teeth specially
made by local dentists.  Some gold was smuggled out in shoe  heels…sounds stupid  I know but remember just an ounce of gold  was worth money…high graders  got 50% of the face value of gold.  Lots of buyers in Timmins.  A miner or a shift boss sees a streak of raw gold
in a hunk of rock…not common but occasionally  appears…he  slips a chunk in his pocket then  gets to a place where he hammers the chunk and get smaller piece with more gold…then has to figure how to
get it out.  A wink to a foreman might do  it.    Most of the high grade gold is ground down right in the mine.  A miner comes upon a vein with raw gold…  he just chips  out a chunk
knocks of the crap and keeps a bit of gold for himself. Small pieces are easy to hide.  Some say millions worth of high grade gold hidden and  sold in Timmins.  Miners today  are checked by security guys
every shift.  Big signs in the mine condemn high graders.   Those  signs would  not be up if there was not a problem.  Illegal  gold…common knowledge  about 
who to contact.”  Mack seemed to know a lot about high grading gold…maybe he got caught and that was why he took a job with us.  Or he was bull shitting a good
story around  a campfire.  Whether his stories were true or not , Mac was certainly an  entertaining character.  
 
 To Mack a blazing Axe was  child’s play.   He was unlikely to hurt himself for he knew
the consequences  of a wilderness injury.
 
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Our new fourth man  was  Mack Deisert standing on  the pontoon while the pilot clears up  a few details, perhaps  related to money.
Mac was quite an entrepreneur.  No fucking around with him.
Mac  arrived  just as we were moving to Kapik Lake with all our gear…August 27, 1958
 
Supper was special.  Fresh food.  We dined on veal cutlets, string beans, potatoes, tea and ‘fresh bread’.   Our bread was soon stale…dru  
or mouldy…god bread got very 
crusty as time wore on in camp.  Mouldy  bread  was garbage.  The only way to soften dry bread up was a French Toast concoction we made regularly…water, powdered milk, a couple of
eggs while they lasted, some butter and a hot frying pan.  French  toast could be stretched out and become a bush lunch when lathered with
peanut butter.   It Got to taste really good.  We could do the same thing with porridge.  Hot in the morning.  Then a slab of cold oats as a jelly like lunch
If firm enough the cold  porridge could also be lathered with peanut butter.   All this was  washed down with tea boiled in a
fruit can tin with a wire looped over so the billy tin could hang on a stick over an open fire.  When we  ran  out of real tea  we used Labrador tea, a
local plant whose leaves were fuzzy on the bottom. Easy to  find. Questionable alternative. No alcohol on the job.   Beer would weigh 
far too much anyway.
 
August 28, 1958
 
Rain…wonderful  rain.  So  we got a day of rest…well not quite that for we had to get our new campsite ship shape.  Kapik Lake is not
big, just enough room for the Beaver to take off and land.  “What’s that over on the other side?” “Looks like a canoe.”  Sure enough, some
person  had abandoned  a canoe on the lake.  No sign of a cabin so it might have been a fisherman or trapper.  We rescued it. complete with
paddles and had  transportation for leisure evenings to tour the little lake.  Maybe this was here for fly in fishermen.   Maybe Kapik Lake 
was full of fish.  Little good that would do us for we had no fishing gear.
 
Kapik Lake was inhabited by some strange mole like creatures on one of the little islands and a family of Loons
who serenaded us regularly.
 
 
 
 
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Maybe Kapik Lake was one of those fly in fishing lakes that rich  people use which came complete with a cook to fry up
whatever they catch.  Our use of the lake was far less fancy.   Rich fishermen, if hey arrived while we  were, would have
been flabbergasted at our basic diet of porridge.  I cut these carrots our of a local paper after the job  was over.  Made
me laugh.
 
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Our Kapik Lake Campsite
 
 
 
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Kapik Lake aerial photo taken by  Huntec Canso aircraft
 
Walt put the tea bags in with our pork and beans tonight which gave us all  a good laugh.   Then Walt asked “Do you want to
to know how to speak Eskimo?” and proceeded to teach us the language which I think he made up as he went along.  Then again
he did work as a diamond driller at Rankin Inlet. 
 
August 29, 1958
 
Walt and I cut line south 221 degrees. Easy work this time because the big trees shaded out the brush.  What a luxury…we could slap our
axes on one side of a big poplar then the other and move by easy  line of sight.  Summer was over suddenly and the trees were changing colour
The bush forest was becoming a land of red and gold.  The down side of this season change was  the arrival of cold  weather.  All summer
we had been complaining about the hot  sweaty days.  Now we complained about the cold.
 
Distance covered   12,000 feet (easy day)
 
August 30, 1958
 
Rain again.  Spent most of the day in our  sleeping bags.  I planned  my short term future.  University bound.  Thoughts of the University of Toronto made 
me very nervous.  Dad was  a tire builder and mom was a seamstress.  Most my other relatives were farmers.  So the prospect of  a university education
was novel and made me nervous not that I told anyone.   My good friends Russ and Jim would be doing the same thing and  were probably nervous as  well.
Money made on this job would pay my first year fees of $400.
 
Our radio weather report warned of heavy frost tonight so we started to assemble our new air-tite wood stove.  The hole in the tent left by the bear was the exit 
point for the stovepipe.   The big birch trees in this  climax forests means we have lots of excellent firewood that splits with ease.   Comfort!  And the smell
of the wood  stove is like the best perfume imaginable.
 
The only bad  news today was that our fresh  meat had already gone bad.  It would not pass the nose test.
 
September 1, 1958
 
Cold  … really cold all day.  Just above freezing which meant the raindrops on the forest leaves were like little ice daggers penetrating our clothes.We 
spent the day extending Bob And Mack’s trail to the northern anomaly.
 
Distance covered   33,000 feet
 
September 2, 1958
 
Another long hard  12 hour day.  We finished blazing our trail to where we figured  the anomaly was  located then did the survey with the Ronka and magnetometer.
 
My gum rubber boots have holes big enough for my socks to poke through which means I am working every day in wet feet.   Each night we pull off our boots
and  peel down the wet socks then massage our feet.   Bad feet would mean no work.   
 
Distance covered”   37,000 feet  (about 7 miles)
 
September 3, 1958
 
Another brute of a storm night and day.  The tent is  billowing in the wind like a great hot air balloon.
 
September 4, 1958
 
Bob and I finished  the north anomaly with both the Ronka EM unit and the magnetometer.
 
In the evening Walt and  I stalked  a crane in the shallows of Kapik Lake then stayed  out on the lake to watch  the sun set.  Magnificent.
 
Distance covered    33,000 feet
 
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September 5, 1958
 
We finished cutting trail to south anomaly ten did reconnaissance survey with the Ronka EM unit and the magnetometer.   No conductor
was discovered or confirmed.
 
Well, we  are in food trouble.  All our staple foods have  been  consumed…bread, meat, potatoes,  fruit and butter.  So we have to make do with
what we can concoct which tonight constituted a can of peas and  carrots, big pile of  rice topped with bacon fat gravy and followed by cookies
for dessert.
 
Mack and Walt really entertained us  with fascinating stories of the ‘high graders’ operating in the Timmins gold mines…Dome Ming Company and  MacIntyre Mines, etc.
 
 
Distance covered   32,000 feet
 
September 6, 1958
 
Stayed awake all night as lightning flashes and  thunder made  sleep difficult.  Very dramatic.  We kept the wood fire burning most of the night and as a result
felt really cosy in our tent.   In the morning I began packing my rucksack for the job is nearly over.   Trans Canada Airline has Viscount air service to Toronto which
sounds exciting.   This was my last day as  cook so  I made a large stew of whatever odds and ends  I could find including the bacon rind on our slab of pork
sowbelly.    Not such a bad  dinner.   To give it a little more body I slipped in a  cupful of rolled oats.  Inventive.
 
September 7, 1958
 
Tragedy struck today when  we came upon Walter Helstein unconscious  on the trail with an alder spike driven through his hand.   We think he was
lying there for an hour or two with this very serious wound.   We revived him and helped him get back to our campsite where the wound was
washed and bandaged.  Walter took some  sulpha pills to numb the pain.  Not sure if that works.  Pain is severe.  We were afraid this  would happen
for Walter had  a habit of stepping on moss covered windfalls rather than stepping over them.  Slippery rotten windfalls are dangerous. 
 
Walter has  been with us for the whole summer which surprised us all for he seemed  too old and too out of shape for the kind of work we were
doing.  But Walt persisted and turned out to be a joy to work with.   He is 40 years older than me yet we worked as a team blazing trails that
criss crossed some very nasty parts  of this wilderness.  We radioed  for an SOS service but failed  to make contact.  Weather is bad with
heavy cloud cover.
 
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A terrible picture but maybe that makes it more authentic. Walter was badly  hurt.
 
We  left Walter in the tent for the day  and set out  to find our last underground conductor.  We failed to find it.
 
Distance covered   34,000 feet
 
September 8, 1958
 
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Walt was in severe pain all night. Moaning. By morning his hand was swollen and red fingers of  infection were apparent.  When the Beaver arrived Walt and
I boarded.  Walt was stretched out in the back.   Both of us were finished.  As soon as we landed at South Porcupine Walter was taxied to the Timmins hospital.
Sad.  I doubted we would ever see each other again and  wanted to say how much I had enjoyed working with him.  There was not time for farewell though.
The taxi was waiting as soon as  we got tied  to the dock.  I  could see the pain in  Walter’s face as he waved good bye.
 
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There are some people that are unforgettable.  Walter Helstein is one such person.   We worked together in one of the toughest jobs I have ever had and this picture of Walter will give you some idea of what
that job was like.  Look Closely  Walter is standing in water…over his boot tops.  His blazing axe in his hand and  his tea cup  tied to his braces with the stub of  a cigarette in his mouth.   Much of our summer was
spent in such conditions.   After his tragic accident I never saw him again but heard  that he spent 8 months in the hospital. 
 
 
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Although this picture  does  not look like I was enjoying myself.  And  much of the time i was not.  But actually I was quite proud  of myself.
I had survived and done my job faithfully with just two temper tantrums when the job got unbearable.  Walter never threw a tantrum but
instead  laughed  at me along with Floyd  and Bob.  Actually I came to love the job…to love the battle with nature…too find I could  survive
in the worst of conditions.   My success in this job led to another six years working for Hunting Technical and Exploration Services.
In  retrospect the jobs were a great privilege…something that few human beings will ever experience.  
 
 
Our Kapik Lake camp…by this  time I had fallen in love with the job complete with the trials, loneliness, failures, successes and
even the Spartan food.   There is a term for that condition…”Bushed”   I remember as if it was yesterday as the plane circled the
lake coming to get us out.  That circling meant the end of the adventure.  But I did not want it to end.  Such an experience  could
never be replicated.    Maybe we should just send Walter out.  He needed help urgently.  Maybe the rest of  us could continue
searching for  anomalies  until freeze up.  Thoughts only.  I knew it was over.   No more carving trails to places where human feet ha
never trod before.  No more comradery around a night campfire with stories, obscenities, laugher.  No more contact with any of
the crew ever again except for Floyd Faulkner who next summer insisted on calling me by the affectionate term , Fucking Al.
 
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By the end of the summer Walter and I had  walked and blazed 206.3 miles on our own
trails through the bush.   That is almost the distance  from Toronto to North Bay.  Hard  to
believe?  Even today, March 27, 2019, I find  it hard to believe myself.
 
 
 
The clerk in the Airport Hotel hesitated  when I  asked for a room for the day only.  Little wonder…two months growth of hair and beard, pants 
patched with Canvas, Gum rubbers with my socks poking through holes and a  packsack that looked like  I had been living rough for a long time (which’
is true come to think of it.)   Had my first real bath of he summer and then called  Timmins airport to reserve a flight this evening.  Next was a little 
tricky.  I asked CN Express  to ship my baggage back  to Toronto.  Why Tricky?  Because a big part of the baggage was the skull and antlers
of that bull moose  we found on the bank of the Groundhog River.  Phoned  home…mom and dad surprised.  “Be home tonight.”
Then got a shave, haircut and  a big ice cream sundae.
 
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Bob and  Mack arrived shortly after 12 and we loaded our equipment in the Land  Rover. which had  been stripped of all easily detached
equipment…hub caps and spare tire.   Bob  drove me to Timmins Airport where I got my first restaurant meal since July.  Huntec had 
promised to cover room and board for the duration of my employment with them.   No luxury involved, that’s for sure.
 
I boarded the Viscount just as the sun was  beginning to set on the western horizon. “Would you like a Peak  Freen biscuit and glass
of lemonade, sir?”  Wow!  This was  going to be a great flight.  I nursed the lemonade for a long time and just nibbled  at the shortbread…loving
them both.   Now,  decades later, I can still place myself  on that Viscount rolling and lifting into the sunset.
 
We landed at Sudbury, then North Bay and  finally Toronto about mid night.  What a greeting.  Russ Vanstone, Red Stevenson, Jim Romaniuk and
my brother Eric  along with mom and  dad.  Eric  had a huge hand printed  sign saying “Go back, Al.”  Jim Romaniuk asked about the
lonely hearts letters.  “Let me have them Al, Might find a girl friend  there.”  “Try the girl from Florida with the pencilled note…she’s ready to
move up here if you send her the fare.”   Russ drove us all home to our place where mom and  dad 
had prepared  all  kinds  of food.  After that I fell asleep in a real bed.
 
 
September 9, 2019
 
Dr Paterson phoned early in the morning.  “Can you come to the office, Alan, maybe help with the results…there are things we need to know urgently.”
So everyone was gathered around the aerial photos hoping I could remember where the top anomalies were located.  I am not sure how much
help I could provide.  “McIntyre Mines  want to know right away.”  That comment reminded me that our summer living rough was really a big secret.
I really could not spot all the anomalies where we got high readings but did the best I could.   Dr. Paterson was very serious and professional…a bit
intimidating.  I am not sure that he knew my job had been swinging a blazing axe most of the summer.  I certainly did not say that.  I did put a word
in for Walter Helstein hoping that the company would help  out or totally pay his medical bills.  Not sure what happened to Walter but heard by
the grapevine that he never fully recovered. 
 
 There was one
nice outcome of that last meeting.  Dr. Paterson looked  me in the eye and said, “How would you like a job next summers an operator-Technician on
a job we have lined up in Alaska?”  
 
Now after reading this account, would  how  would  you have answered Dr. Paterson?
 
my answer was short and simple.  “Count me in.”
 
What about the BUSHMAN’S THONG?  Good question, keep reading.  You may think it is some  kind of underwear but that thought
is about as far from the truth as possible.   Who is proud of underwear? I am  very proud of my Bushman’s thong.
 
ALAN  SKEOCH
MARCH 2019
 
 
 
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NEW BOOK: “MINING GEOPHYSICS: A  CANADIAN STORY”  by Dr. Norman Paterson
 
P.P.  “From 1950 to 1960,…127 mines were discovered, of which 40 were credited to geophysics.” (P.6, Paterson)
 
 In March 2019, just as I was transcribing my journal memories from the Groundhog River job, a book arrived in our mailbox.  Dr. Norman Paterson, my boss way back in
the 1950’s and1960’s had just written a book titled “MINING GEOPHYSICS: A CANADIAN STORY…The people and events that made Canada a global leader in mining exploration
in the 20th century.”  ($20 plus $12 postage, published by the Canadian Institute of Mining, Metallurgy and Petroleum, 2019)   It is a wonderful record of those heady days
between 1957 and 1975 when big changes were happening in the search for orebodies within the rock mantle of our earth.  Personally…I  was flattered  to be included here
and there in the book for I had no idea at the time that we were on the cusp of scientific  breakthroughs. I was  a very small part of the story. Was Dr. Paterson even aware
of the difficulties we faced translating theory into practice?  Of course he was.  He did lots of field work.
 
WHAT HAPPENED TO OUR CREW?
 
Walter Helstein spent eight months  in the Timmins Hospital…from September 1958 to March  1959. At one point amputation was considered but Walt, true to form, was just
too tough to lose an arm.
Floyd Faulkner became the chief field man  for Hunting Technical and Exploration Service. He retained  his gruff manner behind which was a great sense of humour
Bob Hilkar returned to Calgary
Robert Hopkins returned to Elliot Lake
Mack Deisert stayed  and  married in South Porcupine
Alan Skeoch returned to Toronto as a first year student at Victoria  College, University of Toronto.  For the next six summers
alan worked for Dr. Paterson and  his assemblage of top geophysicists.  Alan became an historian with a specialty in 
Economic History eventually doing an  M.A. in machine  design.
 
DID WE FIND  A MINE?
 
Nothing happened.  All those anomalies were ignored even though some of them were very promising.  The client, McIntyre Mines. concluded the area was  too
rough for a diamond drill crew to operate so  the project was  abandoned in the 1950’s and 1960’s.  I am unsure of its  status today in 2019.
 
HOW ARE MY MEMORIES  DIFFERENT?
 
DR. Paterson tells  some of the humorous things that happened in those days.  My journals  hopefully reveal even more of the human face of mining exploration
.  Some details may make you laugh, others will make you cry. Still others will make you say ‘he must be kidding’.  Truth?..it all happened.
 It was a very personal Odyssey for me.  A privilege really.   Alaska, Ireland, New Brunswick , Timagami,
Niagara Falls, Chibougamau, Marathon, Paradise Lodge,  Merritt BC, Yukon Territory…not as a  tourist but as a person probing the surface of the earth and  marvelling
at the characters I met.
 
WHY DID  I KEEP SUCH A DETAILED JOURNAL?
 
I was  a Rover Scout, the senior part of the Boy Scout movement.   Some Boy Scouts were and are badge collectors. There was only one badge of honour
that excited me.  It is called the BUSHMAN’S THONG.   My journal detailing the Groundhog river job was submitted  and I got my thong.  I am not sure
the official readers of my application really believed everything written in my journal.  There was some scepticism.  But what I have written did actually happen
and my Bushman’s Thong still hangs on my old scout shirt.
 
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Posted on

1958 BUSHMAN’S THONG…: GROUNDHOG RIVER JOB 1958



ALL I WANTED WAS A  ‘BUSHMAN’S THONG’
(What is a Bushman’s Thong? That, my friends you will find at the very end)


LOCATION: GROUNDHOG RIVER:  SUMMER OF 1958
                    WILDERNESS NORTH OF  TIMMINS AND  SOUTH OF KAPUSKASING


PURPOSE:  TO  CHECK OUT ANOMALOUS SIGNALS PICKED  UP BY A CANSO FLYING BOAT DRAGGING A MAGNETOMETER
                     TO DO SO  AS  SECRETLY AS POSSIBLE

alan skeoch
March 22, 2019

Three men I will never forget…Floyd, Bob and  Walter.  We  were  thrown together by accident in that summer of 1958.
Floyd Faulkner was our crew chief.  Bob Hilkar was our instrument man.  Walter Helstein, was our soul.  I think of his sad ending often.  
 Me?  AIan Skeoch, a 19 year old blank slate, just a few days out of high school.
 “So you are a Boy Scout, let’s see how you handle a  real  wilderness.  No badge
for this job, Alan.” jeu said/  “No, you are wrong, there is a  badge.”  And we all laughed.




Floyd Faulkner


Bob Hilkar


Walter Helstein


Alan Skeoch


July 2 – 5, 1958

And so the adventure begins.  I reported  to company HQ at 1950 O’Coinnor Drive with my bag packed  for the summer.  Never knew how long…did  not know
where I was going…had no idea who I was going with…had no idea how we were to get there.  Did not really know why I was hired in that summer of 1958.
“We needed a Boy Scout to baptize into the real  world,” commented Floyd or Bob. One of them. They intended to make a man of me.  And I think they did
that.  The events of that summer are still crystal clear in meh mind now…61 years later in my 80th year.  

 Mom and dad were a  little concerned as  the whole plan seemed
sort of loosey goosey  Who were these men that called  themselves  ‘geophysicists’?   
Right from the get go there were problems.  Our Land Rover had not arrived nor had the canoe which was to be strapped to the Rover’s roof.   And the two way radio was
still being overhauled.  If we needed a two way radio that meant we were heading into the wild unknown.  No telephone booths.  

“Go back home, Alan, gear not ready quite yet.”  Fine, I thought, for  I was already on the payroll.

  Floyd Faulkner and Bob Hilker  Both seemed  nice but a little distant .
They were veteran  bushmen.  I  was just a  high school kid.   First day we drove to Oshawa where the company  had a fleet of Canso double engined aircraft.
Vintage World  War II submarine hunters.
One of the Canso’s had  already overflown our target dragging an  airborne magnetometer.  The mag readings  indicated several anomalies worth detailed  ground
mapping.  We were that three man mapping team.  “Keep your mouth shut about the job, others are interested.” said our big boss, Dr. Norman Paterson.  He
made me feel like a military hit man  being sent on a mission.   

Dr. Paterson gave us a  final briefing on July  3. “This is  a  rough job, you will be  dropped  by  aircraft as  close as  we can  get to the anomalies.  Virgin forest.
No people, no trails, no transport except the canoe and your feet.”  Dr. Paterson was a  bit intimidating…long and lean…a serious  scientist who had  been
a student under Dr. Tuzo Wilson…the man who put the expression Plate Tectonics  in the dictionary.  I felt we were doing something important…something
that would change the world.  I was part of the  team… on the bottom rung of the geophysical ladder.  “What is my role?”, was  a question that I was afraid to ask.  As thing turned  out I should have
known when Dr. Paterson mentioned a blazing axe.  A blazing axe differs  from a  regular axe. It is smaller, lighter and is used to blaze trails  through virgin forest.
the idea is simple…lop a chunk  out of both sides  of trees ensuring that the line of blazes makes sense…i.e. going somewhere.  Why both sides of the trees
are hacked  should be obvious…one way into the wilderness  and to get back out follow the alternate blazes.  That was to be my job.  It was  never fully explained.
As things turned out all the jobs  were shared.  This  was to be a real learning experience.  Could I handle the job?  I thought and  was comforted  by a line
from Mr. Fred Burford, our football coach at Humberside  Collegiate Institute…”When the going gets tough, the tough get going.”  That line was called  upon
many times  in the following two and a half months.

July 6, 1958

“Al, meet us  at the corner of Bloor and Jane…bring what you need for three months…but all in one bag.”   Mom and dad  got a little worried.  Who were these
strangers?  They were not even coming to our house but asking Alan to meet them on a street corner.  So dad  came along.  My dad is a tough customer so he
planned to check ‘these assholes out’ before allowing me to crawl into the Land Rover.  Dad knew the difference between normal  assholes and  dangerous assholes.
Floyd, my crew chief, was gruff but solid.  So  dad  helped  stow my rucksack in the back of the Rover and waved me off for the summer.  This was  a  rite of passage.

We headed  north to Gravenhurst where we ate a huge dinner on the expense account.  The Food was heartburn hell but cost was on the company tab.  Then we carried
on northward to South Porcupine.  Floyd  and Bob knew  each other so they gabbed  away.   At some point Floyd gave me a nickname that stuck like a turd on a boot.
“Fucking Al will do the blazing…ever blazed a  trail Al?”   Conversation ebbed and I got a little tired of straddling the gear shift.  “Floyd, could you stop and let me crawl
in the back on top of the gear…that would be more comfortable.” “Fucking good idea.”  I learned  that Floyd  used fucking as  an adjective for just about everything including
me…as in Fucking Al with a grin.  It was not a term of derision…sort of a term of endearment.  Sort of.   So I spent the rest of the long  long journey folded like a jackknife on our tents and rucksacks.
I even slept a bit.  I was a little scared.  Wondering just what the hell I had gotten myself into.  At North Bay we got a  canoe and  strapped  it to our roof. Lots of rattling.
I was determined to make the best of it…something to remember.


July 7

In Schumacker we visited our contractor, McIntyre Mines, where the geologist handed over a large sheaf of aerial photographs that pinpointed the anomalies  we were
to find and map.  “You guys will be the first mining persons ever to explore the wilderness northwest of the Groundhog River.”.  Was that true?  Wow…real wilderness.  We rented 
a  Beaver float plane from Austin Airways in South Porcupine for a flight on July 9 at 8 a.m.  McIntyre Mines  did not want us to use their plane lest other mining people
got wind  of our project.  Mining is super competitive.   The cloak of secrecy made the job  seem all that more important.

Floyd drove us to Timmins  where he handed  Blahey’s Food  Market a grub list that was to last three weeks. After that our food  supplies wold  be replenished b Blakey’s and
Austin Airways..  The word  “grub” or to use a more familiar ‘maggot’.   We would se lots of them on this trip, maybe even eat a few by mistake.
July 8

Today  we hired Walter Helstein to help with the line cutting.  Walter seems  a little too fat and a  little too old for what we are about to face.  I know that seems unkind.  Sorry
to say that but he has  a fatherly…even grandfatherly manner.  He speaks of the Great Depression and the Dirty Thirties as events  he has experienced only yesterday.
  Hard to say why he was hired.  Then again I have no idea why I was hired. For the rest of the day
we lounged  around South Porcupine…in the bright summer sunshine.  Then in the evening we went to a  small circus in Timmins.   

July 9

In the morning We  loaded  the Beaver float plane with all our gear and our instruments.  We had  so much gear that we needed two trips as the Beaver could only
carry 1100 pounds.   Walter Helstein and Bob Hilkar went with the first load. “Fucking Al and I will come later.”  My seat for our flight was  a crate of oranges some 
of which got crushed since we had  a rough landing an hour or so later on the Groundhog River.  The river is tough for a float plane because it is so muddy that
obstructions cannot be seen.  We bounced hard a  couple of times throwing huge chevrons of water as we powered  down.  “Water’s high this time of
year, but water level will drop fast.  Future landings will be difficult.”, said the pilot.


We  parked our Land  Rover beside the South Porcupine hotel for the summer.   Entered the bush  in early July, returned
on September 10.   Naurally, The spare tire was gone as was any loose  item after all this was Timmins, a tough mining
town.  I guess we should  have expected that.


Strapping our big four man canoe to the Beaver pontoon seemed  a  trifle dangerous  to me but normal to Floyd and Bob…and the Austin 
Airways  pilot.  Bob,  Walter and the canoe would  go first . A lopsided takeoff.


Floyd  and  I were wedged in among our gear and food supplies.  Not much spare room.  I wondered  how the pilot would know
we had reached the 1100 pound limit.  He had  no  scale. Just guessed.





 we began Erecting two tents even before the Beaver took off on its  return flight…. first our sleeping tent and next our cook tent and then Floyd looped a  long rope over a high tree branch on which would hang our meat supply “because otherwise the fucking bears  will get it.”   We did not know that a  bear was watching us.   He gave  us the  once over and planned a visit.
The little ‘bite ums no see  ups…sand  flies…are  really ferocious.  I get the feeling that we will be fly bate this summer.   Later in the evening Floyd and Bob showed  me
how to use stereo scope  on the aerial photographs.   Suddenly a flat surface become  three dimensional.  And our trip took on a cloak and dagger character.  We were
commandoes on a mission.

July 10

We  cut trees today and lashed a dock together.  Banks are very steep and  we expect water level to drop significantly.  Currently the river is
about 300 yards wide.  Seems immense.  We also erected  our radio antennae.  If anything goes wrong this will be the only way get help…if the radio actually works.  Floyd and Bob took the canoe down river and were caught in a terrible storm…drenched.  Then we had  our first big camp supper using our most perishable food.   As  dusk settled I wrote a  letter home.  Do not know why… the letter 
won’t get out for at least three weeks.



July 11

Rained all  morning so survey start delayed until afternoon when we piled in the canoe…four men in a single canoe is a challenge.  River current is  super fast. Drove us  at speed into a rock which 
ripped the canoe open but not fatally so.  Two of us bailed  while the other two frantically paddled us back to camp.  Patched the canoe with a piece of  canvas.  Then Floyd gave me a lesson
on setting a  survey line.  That was going to be my job. 
And this, Al, is blazing axe…smaller, lighter than a regular axe…Don’t cut your hand off with it…that float plane costs money, you know.”

 Flies are voracious.  Hard to say which  is worst.  The little black flies  that crawl in our ears  or slip behind our belt bands and munch.  Or the Moose flies  land  gently and tear a piece of skin if they have time.  These moose flies  are big yet able to make silent landings on exposed skin then chew holes.

July  12

Another day of heavy rain so we did  what we could to improve our campsite.  We  have chosen a Rough spot really quite high above the river.  Stupidly decided to test our Mae West life jackets  in the river.  That was like swimming 
among ice cubes…noted that the Groundhog River flows north to James Bay.   In other words this river was not like the Humber or Don  or Etobicoke creek…sweet and warn, We then took the canoe, hooked on the outboard 
engine, and  motored down  river for a  spin.  No sign of  human habitation.   Slight concern that our two way  radio was not working.  Who gives a damn?  Good to be alive and young and healthy … watching a beautiful sunset.

Some of our camps and anomalies we tried to locate…last camp was Kapik Lake

July 13

Nice sunny day…motored  five miles down the Groundhog River to check out our first anomaly.   Walter Helstein and  i set and cut line while  Floyd and Bob followed with the EM…principally two great hoops  of
tightly worn copper wire…looked like a hoop skirt without the underwear. Heavy.  And  a console with earphones to pick up the signals  sent from one to the other.  Coils had  100 foot separation each attached
to a heavy cable.  Walt and I had
to mark these separations  with pickets.   As mentioned earlier, this job was for the young.  Walter was about 59 years old and by five o’clock he was exhausted.   Don’t get me wrong, I really liked Walter but
did not expect him to keep up.

When  we got back to camp and made preparations for supper we found that others had  been in camp.  Blow flies had laid  their eggs in the meat a few days earlier and the maggots were hatching.  We cooked 
the meat anyway…and  ate what we could.  Boiled  maggots tasted  okay if they were eaten unseen.    Our radio is still not operating so any crisis will not be known to the outside world.

We  cut 3,000 feet of  trail for the E.M. unit today.

Bob and Walter with loaded canoe on Groundhog River


July 14

Hot and windy day.We motored back to the River anomaly.  Walter and  I blazed another trail for the E.M. unit…North East compass reading.   Walter having a very tough time.  Blazing sounds easy but that is
not the case.  There is  always  dense brush that has to be cleared so the compass shot will be straight.   Best to blaze trees that are on the compass  line but that is not always  possible.  The line must be straight.
Big obstructions  must be climbed over, waded through, or slashed and thrown to the side.  Today  we cut and marked 8,000 feet of line.

July 15

Today we checked out another anomaly whose  location was  confirmed  by aerial photographs.  Our base  camp is  located at the junction of a smaller creek or river where it joins the mighty Groundhog River.
We travelled  by canoe westward along this tributary to get as  close to the anomaly as possible.  Not easy.  The canoe bottomed out regularly as the creek was quite shallow.   A giant bull moose startled  us
as we came around a bend.  Or did we startle him?   We were more surprised I think because he just stood there for a few moments looking at us and then wandered  leisurely out of the water and into
the forest.  His antlers were so large that they spanned the creek.

Really tough day blazing trail into the anomaly and then cutting formal lines for the EM (Electro Magnetic) unit.  Nothing worse than a cedar swamp with tag alder shrubs. So much slashing that the blisters on my hands are getting
blisters beneath blisters.   To make matters worse we we’re unable to find the anomaly.

Our crew…living together for the duration of the job.  Lunch  break in the bush with pot of tea…see if  you can find the billy can.

When we stop for lunch there  is a danger that few new people in the bush  know.   The danger is piles…”your ass gets pulled out…the  sphincter muscle bulges…bloody painful”  “So, Al, do
not sit on those lovely soft spongy piles of moss.  Wet.  Wet underwear can cause piles.  Sit on a dry log or anything other that wet moss.” “You can get piles from constipation so keep the greasy 
food coming.”  What about heartburn?  “We have some  tummy pills.  Lots  of things  can go wrong on these jobs, Al”  Nice to be on a 2.5 month camping trip with know-alls that tell me  after the fact.

July 16

Tough day.  We went back up the tributary then followed  our previous  trail and extended it in a  vain search  for the airborne anomaly.  Half of  my time was  spent working with the E.M. transmitter
which was nice.  Creek is getting more shallow each day.   Canoe struck  bottom often today whereas yesterday we hit bottom only a few times.  We  startled a  family of  hell diver  ducks who submerged as 
we got close then popped  up some  distance away.   we blazed and traversed 18,000 feet of line criss  crossing what should be the anomaly.  The bush is  incredibly dense with cedars  and tag alders…and
swamps.  Cutting through cedar swamps is like trying to cut rubber bands…the branches  seem to be elastic and cause the axes to bounce back…must be careful.  Much of  the time we are standing in 
shallow  water.  Boots tend to leak.

Radio is full of dire news suggesting chance of another world war since the United  States marines have landed  in Lebanon.

Gum  Rubbers tend to leak which means wet socks which means  boiled feet which  mean white pock marked feet.  Not nice
I could peel skin from my feet as they  were pomogranates. (sp?)

July 17

Wildlife is sure abundant.  Just  today  we startled moose, mink, ducks, hawk, partridge and lots of little red  ground  squirrels.  These creatures  were the only nice thing about our day.  Hard cutting but
no luck finding the anomaly.  The creek is so low now that we decided to give up the search for the anomaly.  We did our best.  And there were many more blips picked up by the airborne magnetometer
and only so much time to confirm wether the blips were real or just a mistake.- Finding these anomalies will be no easy task.

I am bothered  by Heartburn often these days likely due to too much fried food.  Sickness has to just be accepted  as getting  to a doctor or even a drug store is impossible.  I dread  having a  toothache.
 The black flies  seem to love crawling through my hair just to get a little blood with a bite of my flesh.  Maybe I should shave…easier to crush the little devils with a  clean face.
Of course  escape from the flies is impossible.  Seems  they  love tight places such as under my belt.  That’s where most of my welts seem to be.  Keep clothing as loose as possible.

We spent an hour or so burning maggots in our garbage pit…thousands of them infested  our rotten rolls of bologna.

We changed the position of our radio antennae in an attempt to establish  contact with Austin Airways.  Radio silence.

Even though we blazed and surveyed 20,000 feet of line we still had no luck finding the anomaly.

July 18

We followed an old  blazed trail westward from our camp re-blazing as  we went.   Mystery who blazed original trail, perhaps some mining sleuth or maybe a trapper.   When the trail petered out we blazed a new trail
in North West direction for 6,000 feet.  A heavy rainstorm struck around three catching us several miles from our Base Camp. Arrived back about 6 p.m. soaked  to the skin. Depressing.  Later I skinned  a mink that
had been trapped  and killed recently.   For some strange reason the trapper who spent his  winters here left all his traps set.  Killed animals for no reason.  Floyd  suggested He may have died here last winter. “His
trappers  shack must be somewhere nearby.”  The forest west of us seems loaded with partridge…they show little fear as we approach.

Today we travelled 32,500 west from base camp to a beaver  dam we spotted on the aerial photos.  Right on target proving we can pin point the anomalies.

Trappers  Cabin found  on river bank.  Very rough place with heads of small animals  nailed  to logs.  Some skinning method I guess.

July 19

Ferocious Storm all night and morning prevented trail blazing so we stayed in base camp.  It was my meal shift so I had a chance to make breakfast rather extravagant.   French toast with thick slices  of sowbelly bacon
and lots of maple syrup and coffee.  Each of us has meal duty days in rotation.  In the afternoon the sun came out…an  opportunity to wash clothes and sun dry them on the tent ropes.   We cut a lot more scrub brush 
from around camp so we now have  clear view up and down the river.  Water level is dropping rapidly…down a foot since we arrived and going down each  day in spite of the rain.


Walter Helstein sunbathing in the nude.  He has the ability to ignore the blood seeking flies.


Any notion that our campsite was built with military precision should be wiped away by this shot.   Clean dry socks are the most important
item of clothing but the task to keep them so is impossible.   Wet socks help to boil our feet in wet boots.  As  mentioned earlier,Boiled feet are pock marked
and peeling.   Anybody believing this job was a luxury rich man’s camp has to be daft.  Many days were just constant agony.

July 20

Today we trekked one hell of a long way to reach Anomaly site Number 3 and the days ahead will be even longer.  Walt and I cut lines
for the E.M. unit to traverse using 100 foot stations  (see map for Sites 2 and 3).  To reach the site we had to cross a big active beaver dam
about 200 feet wide and 8 feet high in places. Six feet thick.These beaver have been here for a long time.

At lunch we found the bones of a young moose killed by a bear or hunter…or perhaps a cougar if stories of their presence can be true.  Maybe
it just died for the bones  have been here for some time.  Collected the teeth for what reason I do not know.

We returned to base camp very tired and went directly to bed.

Eureka!  A successful day even if tough.  We found the anomaly…high readings on the magnetometer and the E. M. unit just north of
the beaver dam.   




Anomaly site #3:  Eureka, we confirmed the airborne anomaly.  Set up a grid pattern
as indicated above.   Site #2 was less successful.


July 21

We retraced yesterdays’  trails then used compass to cut new trail North.  Very slow progress due to the damn
cedar and alder swamps and their thick vegetation.  I was point man using the compass and made a terrible mistake
having my heavy belt buckle too close to the compass.  We had  spent a couple of hours going in the wrong
direction…deflected.   When we realized our error, Floyd and Bob made fun of my stupidity.  Laughed at me.
So I threw a temper tantrum and began slashing the brush and heading nowhere really.  Which made them
laugh all the more.   Made me  laugh too.  Not my best day but i
guess I provided  some entertainment.   The compass error may not have been my fault for there were 
strong indications of a body of magnetite below us.  Floyd decided we should strike directly east through unblazed 
bush towards  the Groundhog River … far to the east.   “Walter, you go back retracing our blazed trail to Base Camp
then get the canoe to meet us somewhere up river.”  Well, things did not go well when sun got clouded  over
and  we got lost…strange how when lost in the bush we travel in circles.  Eventually we reached the
Groundhog River around 8 p.m. as darkness was descending.  Walter had been on patrol and found us thankfully.
Arrived  at camp dead tired.   Floyd and Bob told Walter about my temper tantrum.

As things turned out the errors  may not have been my fault.  The anomaly upon which we stood was likely
a whopping big magnetite find, confirmed by the aerial photo. Magnetite is strong enough to deflect
a compase…even  confuse a compass giving one false reading in one spot and another a few feet away.
Were we standing on a future copper mine?   If we were it was going to be one hell of  a place for mine
families to  live. Swamp…swamp…swamp.  I read somewhere that certain plants like magnetite.  Couldn’t
be  true.

Today we traversed  39,500 feet finishing the beaver dam anomaly.  Distance is  a guess though due to being
lost for hours.  Tomorrow Floyd decided to reconnoitre the territory east of the Groundhog River.

July 22

Today Floyd decreed  we would all have a day of rest.  Wonderful.  To top things off a moose appeared
close to our camp at the rivers edge.  I stalked  him with the canoe in order to get within camera range.
Then towards evening another moose appeared.  Floyd  and I chased him by canoe along the river bank
until he found a gap to scramble up and get away.  Moose around here seem interested in us as they move
away slowly if we approach.   One moose even seemed  to like music for he stuck his head out of the
brush behind our camp when we had cranked up the music as loud as possible.  The moose seem almost
tame.  A shame really for they are easy game for hunters.

Walter has become valuable in a totally unpredictable way.  He is our berry tester.  Lots of wild plants
are bearing berries but we have been cautious about eating them lest they are poison.  Walter has no
such caution.  He eats any berry he can find…well not any berry but most berries.  He even has
names for them.   Walter is  colour blind so all berries  look the same to him.  We even named one
berry a ‘Walterry’ as  we had no idea the true name.  If Walt could eat it, then it cannot be poison.



We always carried  a cup or some other thing that would rattle.  Bears do not like humans.  the rattling sound wold alert the bear and he or
she would move away.   Bears were present but I only saw one bear on the river bank.   In the picture above my cup has been filled with berries.  Rather than
a tight hat which black flies loved to slip under and chew my flesh.  I found a bandana with knots at the corners would 
work better since the black flies had no place hide in secret.


July 23

Today we again retraced our trail to the beaver dam and then corrected our compass error and cut a more accurate northerly trail for 2800 feet heading towards what
we called our Arctic  anomaly since it was the farthest north we would be going.  Hardly the Arctic.  Worst kind of trail yet as alder and cedar seem to be interlocked to keep
us from making much headway.  Not sure about he anomaly.   Hot sweaty day…terrible really for the flies zero in on our sweat drenched bodies  to suck our blood.

The Groundhog River is falling fast…getting dangerously low.  Maybe even too low for the float plane to land.

Two more moose near camp tonight.

Walter Helstein if in very poor shape and a source of concern to the rest of us.   We all love him and his stories about the Depression years but a man 59 years  old  should
not be doing this type of work.   Walter won’t knock off though.  He insists on keeping up with the rest of us even if far behind.

Distance covered  today was 57,800 feet


We landed on the Groundhog River early in July.  By late July the water level had dropped more than four feet making any landing
by float aircraft a problem.  Look at our dock … what a difference.

July 24

Floyd postponed the scheduled arrival of our food supplies over concern about river level.  We will do a test of water level
to ensure no dead head logs are lurking where the Austin Airways Beaver must land.   On our way down river we came across a cow moose
with its calf.  Both feeding in the shallows unaware of our presence.  Bob and  I let Floyd off on shore where he would try to scare them into
an attempt at a river crossing.  Both began to swim across the channel.  Bob and I paddled madly putting our canoe between cow and calf 
forcing the calf to turn back.  This was not a nice thing to  do for the mother bawled and bawled and the calf was very frightened.  We took a 
couple of pictures and got out of the way so the calf could make a safe crossing.





After the separation of cow and calf we were able to get quite close to the terrified calf.   None of us felt good  about our little game so we
never pressed the issue by getting close  enough to touch the calf.   Momma moose was  bawling throughout.


July 25

Today was  a great day.  The Austin Airways Beaver circled  a  couple of times  and  then set down perfectly. Jeff the pilot announced
however “that he could  not get down again if the river drops  much  more.”  Fresh food at last.  Three days of  fresh  meat before the
blow flies lay their eggs.  Big time trouble though since we will not be in Base Camp for next few days.  The meat will be a gift to
the blow flies.  The cooked  ham  might last longer.  We  stuffed ourselves.

Then spent the afternoon packing all we would need  for the next two weeks in pack sacks  with tump lines.  No luxuries as Floyd had
decided  to set up a fly camp two miles  west of our Base Camp.   Those anomalies north of the Beaver Dam could not be surveyed
properly if we had to spend  most of the day hiking.   What ‘luxuries’ had to be  rejected?  Lots.  Take our beds for instance. “We will be
sleeping on spruce boughs  boys.”  Even  then the loads on our backs  were really heavy.   To make matters  worse the skies  turned grey 
and rain began to fall as we lumbered along carefully stepping over windfalls  while keeping our eyes  on the tree blazes which had faded
somewhat.

Our new camp is in the centre of a swamp.  Nothing better nearby.  For fresh water we dug a  deep hole and let the swamp water percolate 
down.   The flies are as  thick as ticks on a  cow’s  nose.  Fly nets protect our ears  and eyes but the rest of our  bodies are fair game for
the little and large sons  of bitches.

As dusk  began to fall we built a large bed  frame out of spruce logs and then filled it with a huge pile of spruce boughs.  Room for all
four os us … if the lashed bed  frame held our weight…which it did not.  Try sleeping on a corduroy road…same as this bed.  No, we  do
not snuggle together.  Who farted?

Distance travelled   10,500 feet

Floyd  and Bob constructed this pine bough bed before erecting our tent.   All four of us were expected to sleep on it.  They lashed
spruce boles together and used the stumps  to keep  the bed two feet above the watery ground.  It worked for one night then collapsed.

July 26

We made our way two miles  on the new trail to the anomaly north of the beaver dam.  Damn transmitter failed.   Likely moisture in the coil.
Floyd and Bob took it back to Base Camp while Walt and I cut 6,000 feet of new line.   I wonder if anyone understands  just how difficult living
in the bush can be.  Just the simple act of walking is  a chore because the surface is littered with obstructions.   Moss covered windfalls are particularly 
dangerous as  they are tempting to step on yet super slippery.  Falling with a sharp axe is never worth the risk.  Even more lethal are the sharpened 
alder shrubs after they have been slashed.  So the trail is one continuous sequence of sharp spikes capable of going with through a boot, or foot, or hand or
face.   No help available.

I managed to bring my copy of ‘Rovering to Success’ which  makes amusing reading. Linked to my plan to get a Bushman’s thong.

Distance covered  30,600 feet  (six miles)


This  is our fly camp Number 1.  Very rough.  In the middle of a moss covered swamp.  We dug a pit for our water source.

July 27

Floyd and Bob got back with new coil and we all took off for the north anomaly arriving in mid afternoon.   Damned  if the E.M. transmitter didn’t
fail again.  Since I was designated to use the transmitter today the boys reasoned I would have to be the person to get it repaired.  Sounds
easy?  Not so.  That meant I had to walk all the way back to our base camp…through our fly camp…about six miles from start to finish.  A long
distance over broken ground.  Of course no reader would ever believe just how hard walking here had become.  Wet socks  and  wet boots made
the walk even less enjoyable.   Then there is the matter of Fear.  Hiking alone in a dense forest can raise the hackles on a person’s neck.  I imagined
something was tracking me.  I would walk then stop abruptly and listen.  Whatever was tracking me did the same thing.  Was it a bear or even
a cougar?  Or was it just my imagination.   Silly.   But try that kind of hiking yourself before you make a fast judgment.

Reached base camp in late afternoon.  Took a swim in the river then cooked a good sized meal.   Meat was already becoming questionable.
We had a package of weiners that looked OK except for the gloss of white stuff that had oozed out.  Sticky stuff.  It was possible to pick up
a weiner with one finger and drop it in the pot.  One finger?  Yes, the white glue like stuff was very sticky.  The weiners  did not kill me so I
must assume the white glossy stuff was  some kind of preservative.

Packed up the new coil plus some extra food for the boys and  headed back to our fly camp arriving just as the sun was setting.  Scared?
You bet I was scared on that lonely hike.

Distance covered  45,800 feet (about 9 miles)

The E. M. (Electro Magnetic) instrument consisted of two heavy coils of copper wire as above.  The signal passed from one coil to the
other was an indicator of magnetism below the ground.  Where there was nothing magnetic the signal was  steady.  When over a
magnetic anomaly the signals increased.  That was fine when the instrument worked…not so fine when it did not work.

July 28

We were all  glad when a full day rainstorm hit us.  What a wonderful feeling to be wrapped up in a sleeping bag for the full day alternately
reading sand dozing.  Floyd slid  a Mickey of scotch from a brown paper bag in his pack.  “Enough here for all of us  to have a sip, boys…that
includes you Al if your Boy Scout training will allow.”   I did not drink up until that point.  The small cup of Scotch  made our lazy day
even better.

July 29

We used our old trails as much as possible then cut an extension to our northernmost anomaly…the so  called  Arctic anomaly. Once again
a nasty bit of swamp and twisted cedars.   Blazing and slashing brush can be dangerous at best of  times but when the branches  have elasticity then
care is paramount.  Hit where a branch can be cut…solid  contact. Hit the notches.   Hitting free swinging branches is pointless because the axe cannot do a thing except
possible fall in a full arc and cut the axeman.  Gnarled wood is also problematic for it resists the axe more than expected.   

Another afternoon rainstorm caught us and soaked us.   Back at camp we lit a  big fire in a vain  attempt to dry our  clothes  for tomorrow’s labour   We only
had one set of  clothing since anything considered  extra  weight was discarded when we packed.  Whatever we carried had to be on our backs and that
included the heavy Ronka Electro magnetic coils,  our food, our tent, our sleeping bags and Floyd’s secret brown bagged bottle of scotch.

These pictures  are not terrific but they clearly show just what burdens  we carried to our fly camps.  This job was no bed of roses and that 
is for sure.  Remember these loads  were carried on blazed trails  criss crossed  with windfalls and bedded with sharp alder spikes from
our slashing.  Another pain in the ass were the swamps whose surfaces were disguised by a thick bed of spongy moss and muskeg.
The job was so exhausting that we vented our discontent with four letter words until even swearing was just too much wasted effort.  

Distance today   38,200 feet  (about 7 miles)

July 30

We were too wet to work  so we sat around the fire in our miserable wet clothing.  I feel dirty but probably not so bad since
the wet clothes gave me a kind of sponge bath. Floyd volunteered to trek out to our 
Groundhog River base camp for some more food.   He made sure we all carried similar weight on the job…and equal responsibilities
including poor Walter who was overweight and seems to have spent a lot of time in Timmins socializing with unemployed cronies.
I give Walter full marks.  He turned out to be a very tough customer…hope he was paid more than the rest of us but expect that
was not the case since he was the least experienced.

Our water supply, believe  it or not, is a problem in spite of the rain.   All water we  use is  in our little pit and  the rain did  not
act as a filter so the drinking and cooking water is  cloudy.

July 31

We had  a real tough grind today lasting a cool 12 hours from seven to seven.   We did,  however, manage to finish work on the Arctic
anomaly…laid  out 6,000 feet of line in three two thousand feet length parallel to each other with four hundred feet between…a grid.  The
area is lively … some magnetite … as my compass was thrown off by 12 or more degrees.   So this  is a really important anomaly
I think.

We got a nice fire going and lounged around listening to Walter reminisce about his life as a hobo in the Great Depression years.
Sad at times…comical at others.  “The trains were loaded with men going nowhere…anywhere…hopped into cattle cars.  Police
in towns  and cities wold not let us  out.  They did not want any more welfare problems than they already had…so we had to jump
and run if we could.  Back and forth across Canada.  In  winter we yarded up in freight yards…hobo jungles…with the starving,
the degenerate, the desperate, the dying.  These were not good years…Begging for garbage”.
Floyd had different stories. He had  been a cageman in a Kirkland Lake mine.  Took miners and machines up and down the shaft.
Quit that job when a friend’s cage broke and hurtled down the shaft killing him. “Scraped him of the bottom of the cage’, as Floyd
put it. He decided to stay in mining but work on the surface.
Bob talked about the beauty of the foothills of the Rockies and the girls he had  met.  Then he was offered a job as  a geophysical
technician complete with room and board.  Sounded good until he discovered what that meant really.  Wilderness life. Room is
a tent…board can be blow fly corrupted meat. After
this job he is heading back to a mining college in Michigan.  My life experience was quite uneventful compared to theirs.

 The flickering fire made the whole evening very dramatic.

Distance covered   38,200 feet plus 6,000 lines…44,200 feet (about 8.5 miles)

AUGUST 1, 1958

Walt and I cut 6,000 feet of line south 20 degrees west from swamp camp.  I think  we hit our destination within 100 feet of spot 
located on our aerial photo. We struck a creek at the precise place on the photo.

In the evening I  patched my clothes with medical  tape and canvas patches (plus some glue).  It’s  getting difficult to distinguish 
pants from patches.

Distance   12,200 feet (around 2 miles)

August 2, 1958

Although the  northern anomaly is not quite as detailed as desirable we cannot spend  another day working there.

I caught a baby rabbit this morning and  we placed him in a bag and hung it on a tree intending to keep him as a pet
but while we were away he escaped.

As we returned  to camp a hurricane-like storm hit suddenly.  The sun was completely blackened out and then came high
velocity winds strong enough to tear trees  out by their roots throwing them around  as if they were match sticks.  Some
of these new windfalls  blocks our trail.   I have never in my life seen such a storm.  Ferocious.  Nature weeding out the
sick and the dead I suppose.

Distance covered    30,000 feet  (6 miles)

August 3, 1958

The storm railed  all night…including lightning and torrential rain.  Frightening but wonderful at same time.  Good thing too for now
our water supply has been replenished and, more important, the supply plane will be able to land  back at our base camp
on the Groundhog River maybe although not expected  until August 8.

In the afternoon Walt and I hiked  out of the swamp camp to our base camp for more food.  So many trees across our trail that
we had to cut new  bypasses.

Distance travelled   21,000 feet (4 miles)

August 4, 1958

Completed Ronka survey of anomaly 18 south of swamp camp #1.  Sure must be something beneath us since the compass seemed
very slow and  contradicted  itself on the backsights.  Probable magnetite ore body as  airborne mag suggested.  We cut 5,000 feet of 
new line.

Tired at night but relaxed as we traded stories around the campfire.  There is  a feeling of exhilaration when living this close to nature.

Our plotted data profiles showed clear presence of something since both instruments reacted…the X ray magnetometer and the 
horizontal loop Ronka EM unit.  “How did the Ronka get its name?” “Inventor guy…physicist…works for Huntec…his machine.”


The Ronka Electro Magnetic Instrument was the most important part of our survey work.  And it was heavy consisting of two large
hoops of closely wound copper wire (see below) . Both hoops were attached together by a 100 foot electric cable and signals 
were received by a console carried by one of the men.  On ordinary surveys this instrument was heavy.  Our survey work meant 
we had to carry a  hell of lot more than the Ronka…tents, sleeping bags, food, clothes, first aid  kits,  axes, a buck saw, pots and  pans…etc.




August 5, 1958

Walt and I began blazing trail west 248 degrees but rain began after we had gone 600 feet forcing us back to camp.

“Your turn to hike back to base camps for food, Al.” I wonder if the other guys  get scared when they are alone
in this  dense forest?  Do they imagine wild things are watching them?  Do they hear strange noises?  Do they run?
Do they stop and slowly rotate around  360 just in case there is something?  They never say, so I best keep my mouth
shut as well.   Back at base camp I tested  the  radio transmitter  which receives fine  but just will not transmit.  If we
ever have a  serious injury, how the hell are we going to get help?  Since Walt and I are swinging blazing axes almost
every day, the odds of an accident are falling from long to short.

Arrived  at base camp about five and  cooked myself a  big supper…2 cans of stew,  1 can of peaches, 1 box cookies and  3 cans
of orange juice.   Then packed  up a lot of dry goods to carry back to Swamp Camp #1.  No  canned goods allowed  as they
are too heavy so the guys will have to make do with a  lot of rolled  oats and  pancakes and my favourite French toast.  One 
heavy item is allowed.  Peanut butter…we eat lots of that.

Slung the pack on my back and headed  west again hoping it would not get dark before I reached Swamp Camp #1.
Arrived at 9 p.m.

Distance travelled:  22,200 feet (4  miles)

August 6, 1958

Walt and I continued blazing our trail to Anomaly #16…west 248 degrees from Swamp Camp #1.  This  section of the bush is
woven with windfalls  like a broken box of pick up sticks.  At western edge we struck two creeks needing bridges. Construction
took a long enjoyable time.  Enjoyable?  Yes,  weather was perfect so  we took our time.  Waded in our bare feet.  Then we 
continued to point of the anomaly.

That night I collected some very strange luminous wood that we had been noticing all around  Swamp Camp #1.  Eerie effect looking
out of our tent at the pin pricks of light.  It seems to be some kind of fungus  acting upon rotting wood.  Dark nights give our camp
a ghost-like appearance.  My luminous collection was a failure though.

Distance covered:  13,000 feet (2.5 miles or thereabouts)



Walt and  I built two of these bridges.  The construction project was enjoyable … especially for our feet.



August 7, 1958

Tiring day as usual.

Finished blazing grid for Anomaly #16, then did survey with the Ronka which gave us some high readings
that checked out with the magnetometer.

Distance covered: 20,500 feet (about 4 miles)


August 8, 1958

Big day today.  Austin Airways Beaver arrived.  Floyd and Bob packed out to Base Camp to meet the plane while
Walt and I were left behind to break up Swamp Camp #1 and follow them later.  We had to sort things into two piles…those 
worth taking and those to be abandoned and burned.  

We arrived in afternoon and were shocked to find  Floyd  gone.  He was being sent to a new project
in Michigan.  That changes things.  We will be leaderless it seems.  But Bob will take over.  I have been elevated a notch to second  in command  which means darn little.

During our absence from Base Camp a black bear paid a visit and managed to get our twenty point ham which we had strung
up high in a tree.  Then for some reason the bear decided to get into the cook tent and rummage around.  He did  not use
the front door of the tent but ripped  a big hole in the side.

This was a really eventful day for not only did we get a new supply of food  but also a big pile of mail.

Why did  I get so many letters?…huge pile of them.  Most had American stamps and I do not know that many Americans.
Some smelled  of perfume.  At first I thought they had been sent to the wrong person but opening the first one read 
“Dear Alan”.  These were some kind  of love letters…maybe 30 or 40 from all over the United States.   One girl, writing in
pencil, wanted to live  with me if I could send  her the fare to get here.  That was a laugh.  Imagine the shock she would
find.  Perhaps I would have the greater shock though.   A lot were from nurses and  some of them were damn interesting…well written…lonely hearts stuff.
Some of the girls  told horrifying stories about their living conditions   Abuse, poverty, desire to escape no matter what.
How  come?   Why send these letters  to me?  Mystery was solved.  In the mail pack were two letters from Russ Vanstone and Jim Romaniuk…they had  sent my
name and address  to a lonely hearts club in the U.S.   Bob, Walt and  I enjoyed all the letters…read them over and over
again for the rest of the summer.  Most of them made me feel sad…there were strong overtones of desperation.

Distance Covered:  10,500 feet




Pilot delivering mail and  taking Floyd out of the bush to a new job in Michigan. 


A black bear managed to get our 20 pound cooked ham even though we had  strung it high up in this  tree.  How did the bear do  it?


The bear also  ripped this hole in our cook tent and then rummaged around for food.   He did not pop open the canned goods thankfully.

August 9, 1958

 Bob Hilkar spent the day reorganizing our targets while waiting for a new 
man to be flown in from South Porcupine.   This gave us a chance to do our washing…clothes and bodies.  We were all covered with
layer after layer of fly repellent along with smoke from our cook fires.  The dirt is  not all bad since it seems to make us less appealing to
the flies…moose flies, deer flies, mosquitoes, black flies, sand  flies, ground wasps, blow flies.

What a great day.  We gorged ourselves on the fresh  food knowing it would not last once the bear and the blow flies  got wind of it.
So we had  steaks, fresh vegetables, some bananas and  one whole watermelon.

The bear must have been watching close by on the opposite river bank.  There he stood for a moment like a big black rock. 
 I got a shot of him with my camera but he was too far away and
too quick to clear out.

August 10, 1958

We packed the canoe and headed  downstream…i.e. north for the Groundhog River flows north to James Bay which is part of 
the huge Hudson’s  Bay watershed.  “Another swamp camp, boys, pack lightly.” We cut line eastward  from the river for half a mile
where we struck a  trap line and decided to follow it in the desperate hope we would reach the new anomaly without the work of
blazing.  But we were disappointed for the trappers trail began to angle north rather than east.

This must be the trapper who left his traps open for some reason when he took his first out in the spring.  Or he had died.  We were
constantly finding open traps on the creeks and beaver dams.  Some had the skeletons of dead  animals and a couple had
been recently snapped shut on the legs of a  mink and  a muskrat.   Why do this unnecessary killing?  Leg hold traps are really
inhumane for they hold the animal in great distress.   Some animals chew their own legs off to make an escape.

We  retraced  out steps and  went back to base camp #1 resolved to try to reach the eastern anomaly again tomorrow…this time
blazing a trail as  we packed in.  No easy task to blaze while  carrying everything needed in huge packs.

As we returned up river we noticed  something large and  white on the river shore.  It was  a large moose head complete with
a perfect set of antlers.  “You want it, Al?”  “Sure do.”  So  we wedged the thing in the canoe and I planned to get it back to Toronto
one way or another.

Distance covered:   16,000 feet (mostly wasted)


My trophy from the Groundhog River job…a moose head found on the banks of the Groundhog River.


Photo was taken earlier in summer because my hair is short and no beard.  But picture makes point that Walter and Bob and me are now
a three man crew after Floyd was taken from us.  We needed a fourth man and got Hopkins on a return flight.


By midsummer, I was  a darn sight thinner.

August 11, 1958

Walt and I were sent upstream (southwards in other words) about a  mile  and  half with orders to extend 
the trail we had cut back on July 24.  Almost immediately this became extremely difficult a we hit an alder swamp about 800 feet wide
with water at various depths.  Alder shrubs  are very difficult to slash on dry land  as they are thin and
elastic like.  A swipe with a blazing axe does nothing unless the cut is aimed close to the ground.  And  when severed the decapitated
alder remain as  a giant spike capable of penetrating our gum rubber boots.  In this swamp cutting was super difficult as
the alder roots were under the water.   Swinging an axe for an underwater cut is just about impossible.   To make matters worse
in the centre of the swamp  was open water…a large stream.  So we had to bridge another bridge.

As if these problems were not big enough, we came across a number of water snakes of various  length.

While  returning to camp we startled up another bull moose.  More moose in here than  people.,

Distance travelled:  16,000 feet

August 12, 1958

Stormy weather until late afternoon when sky cleared and Austin Airways sent in the Beaver with our new man, Robert Hopkins.
First bush  job for him…he is about my age…hope he can handle a  blazing axe.

August 13, 1958

We packed food supplies and  placed them in a cache using trail cut on August 10.  Then we extended the trail for a  mile and  a half.
Robert Hopkins is  nice enough but has never handled an axe before and keeps swinging at thin branches.  Axe bounces  back…very 
dangerous.  “Hit where the branch joins the tree.”  Wish he would do this as  his actions are dangerous.

The swamp apples are ripe…big orange berries  on a small ground  plant in the swamps.  Sweet taste…too sweet really.

Water on the river is low  again so many areas have rapids.  We got caught in a cross eddy which turned us  broadside to 
the river flow and then jammed us  on the rocks.   The canoe did  not overturn as we pushed and pulled  it back from the
rocks and shot down a  kind of chute.  Only damage was a punctured bow.

Distance Covered”  21,000 feet

August 14,  1958

Rain again…all day long until 8 p.m. at night.  Spent day reading and talking.

August 15, 1958

Today we moved our cache of food two miles deeper towards future Swamp Camp #2 then blazed new trail another mile to our objective which is
a branch of Hicks Creek.   The temperature hovered around  35 degrees all day.  Damn cold, especially so since leaves and  trees are still wet from
the rain yesterday.  Absolutely miserable.  Shivered from 6 a.m. to 7 p.m.  End result was  a trail to our new fly camp.   We trekked out to the Groundhog
River and back to Base Camp.  Tomorrow we will pack in our instruments, tent, sleeping bags and cooking gear to Swamp Camp #2.

Distance covered     31,500 feet

August 16, 1958

Packed canoe with essentials and motored north on river to strike point of departure eastward  on new trail to Swamp Camp #2.  Three miles.
We passed by our earlier food Cache in order to set up tents as fast as possible then Robert and  I went back for the food.  Bob Hilkar and
Walter built large elevated spruce bough bed for the four of us  to try to sleep upon.  “Try to sleep” that is.

Weather has become much colder. Frost in the morning.

Distance covered:  22,000 feet (about 4 miles  plus)


Swamp Camp #2 is miserable

August 17

Rain and extreme cold  weather kept us in our sleeping bags  all day.  This search  for an anomaly is going badly and will take longer
than expected  so  we decided to ration our food  supply.

August 18, 1958

This terrible forest collected its pound  of flesh  today as we succeeded in cutting two miles deeper to the east.  Our clothes were soaked
by showers twice.  And we had to wade across a creek once.  Sun came out later thankfully.

Compass problems  again as the Brunton and  Silva compasses give slightly different directions.  Our error or compass defect?

Distance covered:  24,000 feet (nearly five miles)

August 19, 1958

Hard  day.  Seems  all the work days  are hard days and  this one is no exception.  We  cut line in a generally southern direction.
Then all work stopped when Robert Hopkins cut his  hand  with a  blazing axe.   Bad cut.  I wrapped  it with a rough tourniquet and stopped
the bleeding.  Will it heal?  Or will we have to get him out by bush plane?

Distance travelled   29,000 feet


August 20, 1958

Twelve hour trips on our blazed trails are not easy.  No one, and I mean no one, will ever understand how hard this job has become.
We thought Robert’s injury yesterday would heal but today he sliced himself again…right to the bone.   He had  never handled  an axe before
and chose to ignore  instructions  and kept swinging at twigs and light branches.  His  axe bounced back of course and this second  time
cut himself damn close to an  artery.  Looks like some tendons may be severed.  We washed  the blood from the wound and then applied  another
tourniquet made from strips of my shirt…picked  the cleanest parts we could  rip.   

By evening his hand  had swollen up and he was in severe pain. Gave him some sulpha hoping that would help him sleep.  Nothing we could
do until dawn and then we must make fast tracks back to the river and motor down to our Base camp where we could radio for an emergency
flight to get Robert out to hospital.  Getting out of this  camp will take all day.   No hope for an emergency flight until tomorrow.
Infection is a big worry.

Distance covered   29,500 feet…very difficult terrain peppered  with tag alder and windfalls.

Robert Hopkins was hired to replace Floyd but just did not work out.  He cut himself badly twice when his blazing axe bounced of some light branches
of tag alder.  He was warned not to hit light branches but to aim his cuts at places where branches  joined the main trunk.   Getting him out was a
real exercise for us…Took 2.5 days and by then infection had set in.  Looked like tendons were cut as well.   Our tourniquet stopped the bleeding but
we could do  little to arrest infection.


August 21, 1958

Robert’s hand is now discoloured which  is  a sure sign of infection.   First Aid  kit is little use at this point.  We must get him out.
So began the long hike to our canoe at the river and then motoring five miles upstream to our base camp where we sent an SOS
call.   Plane arrived  and  Robert Hopkins was no longer part of our crew.

Walt and I spent day cutting line south 1,000 feet and  east 3,000 feet to a new anomaly.   With only three of us progress  is going to be slow.

We were startled to discover an old trappers shack deep in the bush.   About as primitive a building as can be imagined….Pyramid  shape.
The trapper must have used this  as a very temporary home because it was  really only a pile of logs leaning into each other.

Distance Travelled   7,400 feet


We came across tis trappers shack in the middle of nowhere.   It must have been used  for overnight habitation.  Hardly liveable.

August 22, 1958

Bob Hilkar returned by float plane bringing good  news.  I passed  my Grade 13 departmental exams …enough to gain
entrance to University of Toronto.   All the money earned  on this job will just pay for my entrance fees.   

Walt, Bob and  I retraced our trail south to the farthest anomaly. Bad news!   Our cable joining the two Ronka coils broke which  meant
that all the walking to get to the site was wasted effort.  We returned to camp and  soldered he broken section back together.

Came across an abandoned beaver dam.   Looked like it have been abandoned for a long time but it still managed
to dam up a large basin of water.  Amazing little creatures.

Distance travelled   25,000 feet


August 23,  1958

Another attempt to run the Ronka over the southern anomaly failed when the big cable got severed  where it joins  the console.
This  was not easy to repair.   The break in the cable meant we had to retrace out steps once more.  Hours and hours
of wasted time.  

Walt and I did manage to cut a little more of survey line to the east.

Distance covered:  25,000 feet walking and 7,500 feet of new line cut

August 24, 1958

Rain!  Wonderful rainstorm.  No work on the anomalies.   Our survey situation is getting serious though for we are running out of time.
We plan a big push tomorrow and  will try to finish the entire area in next couple of days.  Must do  so because a relief plane is
due on August 27 when our Base Camp on the Groundhog River will be abandoned and  a  new base camp built on Kapik  Lake
far to the west.  We will get there by air with all our gear.

We had a bit of a laugh in the evening when Walt salted all our tea thinking he was  adding sugar.

August 25,  1958

Somehow between 7 a.. and  7 p.m. we managed to finish the remaining two anomalies.  Not easy to do but then again nothing on
this  job has turned out to be easy to do.   In spite of it all we felt nostalgic  as we sat around the campfire knowing that this camp
would exist no longer.  No one said very much really.  We just sat there feeling we were leaving a home in spite of all the adversities.

Distance covered:  44,700 feet  (almost 9 miles)



August 26, 1958

If I had  to pinpoint the worst day  on the job it would be today, August 26, 1958, when we abandoned the eastern fly camp.  There were only 
three of  us now…Bob Hilkar, Walter Helstein and me.   When this  camp was  set up there were four of us and we made three trips
into the camp with gear and food from caches along the way.  To get out was going to be difficult so we began to pile absolutely essential
gear in three piles…one for each  of us.  “Discard  everything you can, boys.” said Bob.  So we did…the discard pile contained  rope, food,
Robert’s backboard, books, some cooking gear, even spare clothing.  In spite of that the piles we had to carry were back breaking.
The tent in particular was a load in itself because it was still wet from the rains.

I  am not proud of my behaviour this day.  My load  was  so big that each step was a problem.  Would  I make to the river?  I became 
convinced that my load was  much heavier than Bob Hilkar’s and I said so.  “My load  is unbearable while yours  is  light.”
“Why don’t we switch  loads then?”, said Bob.  We switched.   I was wrong…terribly wrong.  His load included the wet tent…heavier
than my load.  He was our point man so I could  not see his face but I felt he was grinning.  He knew how heavy the tent had become and
was glad to switch.  I  could hardly start to whine again so had to grin and bear the situation.  Forget about the word  grin.  The pain
was  excruciating.   The end result was  hard to believe.  My load had been tied  to a sturdy metal pack frame.  By the time we reached  the river
that pack frame had bent into a circle and had to be discarded.  The other pack  frames were also ruined.   Somehow we all lived through
the trek.   Bob Hilkar did not say much but the look in his eye was an ‘I told  you so’ look.   

Our bad day was  not over.   When  we finally reached Base Camp  #1, we found it to be a shambles.  The black bear had returned
only this time he ripped  his way into our sleeping tent.   Nothing to eat in there so his or her decision was  a  mystery.   Any food
left in the camp was gone except for the canned goods some of which had been crushed but not opened.

Distance covered     15,000 feet   (nearly three miles)

This was  only part of the load.  On top of the rectangular pack was placed one of the Ronka hoops made of wound copper wire…a super heavy load.  what we left
behind will never be found  for no one will return to the eastern anomalies since the readings were low compared with the western
anomalies.  Then again maybe the trapper is not dead and will return to his trap line late in the fall and  find what remains of or  cache.
No, the bears will get there first.

August 27, 1958

I woke late tonight with a funny feeling.   Did not know why for a few moments.  Admired how the moon lit up the inside of our tent.  Then a cloud passed  by
blotting out the moon.  Only it was not a cloud.  it was the bear…he was on the other side of the tent wall…maybe three feet from my body encased
in my sleeping bag.  His  shadow blotted  out the moonlight.   I held my breath.  Then his  shadow just moved  down the tent wall and out of our
lives.   He stole no food  that night.  Probably he could smell us and I am told bears  do not like the smell of human beings.  Our smell was particularly
strong that night.

In the morning we tore apart Base Camp #1 and  packed everything on the dock and  shoreline.  Late in the afternoon the Beaver float plane arrived and was  
loaded for the short hop to Kapik Lake a  few miles to the west where we set up our new  Base Camp.  What a difference.  The new camp is  nestled in climax forest 
of birch  and poplar trees high on a hill where fresh  wind blows.  We were out of the swamps.  

A strange thing happened the day we left Base Camp #1..   Something not really  relevant but strange all the same.  Our makeshift dock began  to attract great clouds of
deer flies.  Deer flies are nasty creatures that like human  flesh and human blood.  Chevrons on their wings. They had  been torturing us every day since our arrival.  Yet this
day, August 27, 1958, they were  not biting.  Instead they were clustering in pods under the dock.  Wedging themselves into a great pack of their brethren
and dying all pressed together.  Hundreds of them, maybe a thousand.  Made no sense but it is a clear unusual  memory.  We did not try to dissuade them  from this  mass suicide.

We had a new employee arrive to replace Robert Hopkins.   Mack Deisert is  a tough man who is familiar with heavy tools.  For a time he worked  underground
in the gold  mines of Timmins.  Why he no longer was a full time miner became evident as we talked around the camp fires.  “There were all kinds of  ways to
high grade gold from the  Timmins mines.  Lunch pails worked  for a  while but stealing gold that way was a little too obvious…small amounts  under fingernails or in false  teeth specially
made by local dentists.  Some gold was smuggled out in shoe  heels…sounds stupid  I know but remember just an ounce of gold  was worth money…high graders  got 50% of the face value of gold.  Lots of buyers in Timmins.  A miner or a shift boss sees a streak of raw gold
in a hunk of rock…not common but occasionally  appears…he  slips a chunk in his pocket then  gets to a place where he hammers the chunk and get smaller piece with more gold…then has to figure how to
get it out.  A wink to a foreman might do  it.    Most of the high grade gold is ground down right in the mine.  A miner comes upon a vein with raw gold…  he just chips  out a chunk
knocks of the crap and keeps a bit of gold for himself. Small pieces are easy to hide.  Some say millions worth of high grade gold hidden and  sold in Timmins.  Miners today  are checked by security guys
every shift.  Big signs in the mine condemn high graders.   Those  signs would  not be up if there was not a problem.  Illegal  gold…common knowledge  about 
who to contact.”  Mack seemed to know a lot about high grading gold…maybe he got caught and that was why he took a job with us.  Or he was bull shitting a good
story around  a campfire.  Whether his stories were true or not , Mac was certainly an  entertaining character.  

 To Mack a blazing Axe was  child’s play.   He was unlikely to hurt himself for he knew
the consequences  of a wilderness injury.

Our new fourth man  was  Mack Deisert standing on  the pontoon while the pilot clears up  a few details, perhaps  related to money.
Mac was quite an entrepreneur.  No fucking around with him.
Mac  arrived  just as we were moving to Kapik Lake with all our gear…August 27, 1958

Supper was special.  Fresh food.  We dined on veal cutlets, string beans, potatoes, tea and ‘fresh bread’.   Our bread was soon stale…dru  
or mouldy…god bread got very 
crusty as time wore on in camp.  Mouldy  bread  was garbage.  The only way to soften dry bread up was a French Toast concoction we made regularly…water, powdered milk, a couple of
eggs while they lasted, some butter and a hot frying pan.  French  toast could be stretched out and become a bush lunch when lathered with
peanut butter.   It Got to taste really good.  We could do the same thing with porridge.  Hot in the morning.  Then a slab of cold oats as a jelly like lunch
If firm enough the cold  porridge could also be lathered with peanut butter.   All this was  washed down with tea boiled in a
fruit can tin with a wire looped over so the billy tin could hang on a stick over an open fire.  When we  ran  out of real tea  we used Labrador tea, a
local plant whose leaves were fuzzy on the bottom. Easy to  find. Questionable alternative. No alcohol on the job.   Beer would weigh 
far too much anyway.

August 28, 1958

Rain…wonderful  rain.  So  we got a day of rest…well not quite that for we had to get our new campsite ship shape.  Kapik Lake is not
big, just enough room for the Beaver to take off and land.  “What’s that over on the other side?” “Looks like a canoe.”  Sure enough, some
person  had abandoned  a canoe on the lake.  No sign of a cabin so it might have been a fisherman or trapper.  We rescued it. complete with
paddles and had  transportation for leisure evenings to tour the little lake.  Maybe this was here for fly in fishermen.   Maybe Kapik Lake 
was full of fish.  Little good that would do us for we had no fishing gear.

Kapik Lake was inhabited by some strange mole like creatures on one of the little islands and a family of Loons
who serenaded us regularly.





Maybe Kapik Lake was one of those fly in fishing lakes that rich  people use which came complete with a cook to fry up
whatever they catch.  Our use of the lake was far less fancy.   Rich fishermen, if hey arrived while we  were, would have
been flabbergasted at our basic diet of porridge.  I cut these carrots our of a local paper after the job  was over.  Made
me laugh.

Our Kapik Lake Campsite





Kapik Lake aerial photo taken by  Huntec Canso aircraft

Walt put the tea bags in with our pork and beans tonight which gave us all  a good laugh.   Then Walt asked “Do you want to
to know how to speak Eskimo?” and proceeded to teach us the language which I think he made up as he went along.  Then again
he did work as a diamond driller at Rankin Inlet. 

August 29, 1958

Walt and I cut line south 221 degrees. Easy work this time because the big trees shaded out the brush.  What a luxury…we could slap our
axes on one side of a big poplar then the other and move by easy  line of sight.  Summer was over suddenly and the trees were changing colour
The bush forest was becoming a land of red and gold.  The down side of this season change was  the arrival of cold  weather.  All summer
we had been complaining about the hot  sweaty days.  Now we complained about the cold.

Distance covered   12,000 feet (easy day)

August 30, 1958

Rain again.  Spent most of the day in our  sleeping bags.  I planned  my short term future.  University bound.  Thoughts of the University of Toronto made 
me very nervous.  Dad was  a tire builder and mom was a seamstress.  Most my other relatives were farmers.  So the prospect of  a university education
was novel and made me nervous not that I told anyone.   My good friends Russ and Jim would be doing the same thing and  were probably nervous as  well.
Money made on this job would pay my first year fees of $400.

Our radio weather report warned of heavy frost tonight so we started to assemble our new air-tite wood stove.  The hole in the tent left by the bear was the exit 
point for the stovepipe.   The big birch trees in this  climax forests means we have lots of excellent firewood that splits with ease.   Comfort!  And the smell
of the wood  stove is like the best perfume imaginable.

The only bad  news today was that our fresh  meat had already gone bad.  It would not pass the nose test.

September 1, 1958

Cold  … really cold all day.  Just above freezing which meant the raindrops on the forest leaves were like little ice daggers penetrating our clothes.We 
spent the day extending Bob And Mack’s trail to the northern anomaly.

Distance covered   33,000 feet

September 2, 1958

Another long hard  12 hour day.  We finished blazing our trail to where we figured  the anomaly was  located then did the survey with the Ronka and magnetometer.

My gum rubber boots have holes big enough for my socks to poke through which means I am working every day in wet feet.   Each night we pull off our boots
and  peel down the wet socks then massage our feet.   Bad feet would mean no work.   

Distance covered”   37,000 feet  (about 7 miles)

September 3, 1958

Another brute of a storm night and day.  The tent is  billowing in the wind like a great hot air balloon.

September 4, 1958

Bob and I finished  the north anomaly with both the Ronka EM unit and the magnetometer.

In the evening Walt and  I stalked  a crane in the shallows of Kapik Lake then stayed  out on the lake to watch  the sun set.  Magnificent.

Distance covered    33,000 feet



September 5, 1958

We finished cutting trail to south anomaly ten did reconnaissance survey with the Ronka EM unit and the magnetometer.   No conductor
was discovered or confirmed.

Well, we  are in food trouble.  All our staple foods have  been  consumed…bread, meat, potatoes,  fruit and butter.  So we have to make do with
what we can concoct which tonight constituted a can of peas and  carrots, big pile of  rice topped with bacon fat gravy and followed by cookies
for dessert.

Mack and Walt really entertained us  with fascinating stories of the ‘high graders’ operating in the Timmins gold mines…Dome Ming Company and  MacIntyre Mines, etc.


Distance covered   32,000 feet

September 6, 1958

Stayed awake all night as lightning flashes and  thunder made  sleep difficult.  Very dramatic.  We kept the wood fire burning most of the night and as a result
felt really cosy in our tent.   In the morning I began packing my rucksack for the job is nearly over.   Trans Canada Airline has Viscount air service to Toronto which
sounds exciting.   This was my last day as  cook so  I made a large stew of whatever odds and ends  I could find including the bacon rind on our slab of pork
sowbelly.    Not such a bad  dinner.   To give it a little more body I slipped in a  cupful of rolled oats.  Inventive.

September 7, 1958

Tragedy struck today when  we came upon Walter Helstein unconscious  on the trail with an alder spike driven through his hand.   We think he was
lying there for an hour or two with this very serious wound.   We revived him and helped him get back to our campsite where the wound was
washed and bandaged.  Walter took some  sulpha pills to numb the pain.  Not sure if that works.  Pain is severe.  We were afraid this  would happen
for Walter had  a habit of stepping on moss covered windfalls rather than stepping over them.  Slippery rotten windfalls are dangerous. 

Walter has  been with us for the whole summer which surprised us all for he seemed  too old and too out of shape for the kind of work we were
doing.  But Walt persisted and turned out to be a joy to work with.   He is 40 years older than me yet we worked as a team blazing trails that
criss crossed some very nasty parts  of this wilderness.  We radioed  for an SOS service but failed  to make contact.  Weather is bad with
heavy cloud cover.

A terrible picture but maybe that makes it more authentic. Walter was badly  hurt.

We  left Walter in the tent for the day  and set out  to find our last underground conductor.  We failed to find it.

Distance covered   34,000 feet

September 8, 1958


Walt was in severe pain all night. Moaning. By morning his hand was swollen and red fingers of  infection were apparent.  When the Beaver arrived Walt and
I boarded.  Walt was stretched out in the back.   Both of us were finished.  As soon as we landed at South Porcupine Walter was taxied to the Timmins hospital.
Sad.  I doubted we would ever see each other again and  wanted to say how much I had enjoyed working with him.  There was not time for farewell though.
The taxi was waiting as soon as  we got tied  to the dock.  I  could see the pain in  Walter’s face as he waved good bye.


There are some people that are unforgettable.  Walter Helstein is one such person.   We worked together in one of the toughest jobs I have ever had and this picture of Walter will give you some idea of what
that job was like.  Look Closely  Walter is standing in water…over his boot tops.  His blazing axe in his hand and  his tea cup  tied to his braces with the stub of  a cigarette in his mouth.   Much of our summer was
spent in such conditions.   After his tragic accident I never saw him again but heard  that he spent 8 months in the hospital. 



Although this picture  does  not look like I was enjoying myself.  And  much of the time i was not.  But actually I was quite proud  of myself.
I had survived and done my job faithfully with just two temper tantrums when the job got unbearable.  Walter never threw a tantrum but
instead  laughed  at me along with Floyd  and Bob.  Actually I came to love the job…to love the battle with nature…too find I could  survive
in the worst of conditions.   My success in this job led to another six years working for Hunting Technical and Exploration Services.
In  retrospect the jobs were a great privilege…something that few human beings will ever experience.  


Our Kapik Lake camp…by this  time I had fallen in love with the job complete with the trials, loneliness, failures, successes and
even the Spartan food.   There is a term for that condition…”Bushed”   I remember as if it was yesterday as the plane circled the
lake coming to get us out.  That circling meant the end of the adventure.  But I did not want it to end.  Such an experience  could
never be replicated.    Maybe we should just send Walter out.  He needed help urgently.  Maybe the rest of  us could continue
searching for  anomalies  until freeze up.  Thoughts only.  I knew it was over.   No more carving trails to places where human feet ha
never trod before.  No more comradery around a night campfire with stories, obscenities, laugher.  No more contact with any of
the crew ever again except for Floyd Faulkner who next summer insisted on calling me by the affectionate term , Fucking Al.


By the end of the summer Walter and I had  walked and blazed 206.3 miles on our own
trails through the bush.   That is almost the distance  from Toronto to North Bay.  Hard  to
believe?  Even today, March 27, 2019, I find  it hard to believe myself.



The clerk in the Airport Hotel hesitated  when I  asked for a room for the day only.  Little wonder…two months growth of hair and beard, pants 
patched with Canvas, Gum rubbers with my socks poking through holes and a  packsack that looked like  I had been living rough for a long time (which’
is true come to think of it.)   Had my first real bath of he summer and then called  Timmins airport to reserve a flight this evening.  Next was a little 
tricky.  I asked CN Express  to ship my baggage back  to Toronto.  Why Tricky?  Because a big part of the baggage was the skull and antlers
of that bull moose  we found on the bank of the Groundhog River.  Phoned  home…mom and dad surprised.  “Be home tonight.”
Then got a shave, haircut and  a big ice cream sundae.


Bob and  Mack arrived shortly after 12 and we loaded our equipment in the Land  Rover. which had  been stripped of all easily detached
equipment…hub caps and spare tire.   Bob  drove me to Timmins Airport where I got my first restaurant meal since July.  Huntec had 
promised to cover room and board for the duration of my employment with them.   No luxury involved, that’s for sure.

I boarded the Viscount just as the sun was  beginning to set on the western horizon. “Would you like a Peak  Freen biscuit and glass
of lemonade, sir?”  Wow!  This was  going to be a great flight.  I nursed the lemonade for a long time and just nibbled  at the shortbread…loving
them both.   Now,  decades later, I can still place myself  on that Viscount rolling and lifting into the sunset.

We landed at Sudbury, then North Bay and  finally Toronto about mid night.  What a greeting.  Russ Vanstone, Red Stevenson, Jim Romaniuk and
my brother Eric  along with mom and  dad.  Eric  had a huge hand printed  sign saying “Go back, Al.”  Jim Romaniuk asked about the
lonely hearts letters.  “Let me have them Al, Might find a girl friend  there.”  “Try the girl from Florida with the pencilled note…she’s ready to
move up here if you send her the fare.”   Russ drove us all home to our place where mom and  dad 
had prepared  all  kinds  of food.  After that I fell asleep in a real bed.
 

September 9, 2019

Dr Paterson phoned early in the morning.  “Can you come to the office, Alan, maybe help with the results…there are things we need to know urgently.”
So everyone was gathered around the aerial photos hoping I could remember where the top anomalies were located.  I am not sure how much
help I could provide.  “McIntyre Mines  want to know right away.”  That comment reminded me that our summer living rough was really a big secret.
I really could not spot all the anomalies where we got high readings but did the best I could.   Dr. Paterson was very serious and professional…a bit
intimidating.  I am not sure that he knew my job had been swinging a blazing axe most of the summer.  I certainly did not say that.  I did put a word
in for Walter Helstein hoping that the company would help  out or totally pay his medical bills.  Not sure what happened to Walter but heard by
the grapevine that he never fully recovered. 

 There was one
nice outcome of that last meeting.  Dr. Paterson looked  me in the eye and said, “How would you like a job next summers an operator-Technician on
a job we have lined up in Alaska?”  

Now after reading this account, would  how  would  you have answered Dr. Paterson?

my answer was short and simple.  “Count me in.”

What about the BUSHMAN’S THONG?  Good question, keep reading.  You may think it is some  kind of underwear but that thought
is about as far from the truth as possible.   Who is proud of underwear? I am  very proud of my Bushman’s thong.

ALAN  SKEOCH
MARCH 2019




NEW BOOK: “MINING GEOPHYSICS: A  CANADIAN STORY”  by Dr. Norman Paterson

P.P.  “From 1950 to 1960,…127 mines were discovered, of which 40 were credited to geophysics.” (P.6, Paterson)

 In March 2019, just as I was transcribing my journal memories from the Groundhog River job, a book arrived in our mailbox.  Dr. Norman Paterson, my boss way back in
the 1950’s and1960’s had just written a book titled “MINING GEOPHYSICS: A CANADIAN STORY…The people and events that made Canada a global leader in mining exploration
in the 20th century.”  ($20 plus $12 postage, published by the Canadian Institute of Mining, Metallurgy and Petroleum, 2019)   It is a wonderful record of those heady days
between 1957 and 1975 when big changes were happening in the search for orebodies within the rock mantle of our earth.  Personally…I  was flattered  to be included here
and there in the book for I had no idea at the time that we were on the cusp of scientific  breakthroughs. I was  a very small part of the story. Was Dr. Paterson even aware
of the difficulties we faced translating theory into practice?  Of course he was.  He did lots of field work.

WHAT HAPPENED TO OUR CREW?

Walter Helstein spent eight months  in the Timmins Hospital…from September 1958 to March  1959. At one point amputation was considered but Walt, true to form, was just
too tough to lose an arm.
Floyd Faulkner became the chief field man  for Hunting Technical and Exploration Service. He retained  his gruff manner behind which was a great sense of humour
Bob Hilkar returned to Calgary
Robert Hopkins returned to Elliot Lake
Mack Deisert stayed  and  married in South Porcupine
Alan Skeoch returned to Toronto as a first year student at Victoria  College, University of Toronto.  For the next six summers
alan worked for Dr. Paterson and  his assemblage of top geophysicists.  Alan became an historian with a specialty in 
Economic History eventually doing an  M.A. in machine  design.

DID WE FIND  A MINE?

Nothing happened.  All those anomalies were ignored even though some of them were very promising.  The client, McIntyre Mines. concluded the area was  too
rough for a diamond drill crew to operate so  the project was  abandoned in the 1950’s and 1960’s.  I am unsure of its  status today in 2019.

HOW ARE MY MEMORIES  DIFFERENT?

DR. Paterson tells  some of the humorous things that happened in those days.  My journals  hopefully reveal even more of the human face of mining exploration
.  Some details may make you laugh, others will make you cry. Still others will make you say ‘he must be kidding’.  Truth?..it all happened.
 It was a very personal Odyssey for me.  A privilege really.   Alaska, Ireland, New Brunswick , Timagami,
Niagara Falls, Chibougamau, Marathon, Paradise Lodge,  Merritt BC, Yukon Territory…not as a  tourist but as a person probing the surface of the earth and  marvelling
at the characters I met.

WHY DID  I KEEP SUCH A DETAILED JOURNAL?

I was  a Rover Scout, the senior part of the Boy Scout movement.   Some Boy Scouts were and are badge collectors. There was only one badge of honour
that excited me.  It is called the BUSHMAN’S THONG.   My journal detailing the Groundhog river job was submitted  and I got my thong.  I am not sure
the official readers of my application really believed everything written in my journal.  There was some scepticism.  But what I have written did actually happen
and my Bushman’s Thong still hangs on my old scout shirt.





Posted on

COMPARE 1955 AND 1956 WITH 2019: MARCH BREAK

SOMETHING DIFFERENT IS HAPPENING…THAT MUCH IS FOR SURE: 1955 versus  2019


(comparing 1955 with 2019….March Break)



GLOBAL  WARMING…SEEMS TO HAVE SKIPPED OVER US

Which of the following pictures were taken in March  1955 and 1956? As opposed to 2019?  Easy  to do.  Way back  in 1955 and  1956 we spent our March Break
on camping trips  to the  Etobicoke Creek which  was  then a wonderful wilderness to us.   We slept outside  and  spent our time exploring
a number of abandoned  farms.   We did  not give much thought as to why they were abandoned  but just revelled in being outside in the
fine spring weather.

Today, our March Break is  totally different.  Ice and snow…plummeting temperatures.  The idea of camping does not come into anyone save
a lunatics  head.  At our farm I skirted this piece of scrap  iron frozen in ice…potentially lethal..   One  slip and the body would  be sliced into fine sections.
Some  would wonder why I saved it.  Elsewhere on the  farm the signs  of mid winter abound.
Two of Andrew’s employees give  mute testimony to the cold.  Find  them.  They were helping to load artifacts  for the  forthcoming TV series
“Anne with an E”.   There was  so much  sheer ice that some items could not be retrieved.   Only gallons and gallons of hot water eventually
freed the anvils.  Moving them by hand to the truck was  another problem.

So  we talk  about global warming.  And I agree something sinister is  happening around us.  Insects, amphibians, birds, turtles, groundhogs 
are dwindling alarmingly.   And  elsewhere in the world  temperatures are sky rocketing.  But here in the Ontario  heartland we seem  to be
having an extended  winter.   You figure it out.  The only creatures  out camping around our place are the coyotes…lots of them.  

We never saw or even heard  a coyote back in 1955 and  1956.  

alan skeoch
March  Break 2018

P.S.  Just getting from the farmhouse to the road  was  no easy task today as you will 
see when you  spot Marjorie.











Pictures taken in mid  March today and also back  in 1955


Andrew using the ATV to try and get the wood wheeled  wagon to the road…not easy.





Pictures of  Eric  Skeoch, Alan  Skeoch and Big Red Stevenson and  Brian Hetherington.






Posted on

February snowstorm…truck stuck…colc


TERRIBLE LAST WEEK  OF FEBRUARY 2019

alan skeoch
Feb  25, 2019


“HELLO,  Andrew,  I am stuck at the farm…truck spinning…snowdrifts…so cold  that the brass  monkey story might be true…can you come?”

“Not sure I can get away”

“Put this down  as  an  emergency.”

“Give me an hour.”

And  so Andrew came to my  rescue.  This was  not a  day for travel but I had  a movie crew who needed our
institutional  beds right away…residential school movie being filmed  on Six Nations Reserve…needed  beds
that looked  as miserable  as possible..  Wind  was blowing white outs…70 car and truck  pile up on highway 400
had  closed  highway both ways…lots of others  accidents.   Just getting to farm I passed  three cars in recent
accident smashed  all to hell with air bags deployed.  Under the snows ice  lots  of  it.

I was overjoyed  to reach the farm.  But the joy was short lived.  Truck  spun  off a 3 foot snowdrift into the side of the road  where tires
just spun on  ice and drifted  snow buried back end in no time.  Even  walking to farmhouse  was tough…hands frozen because
I took time to take these pictures.   OK, everyone say it loud  and  clear…”I Told  You So!”

Look at those bed frames.  Beautiful! Chipped paint…so authentic that they could not be replicated by studio art people.   People don’t know
just how valuable things  in this  condition appear to movie makers.  “Alan,  we cannot get this  kind  of set material anywhere else.”

That kind of flattery drive me forward.  Today  I  should  have stayed  home.  

But the effort getting the bed frames to the road  could not be cancelled…nor the effort loading the mattresses and bed boards…It took Marjorie and
I the full day Sunday just getting these  wonderful beds ready for pick  up.  



I sent a  note to Shane…”Do not come, road  impassable”…but he was too busy  holding on to the steering wheel of his rental  van for the and was
blowing between 60 and  100 km per hour…white outs.  He pulled  up … two trucks on an empty road…his  and  mine.  Only his was not trapped in snow.
He could make  a getaway. 


Picture  above shows just how deep drifts  had become…whole farm was being scoured…Until  Andy arrived  with our tractor and  are-end snowplow.



Wind so strong that interior of the green house was  converted  into something for a horror movie


That’s  Shane bracing himself  as we loaded  the beds.


Even the tractor could not pull me out…Andrew had to dig me out first.  Why  did  I not help?  Someone had to
record the event…

Take a close look at the road…under the snowdrifts is a solid  sheet of ice  running down  the Fifth Line.




“Dad, is it necessary for you to get into so  much trouble, so often?”

“Well,  Andrew I just do this so I can get payback fro  all those  years
that I changed  your diapers, piled your pablum, gavelled in front of your teachers,  washed  your  clothes, made the meals…made your  bed…”

“Dad, you never did any of  that…mom did it all.”

“Right, forgot about that.  But I did keep the record with my  camera…and  am still  doing so.”

“Now turn  the truck  around … you are free to go.”

“Did  you see that snowplow…just covered  us with the stuff  you plowed.”

“I will be fine…get moving before you get trapped again.”


Posted on

Fwd: BARN RAISING, ERIN TWP, 1820, “MYSERY ON A SCRAP OF PAPER DATED 1940”

Last name removed


Begin forwarded message:


From: SKEOCH <alan.skeoch@rogers.com>
Subject: BARN RAISING, ERIN TWP, 1820, “MYSERY ON A SCRAP OF PAPER DAED 1940”
Date: February 17, 2019 at 12:53:32 PM EST
To: Alan Skeoch <alan.skeoch@rogers.com>



MYSTERY FOUND ON A SCRAP OF PAPER DATED 1940

(listen to Joelle, fiddler extraordinaire…in your imagination)


ALAN SKEOCH
Feb.2019


Picture of a barn frame…It was customary for the barn builder to walk the high beams in a kind of celebration.
Often whiskey was  involved.  This picture is not the alleged Skeoch barn on the Cruickshank property.

AN  ODD STORY CAPTURED ON BACKSIDE OF A 1939 CALENDAR.

alan skeoch





By chance this scrap of paper fell from a  pile of old letters…it led  me on a trip.  Please
Join me.


This letter was never mailed…written about 1940.  Hard to say  the real  origin as it has been transcribed onto the back
of a  1939/1940 calendar   Written in pencil…faded…but translated below.

Mrs. F. Slater,
73 Heywood St.,
Moss side
Manchester
England

Wrtten in pencil, so faint that in another decade it will be indecipherable..

Found  among papers  and clippings I bought at an auction sale years ago


ERIN COUNTY BARN RAISING 1820 ?

“This is  a true story a barn raising in the early history of the settlement of Erin Township, in the County of Wellington,
Whisky was cheap in those days and it was the custom to have a keg on hand for the barn raising. The whiskey was
procured and  stored  in the old barn while the carpenters  were in the woods preparing the timbers for the new barn.
The good lady paid a visit to the whiskey keg and  when the mend came in to dinner the good lady was in high good
humour but no dinner was ready. The husband and with the help of a carpenter put up the dinner.  After  dinner they 
went out to the barn and  getting the offending keg. They, with the aid of a rope slung it high up in rafter out of reach.
Later in the day the good lady paid a another visit to the barn only to find the whisky out of reach, however, she set her wits
to work going back to the house. She returned with the wood tub and the rifle setting the tub under the keg she put
a bullet through the keg and caught the whiskey in the tub.   When the men came in to supper she was in quite good
humour but a good  supper was prepared, after supper she told what she had  done.  She said she didn’t care so’
much for the  whiskey but she was not going to be outwitted by the men. The next day the neighbours were called
for the raising. the men putting up the barn, the ladies preparing the meals. By supper the last rafter was on and
the floor laid. After supper all the young and old folks gathered  on the new barn floor.  The fiddler and caller were
on hand then to the tune of Turkey in the Straw,  Old Irish Washerwoman, and the Scotch reels and —  On with the
dance which was kept up until the wee hours.  Incidentally the first settler came into Erin Township in the year 1820.”






SILLY OR MEANINGFUL?

Was this copied from an original written 120 years earlier.  Hard to say.  This unsigned rewrite was done sometime
in 1940.  My thoughts?  1) There may be a  kernel of truth…small kernel  2) The  story is the kind of story that
would  be told at a one  room rural school Christmas social.   These evenings featured short plays, speeches,
music (as mentioned) and as much humour as possible.   Women were usually  associated with the Temperance
movement as cheap whiskey (25 cents a gallon in early 19th century) caused a lot of trouble in small communities.
To sophisticated ears today this  story seems rather silly but mid winter socials were not sophisticated.
Associaitons of alcohol with barn raisings was no exaggeration.although hardly mentioned in the laundered
barn raisings.   Kernels of truth acted like sand in a clam shell.  Layers and layers of exaggerations resulted in
a pearl of  a story.

ALEXANDER SKEOCH..TRUTH OR FICTION

I am not sure about the truth of the hearsay concerning Alexander Skeoch and barn raising.  One story has
Alexander walking the top beam of the barn…a topping off ceremony.   Allegedly, He had been drinking whiskey and
fell from the top beam.  Injured  or dead?  I have no idea.  I even suspect the story is false.  I am not even
sure a person called Alexander Skeoch was a  barn builder.  Alexander Skeoch, however, did exist. 
 The kernel of truth came from Christina  Skeoch
and Evan Cruickshank who assured me that a person name Alexander Skeoch did build the Cruickshank  barn.
I have a picture of t he barn to prove its existence.  On one occasion I even entered the barn, by then a part of
land owned by Imperial  Oil.  A huge pile of grain had  been dumped on the threshing floor and ignored since
the grain was being eaten by a bunch of rats some of which were dead from poison.  The barn looked great
but its future  seemed tenuous.   I have no proof that Alexander Skeoch built the barn or
walked the high beam to celebrate or had  been drinking whiskey.  If the barn was built around  1890, then Alexander 
Skeoch would have been 46 years  old.   A barn builder possibly.





WHAT HAPPENS WHEN PAST AND PRESENT COME TOGETHER?

COMMUNITY MID WINTER CELEBRATION AT WOODSIDE SCHOOL 1940   (HYPOTHETICAL)

WINDMILL THEATRE WNTER CELEBRATION OF CELTIC MUSIC, PORT CREDIT UNITARIAN CHURCH, FEB.  2019  (REAL)


I know this  requires a stretch of the imagination but stick with me for a moment or two.  On Feb. 16 we attended a wonderful performance at the Windmill Theatre.  A festival of Celitc Music.  As I 
watched  and listened my mind jumped back in time to the small  farm community on the Fifth Line of Erin Township in the late 1940’s where my grandparents provided some of the music…Granddad on the violin
playing the Devil’s Dream, Grandma singing Roses  of Picardy…and everyone else contributing with dancing or elocution (public speaking)…or food  and drink.  Drink?  No alcohol because the
Temperance Movement had been victorious in the battle with the demon Whiskey.  Heavy drinking of cheap whiskey had damaged many  families.  It was fortunate that horses
knew the way  home after some of those heavy drinking evenings such as barn raising celebrations. Motor vehicles  had no memory.

So look over the pictures below,  taken Feb. 15, 2019…grainy pictures…and let your mind  roll back to Woodside School in 1940.  Someone is giving a speech on a  barn raising way back in 1820
in Erin Township.  First, however , listen to the music.  Join in with the lyrics if you wish.

MASTER OF CEREMONIES:

“AND ON THE VIOLIN…FIDDLER  JOELLE”, A NEW RESIDENT ON THE FIFTH LINE, LIVING ON THE OLD MCLEAN FARM.
JOELLE WILL PLAY A FEW REELS AND JIGS…AND THEN WATCH HER FEET AS SHE TAP DANCES  HER WAY TO YOUR HEARTS.
JOIN IN IF YOU WISH…SING, CLAP,  DANCE…WHATEVER.  WE ARE GOING TO DISPELL THE WINTER DOLDRUMS  TONIGHT….”








SKYE BOAT SONG

Speed, bonnie boat, like a bird on the wing,
Onward! the sailors cry;
Carry the lad that’s born to be King
Over the sea to Skye.

Loud the winds howl, loud the waves roar,
Thunderclaps rend the air;
Baffled, our foes stand by the shore,
Follow they will not dare.

DANNY BOY

Oh, Danny boy, the pipes, the pipes are calling,
From glen to glen and down the mountain side;
The summer’s gone, and all the roses falling;
It’s you, it’s you must go, and I must bide.
But come ye back when summer’s in the meadow,
Or when the valley’s hushed and white with snow;
I’ll be here in sunshine or in shadow;
Danny boy, Oh Danny boy, I love you so.



“My Love Is Like A Red Red Rose”



Oh, my love is like a red, red rose 
That’s newly sprung in June 
Oh, my love is like a melody 
That’s sweetly played in tune 
As fair art thou, my bonnie lass, 
So deep in love am I 
And I will love thee still, my dear, 
Till all the seas gang dry. 
Till all the seas gang dry, my dear, 
Till all the seas gang dry 
And I will love thee still, my dear, 
Till all the seas gang dry. 

‘Til all the seas gang dry my, my dear 
And the rocks melt with the sun 
And I will love thee still, my dear 
While the sands of life shall run 
But faretheewell, my only love 
Oh, faretheewell a while 
And I will come again, my love 
Tho’ ‘t were ten thousand mile 
Tho’ ‘t were ten thousand mile, my love 
Tho’ ‘t were ten thousand mile 
And I will come again, my love 
Tho’ ‘t were ten thousand mile.



GONE  NOW?  MAYBE NOT!  

Gone now.  The local mid winter community gatherings at Woodside School.   Television killed them dead  as  a  door nail.  Entertainment just
got too professional .  Corny homespun entertainment died.   I was lucky to be around just before these amateur evenings faded away.  I think
the story of the barn raising that I rescued from a scribbled note on an old piece of calendar was written to be performed.   When the farm families
around  Woodside school organized a social evening everyone was expected to play a role.  Some would sing, some play the fiddle or the pump organ,
some would  dance … and , always, some would tell stories of the old days.  That is what i think that scrap notation of a barn raising in Erin Township,
Wellington County was meant to record.   The barn raising described likely never happened.  The facts were never allowed to get in the way of a good
story.   Facts  can be embellished.  So here is the barn raising story in my words.

BARN RAISING STORY FROM  THE OLD DAYS

“I was there when the first barn in the township was erected.”
“That was  1820…this is  1940…that was 120 years ago…you couldn’t have been there.”
“OK…OK..I heard this story from my grandmother.”

“Seems the  wife got into the whisky while the men were in the bush squaring timbers for the new barn.  She drank 
a couple of dippers full and  fell asleep.  When the men came home they expected a big meal but got nothing.  So
my Grandfather rustled up a quick meal and let the men have some goodly cups of whiskey before the went back
to the bush.  “What if she gets at the whisky again?”
“She won’t.” 
“How can you be sure?”
“Because we are going to string the keg up on the high beam where she can’t reach.”
The men raised the whiskey high above the threshing floor…thought they had outwitted 
the farm wife.”
“Not so, when she saw the barrel high in the air she went back to the house and got the rifle
and the wooden wash bucket.  Placed the bucket on the floor and then put a bullet through
the barrel.  Pow!  Out poured the whiskey which was caught in the bucket.  When the men came
back expecting the a big barn raising mean, they got nothing. 
 SHE WAS ASLEEP AND THE  WHISKEY WAS GONE.
No huge  dinner and no whiskey.
“Why no whiskey? There should have been lots in the wooden tub.”
“Tub had dried out…leaked the whiskey onto the new threshing floor…a kind of baptism.”
“ And That’s why we do not have whiskey at barn raisings anymore.”


ALAN SKEOCH
FEB. 2019


Posted on

John Skeoch’s Threshing outfit , Roverhurst, Sask, 1927

While  thrashing his wheat crop of 1927, John  Skeoch hired a photographer to capture  just how

much he had  invested in his enterprise…Steam Tractor,  Threshing machine,  hay wagons, hired help (and neighbours).
This was  no small venture.   While the home farm was in  Fergus, Ontario, the Skeoch brothers also had  sections (640 acre sections)
near Riverhurst, Saskatchewan.   John and his  wife Anne lived  in the west … built a  stone house as was the custom with Scottish
farmers.  That proved to be an error as large numbers of Garter snakes also like the stone foundations.  Eventually the house had
to be abandoned.  No  matter…the wheat crops were terrific.  (P.S.  I like the word thrashing better than threshing…as in “I will give you
a good thrashing”…That’s what they  did to the wheat tassels.)

Re:Photo…a little lobsided …had to do this  to avoid glare.

alan skeoch
Feb. 2019


When Marjorie, Kevin, Andrew and  I visited the Keillor farm (village nearest to the Skeoch farms)… the ruins of these machine were part of  uncle John”s graveyard for vintage implements.  We did not have much
time to appreciate them though because  a big windstorm blew up and we had a hell of a time holding down  our tent.  My pants  disappeared  in that windstorm.   Next morning we had
breakfast with Aunt Anne  and  Uncle John in the stone farm house.  Yes, the snakes were there…peeping  at us  through cracks in the stone wall…and  curled up in the coffee cups.  You are probably wondering
about my pants.  Maybe you think I had breakfast in my underwear.  Let me leave that tough in your head.

alan skeoch
Feb. 2019
Posted on

1955 camping trip…March….Easterb break coming Etobicoke Creek

THINGS WERE DIFFERENT THEN….1955…INNOCENCE 

(Camping trip … Easter Break 1955)

“What’s up?”
“Easter Break coming…”
“Let’s go on a camping trip…the three of us.”
“Where?”
“Etobicoke Creek is  nice and  wild…abandoned  farms.”
“How?”
“Well, we could hitch hike part of the way, as usual.”
“Hey Al, remember the potato farmer last summer?”
“You guys just laughed at me…I was in the front seat…you two in the back… laughing.”
“He  wanted to know your sex life…”
“What sex life?”
“Precisely.”
“Hitch hiking is  interesting…that time we hitch hiked up to Lake Simcoe..”
“Got rides right away…only odd  character was that potato farmer.”
“Sort of sad guy when I think about it.”
“You should  have invented a sex life, Al…told him what he wanted to hear.”
“Actually I felt sorry for him…and embarrassed.”

Those were the days, mid 1950’s, when the small world  in which we lived was quite innocent even though
just ten years earlier the world had been ravaged by a war that tore the innocence away from many people.
Canada had changed.  Lots of jobs…wealth increasing.  Also massive immigration of people from 
Europe including the former enemy nations of Germany and Italy…and Eastern Europe.  We lived in
a nation which had  been shielded from the blood letting.  Teen  agers  in Canada felt free and safe.

“So let’s pack up and  head for Etobicoke…three or four nights under the stars.”
“Food?”
“Maybe try a  steak first night…then Kraft dinner for rest of trip.”



“Just pile our gear beside the highway.,,stick out your thumbs Russ and  Jim…”
“My Humberside football jacket should help.”
“Jesus, the first car stopped.”
“Hi, boys, where you going?”
“Etobicoke …west of Highway 27 along Burnhamthorpe Road.”
“Pile your stuff in the back…I can get you outside  the city.”
“We  want to camp along the Creek.”
“Lots of empty spots there now…nobody to bother you.”
“Why are so many of those farms abandoned?”
“Not abandoned…soon be a different forest of new houses….Toronto is changing big time.”
“We love exploring the empty farm barns…”
“Cold  nights boys…frost.”
“But feels like everything is about to burst into life…smells wonderful.”
“How old  are you guys?”
“Sixteen or so.”
“Lucky generation…everything is going to fall your way…jobs, marriage, homes,..you will
have your own cars  even.”
“Not so sure  abut that.”
“Just you wait and  see…”



And so the three of us took off for the  wilds of Etobicoke.  Russ Vanstone, Jim Romaniuk and  Alan  Skeoch.   1955.  Explorers of a  sort.
Ready to face the brave new world.   Breaking free.  Carrying what we needed.  Except for one mistake that camping trip.  We did
pack three ‘minute steaks’ but forgot to bring knives, forks and  spoons.  Eating with our hands  was OK though…and we had
our Boy Scout knives.


“Hey Russ, there’s water in the well.”
“Use that stick as a pump handle…”
“Should  we drink the water?”
“Sure…those little chunks are just fleck of rotten wood…skim them.”
“Shouldn’t we use the Creek water?”
“We could…although remember when we were diving
off the old iron bridge last summer and someone said 
the muck below the water was sewage.”
“Didn’t kill us.”
“Let’s trust this  pump.”


“Cold  night.”
“But sun is out now…swim is  possible.”
“Bragging rights…did you know we swam across a 
raging river on our Easter Break.”
“Make it sound big.”



Exporers


The Campsite…all  kinds of stuff floating in the river that we could use.


Along with our gear we even packed a  few books.  No flies to bother us in March  of 1955.  Flies wild come later in the year.

“Hey Al, Look over here…dead horse floating in the Creek.”
“Sure enough.”
“Must have died over the winter.”
“Or worse…maybe shot by one of the farmers  as he
left the farm.”
“Glad  we didn’t drink the water.”


Alan Skeoch, cooking.  Jim Romaniuk drying himself off after swimming across the raging Etobicoke Creek.

TEST:  Compose a list of our camping gear using this picture asa guide.

NOTE:  RUSS Vanstones Humberside Football jacket .  All three of us were on the team, none of us
in exalted postions.  That would come in time.

CONCLUSION

On a clear day in January 2018, I drove west along Burnhamthorpe Road from Highway 427…a trip I had avoided for decades because
I wanted the memory of this camping trip in 1955 to never be wiped  out.  Feared that the place would be covered in houses…the barns all
gone…the  dead horse now a skeleton somewhere out on the bottom of Lake Ontario.   But I was  surprised.  This spot where we
camped is  unchanged.  It became a park.  And the raging river looks much like it does in these pictures.

WHY GO CAMPING?  

We went for the joy of it.  Not because there was  nothing else to do.  We played football, basketball…were members of the Presbyterian  
Young Peoples Society, Boy Scouts, Drama Society…and we were very interested in girls even though they were less interested in us.
Camping was, however,  a top priority.  Why?  Because of the challenge of the raging river.  We swam across that river often…It was  so
dangerous that we took along an inflated air mattress just in case the river swept us down to Lake Ontario.

alan skeoch
Feb. 2019

Posted on

ANY SNAKES? THE CRUEL SAGA OF THE ONTSRIO VIPER


ALAN SKEOCH
FEB. 2019
(supplement to Ten Years  in the Wilderness)


  THE DANGEROUS ONTARIO VIPER:  A CRUEL JOKE

“Any snakes?”
“Yes, watch out for the Ontario Viper.”
“Ontario viper?”
“Deadly?…many around here?”
“Lots…they love swamps like this.”

Picture: Much of the 2400 hectare Beverly Swamp looked like this picture only the clumps of trees were cedars.  The water was
shallow, maybe a foot or two in most places.  But occasionally!!!  Occasionally there were deep holes where clumps of cedars
had been blown over.  These holes could be 3 or 4 feet deep.  “And?”  And I am not proud of what happened here. Sometimes 
jokes are just not funny in retrospect.


Picture:   Notice the person in the high hip waders.  His name is Maxie Ranasigh.   He feared snakes  would get him.  That was  all
we needed to know.  “Let’s have some fun with Maxie.”   What followed was a very bad joke.

ANY SNAKES?

The snake incident makes  me flinch when I think about even now…65 years later.
Let’s call it ‘the Ontario Viper’ saga.  You will think less of us after reading this confession, that’s for sure.
 Remember we were 19 or 20 when this  grand idea popped into our
heads.  And we were doing a seismic job through the Beverly Swamp, a  2400 hectare wild land south of
Hamilton.   Dan B. was my partner on that seismic job.  In addition we were assigned  a  Colombo Plan
geophysicist from Ceylon named Maxi Ranasingh.   I’m afraid we did not set a fine example of
Canadian graciousness.  What we thought was funny some readers may consider tasteless … even gross.


Picture:  You are looking at the ONTARIO VIPER….commonly known as the HARMLESS GARTER SNAKE…but Maxie did not know that.


“These Canadian swamps  can be dangerous, Maxie.  So be Careful.”
“Why?  What danger?
“The deadly Ontario viper could  be in here?”
“Ontario viper?”
“Deadliest snake in Canada…perhaps three feet long, dark green with a thin red  stripe “
“Any in this  swamp?”
“They are everywhere.”
“I got these hip waders to avoid getting wet.  Will they also protect me?”
“Should  do unless you accidentally step into a big swamp hole and a viper crawls down inside the hip wader.”
“You boys  lead on.”



And so  we entered  a long stretch of the Beverly swamp that looked much like the photo
…trees that loved water, mostly clusters of cedars.  Some of these clusters had been toppled
by a windstorm thereby creating deep holes in the normally shallow swamp.  Dan and I stirred  up
the mud and broken tree roots as  we crossed  through one of these holes…a  deep one.  

“Carefull, Dan, this  looks like s deep one.”
“Keep the instrument high.”

“Did you tell Maxi about the hole?”
“No, did you?”
“Nope.”
“Then he doesn’t know the hole is about three feet deep?”
“He has no idea.”

Then Maxie stepped in the hole.  Suubmerged up to his ass Black gucky water poured into his  hip waders…
 pieces of tree roots that could seem like snakes  with a little
imagination.   Maybe an Ontario viper slipped down
his legs along with all the guck.

“MY waders are full!…I can’t move…slimy things down my legs…”

No easy escape.  The water filled waders were like the cement overshoes in gang murders.  Maxie could
barely move.  He tumbled his way to a clearing.  Scared for sure. 

Now Dan and I thought this was really funny.  We even considered it part of Maxie’a education…the practical
side of being a  geophysicist.   Whenever a new person joined s field crew, jokes like this were rampant.  Like 
Scratching the tent wall simulating a bear when the new guy is wrapped up in his sleeping bag.   Or hiding
his fly net when the black flies  were at their worst.  Or making sure the worms in the bacon slab are visible
and not removed.  Or telling stories abut bush planes that crash.  “Those seabees fall like rocks if the engine falls, no
glide.”   Or putting pine gum on the sitting bar at the latrine.  Or telling a new guy that pike are delicious and
bone free.  Or stopping suddenly…”Did you hear that? We’re being tracked by a wolverine.”  Or telling a new 
guy why we do not carry guns…”Danger we might shoot each other…cooped up together breeds hatred.”
Or be careful with the Forcite…”slide the detonator in slowly…if there is too much friction it could explode.”

The chances  to pick on a new man were almost infinite.

But the joke on Maxi backfired.  I still feel badly about it.

After Maxie emptied his hip waders and after we were through laughing we queried Maxie 
on snakes in Ceylon (now Sri Lanka).

“Any vipers in Ceylon, Maxie?”
‘Many of them…and other deadly snakes well.”
:Deadly?”
“If bitten, a victim has about 30 to 60 minutes to get to a hospital or die.”
“No joke, Maxie?   Are snakes that deadly common?”
“Very common in certain places.”
“Names?”
“Sea snake, Saw Scaled Viper  (kills 5,000 people annually) , Russels’s Viper (kills 25,000 people annually), Hump Nosed Viper, Green Pit Viper, Common Krait (KILLS 10,000 per year in India), Common Cobra, Ceylon Krait, …
all are very bad.  One kind  of cobra can spit its venom up to 3 metres away.  That’s 10 feet.  Snakes in my country are not funny.  And there are lots of them.
“How many?”
 “We have more than 93 snake varieties…many deadly snakes. Of the five most dangerous snakes in the world, three of them
are in my country. Ceylon has the highest rate of snakebite deaths in the world.”

NO LAUGHING MATTER…OBVIOUSLY WE WERE EMBARASSED.

You might be surprised to know that these facts made our little joke less  funny.  Below are four of the most deadly snakes that Maxie Ranasingh  could have described
if we could have stopped laughing at our joke as he struggled to pull off his hip waders.

Common krait[edit]

Common krait (Bungarus caeruleus)

The common krait (Bungarus caeruleus) is often considered to be the most dangerous snake species in India. Its venom consists mostly of powerful neurotoxins which induce muscle paralysis. Clinically, its venom contains presynaptic and postsynaptic neurotoxins,[67] which generally affect the nerve endings near the synaptic cleft of the brain. Due to the fact that krait venom contains many presynaptic neurotoxins, patients bitten will often not respond to antivenom because once paralysis has developed it is not reversible.[68] This species causes an estimated 10,000 fatalities per year in India alone.[66] There is a 70-80% mortality rate in cases where there is no possible or poor and ineffective treatment (e.g., no use of mechanical ventilation, low quantities of antivenom, poor management of possible infection). Average venom yield per bite is 10 mg (Brown, 1973), 8 to 20 mg (dry weight) (U.S. Dept. Navy, 1968), and 8 to 12 mg (dry weight) (Minton, 1974).[67] The lethal adult human dose is 2.5 mg.[68][69] In mice, the LD50 values of its venom are 0.365 mg/kg SC, 0.169 mg/kg IV and 0.089 mg/kg IP.[15] 



Russell’s viper[edit]

Russell’s viper (Daboia russelii)

Russell’s viper (Daboia russelii) produces one of the most excruciatingly painful bites of all venomous snakes. Internal bleeding is common. Bruising, blistering and necrosis may appear relatively quickly as well.[70] The Russell’s viper is irritable, short-tempered and a very aggressive snake by nature and when irritated, coils tightly, hisses, and strikes with lightning speed. This species is responsible for more human fatalities in India than any other snake species, causing an estimated 25,000 fatalities annually.[66] The LD50 in mice, which is used as a possible indicator of snake venom toxicity, is as follows: 0.133 mg/kg intravenous, 0.40 mg/kg intraperitoneal, and about 0.75 mg/kg subcutaneous.[71] For most humans, a lethal dose is approximately 40–70 mg. However, the quantity of venom produced by individual specimens is considerable. Reported venom yields for adult specimens range from 130–250 mg to 150–250 mg to 21–268 mg. For 13 juveniles with an average length of 79 cm, the average venom yield was 8–79 mg (mean 45 mg).[13]




Saw-scaled viper[edit]

Saw-scaled viper (Echis carinatus)

The Saw-scaled viper (Echis carinatus) is small, but its unpredictability, aggressive temper, and lethal venom potency make it very dangerous. This species is one of the fastest striking snakes in the world, and mortality rates for those bitten are very high. In India alone, the saw-scaled viper is responsible for an estimated 5,000 human fatalities annually.[66] However, because it ranges from Pakistan, India (in rocky regions of Maharashtra, Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh and Punjab), Sri Lanka, parts of the Middle East and Africa north of the equator,[72] is believed to cause more human fatalities every year than any other snake species.[73] In drier regions of the African continent, such as sahels and savannas, the saw-scaled vipers inflict up to 90% of all bites.[74] The rate of envenomation is over 80%.[75] The saw-scaled viper also produces a particularly painful bite. This species produces on the average of about 18 mg of dry venom by weight, with a recorded maximum of 72 mg. It may inject as much as 12 mg, whereas the lethal dose for an adult human is estimated to be only 5 mg.[18] Envenomation results in local symptoms as well as severe systemic symptoms that may prove fatal. Local symptoms include swelling and intense pain, which appear within minutes of a bite. In very bad cases the swelling may extend up the entire affected limb within 12–24 hours and blisters form on the skin.[76] Of the more dangerous systemic symptoms, hemorrhage and coagulation defects are the most striking. Hematemesis, melena, hemoptysis, hematuria and epistaxis also occur and may lead to hypovolemic shock. Almost all patients develop oliguriaor anuria within a few hours to as late as 6 days post bite. In some cases, kidney dialysis is necessary due to acute renal failure (ARF), but this is not often caused by hypotension. It is more often the result of intravascular hemolysis, which occurs in about half of all cases. In other cases, ARF is often caused by disseminated intravascular coagulation.[76]


Philippine cobra[edit]

Philippine cobra (naga philippinensis)

The Philippine cobra (Naga philippinensis) is one of the most venomous cobra species in the world based on murine LD50 studies. The average subcutaneous LD50 for this species is 0.20 mg/kg.[15] The lowest LD50 reported value for this snake is 0.14 mg/kg SC, while the highest is 0.48 mg/kg SC.[115] and the average venom yield per bite is 90–100 mg.[15] The venom of the Philippine cobra is a potent postsynaptic neurotoxin which affects respiratory function and can cause neurotoxicity and respiratory paralysis, as the neurotoxins interrupt the transmission of nerve signals by binding to the neuromuscular junctions near the muscles. Research has shown its venom is purely a neurotoxin, with no apparent necrotizing components and no cardiotoxins. These snakes are capable of accurately spitting their venom at a target up to 3 metres (9.8 ft) away. Bites from this species produce prominent neurotoxicity and are considered especially dangerous. A study of 39 patients envenomed by the Philippine cobra was conducted in 1988. Neurotoxicity occurred in 38 cases and was the predominant clinical feature. Complete Respiratory failure developed in 19 patients, and was often rapid in onset; in three cases, apnea occurred within just 30 minutes of the bite. There were two deaths, both in patients who were moribund upon arrival at the hospital. Three patients developed necrosis, and 14 individuals with systemic symptoms had no local swelling at all. Both cardiotoxicity and reliable nonspecific signs of envenoming were absent. Bites by the Philippine cobra produce a distinctive clinical picture characterized by severe neurotoxicity of rapid onset and minimal local tissue damage.[116]





Playing childish tricks of newcomers on survey crews is not new.   But this  joke on Maxie backfired  badly.  He had every reason to 
be fearful as deaths from snakebite in Sri Lanka is the highest in the world.  We did knot know that.  All we knew was that Maxie
had never been in the wild lands of Canada.  Wile lands?  The Beverly Swamp is huge…2400 hectares …but it is also part
of the City of Hamilton.  Hardly a wild land.


DO YOU WANT ANOTHER EXAMPLE OF INSENSITIVITY?  

THE WORST JOKE I EVER WITNESSED IN THE BUSH:  CRUEL

 The worst trick  ever played on one of my crews was
played on Dick Wilson.  Dick was a  mild mannered  young man who had a terrible stutter.   He could  never complete
a  ssssetntence  wwwwwithout ssssstuttering.  We were working in Northern Quebec near Chibougamau back in 1956
when one rather insensitive practical jokers on our crew  devised a wonderful (?) practical joke using a long sharpened sampling.
One dark night he waited at the base of our latrine which was located on a rock outcrop.   When Dick Wilson dropped his pants
and sat on the latrine seat (a length of poplar lashed to two trees)…the joker shoved the sharpened stick up and scratched
Dick Wilson on the ass   Dick ran down the outcrop to our tents where he tried to say:

“BBBBear ccccclawed mime noon the aaasss.”    

I did not think that was a very funny joke at the time.   To others it was hilarious.   Poor Dick Wilson was a target for many
so called  jokes.  I was  the youngest person on that crew and got my share of jokes.  Jokes  at my expense.  But Dick
Wilson was the most vulnerable because he stuttered.  Do wild  animals pick on the  weakest in the litter?  Male bears 
will kill cubs if they can get them.  Maybe the weak are always targets from the strong.  Wilson worried  about going
bald.  

“I think I am growing bbbbald.”  he stuttered on one occasions.
“If you cut all your hair and  shave your head, then a full head of hair will grow back.”  suggested
one of the crew.
“Really?  Help me cut is  all  off.”

Dicks’s hair did  not grow back.

SOME will find this behaviour infantile, insensitive and classic examples  of bullying.  Probably true.   Pretend  you did
not read these  silly examples.

ALAN SKEOCH
FEB. 2019


Posted on

Fwd: SUMMER 1965: LAST JOB IN THE WILDERNESS


NOTE:  Please forgive my intrusion…This is (nearly) the last of my Ten  Years  in the Wilderness theme….I know they seem self centred…maybe even

self obsessed.   I have wanted to record these experiences  for more than 50 years because my job back then got me into some strange places with strange people and

presented lots of excitement.  You do not need to read if you find the subject intrusive or you think I am a fool.  Yes, there are typos…my computer keeps  changing words
for some reason…I think there is  a little person sitting inside the computer deliberately trying to infuriate me…I will give him a quarter stick  of forcite sometime in the
future.  Forcite?  What is Forcite?  Read  on.

alan


1965:  My Last Summer in the Wilderness:   Merritt Open Pit Mine, Merritt, BC

alan skeoch
Feb. 2019


As the Summer of 1964 ended,  I thought my careers as a Field  Man in the Miing Industry
also  ended.  Was I waving a fond good-bye.  Not a chance.  Along came the Summer of 1965.
Marjorie was misinterpreted as you will notice.


“Hello, Alan, is that you?”
“Yep.”
“Norm Paterson here…need a man for a seismic job in BC…two weeks, maybe three.”
“Wait until I check with Marjorie.”
“Short job, Alan.”
“All clear, what’s up”
“Big molybdenum mine near Merritt B.C…worried about overburden slippage…need seismic
info urgently.”
“Using the  portable FS2 unit.”
“Yes, with some modifications…”
“Modificatons?”
“Nothing big time…you can handle it I’M sure.   Can you take the job?”
“When?”
“Fly out to Vancouver tomorrow then short hop to BC interior.”
“Sounds great, count me int.”

That call came from out of the blue about August 10, 1965.  This  was our summer vacation as public 
school teachers.  Hardly a  vacation for us since somehow I got Trench  Mouth in early July.  Trench Mouth?
Not many people have even heard  of trench mouth.  Lucky for that.  It is a super painful mouth infection 
Mouth…a series of ulcers in mouth and throat…super painful.  Cause?  Gums got infected with Trench ]
Mouth bacteria from some source.  Rare disease  dates back to soldiers in the  trenches of World  War I.
Knocked me out for month of July so the Seismic call from Dr. Paterson was a welcome return to normal life.

But I had a few questions…reservations.  What is molybdenum?   What are these ‘modifications’ to the 
FS 2 portable seismic unit?   Where is Merritt?  How big is the open pit mine?  And finally a questions
best not put to Dr. Paterson”  “Can Marjorie come along on the job?”  Of course, the final question was
the really big question.  And  it was already answered.

“Marjorie, pack a  couple of bags for two weeks…light, one bag each.”
“Where are we going?”
“Wish  I knew…place called  Merritt.”
“Another bush job?”
“Nope, sounds like a  job at a mine site.”
“Where will we live?”
“Not sure…I will fly in first and then you follow a couple of days  later.”
“Why?”
“Because the mine manager expects an expert…this  job is serious business…if the open pit is on verge of collapse…
they do not expect a husband and wife team on some kind of junket.”
“Where am I to stay then?”
“Stay in Vancouver for a day or two in some cheap hotel and then take a bus to Merritt…by then the job should be well
underway.”
“How do I get there?”
“By bus…should be  a nice ride.”
“I’ll book you into a an East  Vancouver hotel,…”

MOLEBDENUM

“What is molydenom?”
“It’s a mineral often found assoiated with copper.”
Never heard  of it.”
“Not many people  have…important mineral though…alloyed with steel makes steel harder.”
“Who needs harder steel?”
“Military.  One inch thick steel plating of steel and molybdenum is as good as 3 inch think ,metal.   Make
tanks ligher…makes ships lighter…”




THE NATURE OF THE JOB:  COMINCO OPEN PIT MINE PROBLEM

One wall on The Cominco Open Pit Mine was unstable and seemed about to collapse which would table  hundreds of tons
of soil and rock into the open pit mine.  Like a  mountain landslide.   Geologists and mining engineers became aware of the danger when slight rock falls began
to happen.   Could the whole massive open  pit mine be  compromised?   Maybe.  Maybe not.  There was  a chance that deep
underground the rock was  quite stable.  Maybe there might even be some kind of intrusion underground that would inhibit any
further  movement.   

It was worth finding out.  If stable then the profits would  be secure.  If not then drastic action would have to be taken.  Action that
might even bring about the closure of this partciular open pit operation.

“You can do it, Alan,” said Dr. Paterson which was comforting.  I was not so sure as I had graduated from U. of T in history and  philosophy.
Philosophy gives a person confidence.  History made me aware of  my ignorance.  One cancelled out the other.

No matter, we were committed and picked up the portable ‘modified’ seismograph.  Marjorie and I flew to Vancouver the next day.  She was  booked into a modest hotel in Vancouver while
I caught a plane to Kamloops and rented a snazzy red convertible for the trip down to Merritt.  Then Rented a room in the local motel which was very close to the mine itself.
On arrival I  met a company geologist and the mine manager
and we sleuthed out the site.  Explosives and blasting caps were purchased and  we got down to business.  Plan was to start the job the following morning.
That sounds  very business like.  Very efficient.  

Unfortunately events did not go that smoothly.  Let’s start with the car rental.  Nice red American  made convertible.  Luxury car was only car available so I motored joyfully
south through the desert landscape of sagebrush and Ponderosa pines.   Pulled the car up near the mine admin building…sort of a wooden temporary structure.  Lots
of huge earth movers were busy stripping off the overburden then loading up with the blasted fragments of copper bearing ore…very low grade…with molybdenum  and tiny traces  of
silver and gold.  Needed huge load of ore to get small amounts  of copper or molybdenum.  Gold  and silver even less so.

Earth movers have a blade about midway down the body. The blade is a mouth…once dropped it scoops up loose soil and rock…then the mouth is lifted and
the pile of soil and rock is hauled to a dump site.   These machines  are often driven by devil may care cowboy kinds of people. Shake the shit out of  drivers.  Certainly true in this case.  As  soon
as I parked the car a cowboy tried to see how close he could come to the car.  He got very close…too close.  Sheared off the passenger side and back bumper.  Had to 
rent another car, less luxurious.  Funny thing was  that neither the mining people nor the rental agency got their underwear in a twist.

Later I heard  that heavy alcohol consumption in the area led  to many car  accidents.  




Imagine this rental car with the side sheared away.








An earth mover, called a tractor scraper,  identical to this one took a  swipe at my rental car…ripped the passenger side and tore off the back bumper.
Driven by a young man about my age or younger…maybe even only18 or so.  I have no idea why he did it.  Never met him
and he did not stop just kept hauling his load to the dumpsite.


The Cominco (later Highland Creek) Open Pit copper and molybdenum mine in 1965




Current picture, circa 2018, of the Highland  Creek open pit mine near Merritt, BC.   When I worked there back in 1965, the pit
was not nearly tis deep.   The place where we did the survey may have been somewhere near the central road way
but up on the former surface.  Then again it could have been a nearby open pit that was subsequently abandoned.



SO YOU WANT TO KNOW ABOUT THE FS2 PORTABLE SEISMOGRAPH?

I learned the business from the bottom up.  My first job in New Brunswick was the ‘hammer man’ job.  Dr. Paterson gave me
a heavy sledge hammer and  small steel plate.   

“Hit that plate as  hard  as you  can wherever and  whenever you are told to do  so.”
“Must I know how to run a seismograph?”
“You do not need  to know a damn thing…just follow orders.”
“Bottom of the learning ladder kind  of job, right Dr. Paterson?”
“Right…if you are lucky, you come back as a field man for the company…capable
of running a seismic survey.  If you foul up, well, you can figure what that means…”
“Who is  my boss?”
“Dr. Abul Mousuf, a professional geophysicist…nice guy.”

Description:  Sledge hammer pounded  on a steel  plate sent sound waves to 
the portable seismograph at clearly defined spatial intervals.  Some distance
from the Seismograph it was necessary use explosives.   Sound waves  travel at
different speeds in different material…i..e. air, overburden soil, bed rock.





So My first job we used an MD-1 portable seismograph.  All I  had to do was  hammer a steel plate with heavy steel headed sledge hammer.  Abul Mousuf  was  my boss on that job.
Just the two of us were sent to New Brunswick  to confirm the future lakebed of the St. John River Valley was  going to hold the huge amount
of water from the Macktaquack (sp?) dam.  




 Abul was the first moslem I ever met.  Very patient
and generous  guy.  He ran the portable seismograph while I provided the sound wave vibrations which were picked up by the machine in milliseconds..tiny
fractions of a  second.  I pounded the steel plate at measured intervals…usually around 50 foot intervals.   The more  distant I got from Abul the
harder I had to hammer that steel plate.  When hammering was no longer readable, we started to use force… explosives…Explosives!

“Alan, cut the Forcite sticks into quarters and  halves.”
“How?”
“Slowly with a knife…the sticks are quite stable…
“Stable?”
“plastic C4…needs big shock to detonate…That’s where  the caps come in.”
“Caps?”
“These little metal tubes with wires…electric  firing caps.”
“How are they charged?”
“Slide the metal tube slowly into the Forcite…quite safe.”
“And the wires?”
“Attach to this cable that goes back to the firing switch…
“Any danger of error?”
“Always  a  danger if more than two people get involved…safe is we work together.
You set  the charge…bury it so some of the force will go down… then get back  out of the way…Signal me…wave your arm…yell, ‘All clear’
and I’ll detonate the charge.  usually only need quarter sticks.

We worked out a routine…once the charge was buried and wires connected I signalled Abul, then moved out
of the way, and he pushed  the firing button.  Wham!  A small geyser of dirt snd  debris flew into the air.  And beneath the ground a  sound wave raced
to the seismograph.  Sound  waves move faster in  hard surfaces so it is possible to ‘read’ what is  beneath the ground…and do  a profile of the depth to bedrock.
That is  a very simple explanation.  Forgive any errors.  Remember I was just the hammer and explosives  guy.  The kid on the
job.

We hired  this man to help with the explosives.  I have forgotten his  name.  If someone
saw him walking through town today with this handful of Forcite sticks made ready
to detonate they would call in a Swat team or run for their life.  In the early 1960’s not
many people  were concerned unless we were crossing their land.

This is how the St. John River Valley above Fredericton appeared to me in that summer of 1961.  Like  a picture postcard.
Stunning in its beauty.  We were agents of change.  


The whole valley from Fredericton to Grand Falls was destined to become a huge lake held in place by the Mactsquak Dam.






King’s Landing.   Many of the historic buildings in the Valley were  moved to King;s Landing which remains a mecca  for tourists.







That job was done a few years earlier around 1961.   Actually the job was depressing because the St. John River Valley was absolutely 
beautiful.   To imagine it being flooded made me sad.  But progress is  progress.   Loyalist  farms had been expropriated. Their antique 
treasures were so vast that a huge historic village called King’s Landing was being constructed while we were assessing the future lake bottom.   Some of these farms were 
still in operation others had  been demolished.  One farm I remember particularly.  We had rented cabins at a doomed resort near Pokiok Falls, also doomed.  The weather 
was turning cool, early September, and each of us had a small wood burning stove beside our beds.  In my mindI can  still smell  that wood fire.
The barns on that farm were filled  with ancient farm machines like  a wooden tread mill for a horse to deliver power to a florally decorated  flat to the floor threshing machine.
At the time I  wished I could rescue some of these implements.  I hoped they would end  up at King’s Landing for future tourists.

Pokiok Falls was also doomed.  The water spilled down a long split in the bedrock which made the waterfalls  almost inaccessible.   Now it is all covered in water and
the village of Pokiok Falls is a memory at best but more likely totally forgotten.

I got to know Abul really well.  We liked each other.  Part way through the job his wife joined us.  She was  a French Canadian girl from Bathurst, 
New Brunswick.  Really nice person   At one point Abul said, “Why don’t you two go down to the Fredericton Fair tonight while I do
the calculations.  We did that.  Even rode a Ferris Wheel as I remember.”  On another night we visited the Beaverbrook Art Gallery.
  Why tell you this?  Because Islamophobia has become such
a big negative factor in Canada today.   Images of Moslem restrictions on women are rampant.  That was certainly not the case with
Abul.  He trusted me with his  wife.  She was about my age. Back in Toronto, in late fall, Abul and his wife joined our Presbyterian Young Peoples Group and explained some
of his Islamic  beliefs.  This was not done with the intention of conversion.
He  was  about as laid back  a man as  possible.

Why tell you all this.?  Because Abul taught me how to use the portable seismograph.  And my image of Moslems was permanently affected by
his gentle behaviour, his humour, his trusting nature, and his love of life.  The next summer I asked Dr. Paterson…

“How is  Abul?”
“He died.”
“Died,  no he  was young.”
“He caught pneumonia on a job in Northenr Quebec las winter….died.”
“What a nice man he was.”
“Yes,  we all  miss  him.  I spoke to him just before he died and he
said…’Don’t feel  badly, it my time to go.  I am at ease.’

There were several end results of working with Abul .   First, I met a man I have admired all my life.  Second, I came to understand Islam in a manner that was  positive rather than fear laden.  And third, I
learned how to operate a portable seismograph which increased my value to Hunting Technical and Exploration Services.   Oh, yes, there was a fourth result…I got a couple of glycerine headaches from
handling the Forcite sticks.  They beaded droplets of glycerine.


So, when Norm…sorry, I meant to say Dr. Paterson…phoned me in late July 1965, I was  overjoyed to have the job.

The greeting by the professional staff at the mine site was a little disconcerting though.  They had  set up a demonstration test just to be sure the company, my company, knew what we we’re doing.
At least that’s the way I interpreted them gathering around the FS2 on the first working day.   They assigned a hammer man to work with me, a man who was a little familiar with frociete explosives.
Really just a kid a few years younger than me.  We walked along the edge of the huge open pit mine.  Walked carefully.  But not carefully enough for the hammer/explosives man.  He slipped over
the edge carrying the box fo Forcite sticks.  Fell down about ten feet or so, regained his footing and popped up again.  Forcite does not explode when dropped.  A most stable explosive…can be needed
and wrapped  around a bank vault as they show in the movies.  So there was no real danger although the boy who fell had misgivings. 

Let me set the stags for the next critical incident:

We are standing on the questionable edge of the open pit Molybdenum mine.  Great circular road  weaves its way down to the pay dirt at the bottom.  Huge Euclid mine trucks are going and coming
while equally large excavators are at work far below.   The officials from the mine are interested in seeing the Seismograh at work.  They are professional people…a geologist and the mine manager
are among the 5 or 6 people present.  

I set up the console and mark off the intervals for a) the hammered plate and then, once hammering cannot be done b) the intervals for the electrically fired quarter snd half stick of Forcite.  The hammer man
has been instructed how to slowly side the electric firing caps into the Frociete then use the lead wires to make the explosive secure.

I am nervous.   What if nothing happens?  What did Dr. Paterson mean when he said certain adjustments had been made to the FS2.  Let me describe what happened next in dialogue form.

“OK, we’re all set up,  FS is on.”
“Hammer the steel plate…NOW.”
“That’s odd, no reading…no milliseconds indicted…Do it again!”
(Nothing happened…I had my heart in my mouth…was there something I did not know…was it my fault?
Keep calm, Alan…be confident.”
“Sorry, must be a defective board…may have shaken something loose en route.”
 Dr. Paterson had given me two or three spare “boards” filled with complicated soldered resistors and what not.)
“Just do a replacement…slide this board out and put a new one in…happens all the time.”
“OK, now take a good song with the hammer:
“Bingo…working fine…measures time vibration gets to the seismograph in milliseconds…
te more distant the hammer or the explosives get from the seismograph the closer we get to finding 
what is underground.  What you want is a stable rock base…or a rock knob to prevent any more slippage.
That will take s lot of readings…(no need for an audience is what I really meant)”
“My credibility had been established…by pure luck…well, more than luck, let’s say guts…Dad always
called me a ‘gutsy bugger’

GUESS WHO ARRIVED THAT FIRST DAY ON THE JOB?

Once the board was replaced all went well.   Firing box for  Explosives worked perfectly. All I had to do was push the button and  then
write down the milliseconds it took  for the sound wave to reach the seismograph.  Simply add  up the little twinkling lights.  At least that
is what I remember.  Things became routine.

My next shock was when I returned to the motel.
Marjorie was unpacking her suitcase in our room.  




“Marjorie, I thought you were going to wait a couple of days?”
“Not in that Vancouver hotel.  I  was sacred so I caught the night 
bus to Merritt…arrived this morning.”
“Scared?”
“Strange men…noise…drunks…did not want to stay around.”
“Glad to see you…perfectly safe here…”

A little later, the mine geologist showed up to make me feel welcome.  Me?
He was surprised to find an  attractive young woman in my room with me.
Wore a kind of lopsided grin when I introduced Marjorie to him.

The next day I got the scuttlebutt from our hammer man that the execs thought I had
brought a hooker in from Vancouver.  They were certain of that.  No matter how many
times  I introduced  Marjorie as my wife, they figured I was leading them on.

“Marjorie, these guys think you are a hooker…can’t dissuade them…”
“So, let’s leave it at that then Alan.”

Pictures: Marjorie…I know these were taken a few years after the BC venture…but they seem to fit.

As the days wore on, I think they came to realize Marjorie was my wife but we were 
never sure that fact was believed.  There is  an old story about mining that I picked
up when working on the Elliot Lake uranium job.  Our liaison man on that job said
“The best way to tell if a mine is going to be operational is the arrival of the hookers.”
Maybe Marjorie was a good luck omen.

WHAT WAS THE RESULT OF THE SURVEY?

I was only the field man.  The interpretation of my results was done by professional geophysicists like Dr. Paterson back in Toronto. 
The execs from Cominco would have liked me to tell them if the unstable north wall of the open pit was on the verge of collapse
or whether it would  stabilize due to a  tilt in the bedrock.  I never did know the results.  That was true of all the jobs except for
the Southern Irish job where Dr. Stam and geologist John Hogan were on site for the duration of the job.  

When we finished our seismic readings and the results were sent back to Toronto, the job was over.  

So here we were in Central British Columbia with s  few days before school started back in Toronto.   What should  we do?
Fly home right away?   I never liked doing that on any job.   Seemed  an absolute waste because most of the places we surveyed
were distant from Toronto. Some were fascinating places like Anchorage, Alaska…Keno City, Yukon Territory…Bunmahon, County 
Waterford, Slouther Ireland.   It would be stupid to rush home.  And it would be costly since two airfares were involved only one of
which was covered by the company.










“Marjorie, why don’t we catch the CPR Canadian…the transcontinental railway?”
“Can we do that?”
“On our own time…company job is over.”
“Expensive?”
“We can cover most of it with my return fare…maybe even cheaper.”
“How?”
“Let’s just reserve one sleeper bed…a lower?”
“Is there room for two?”
“Who cares?”

CPR The Canadian sleeping car section

So we did.  We came back to Toronto on board the ‘Canadian’…meals in the dining car, vistas enjoyed from
the dome car and both of us folded into the lower bunk sleeper.   A little tight but No problem.  Job over.

AND  SO  ENDED MY CREER AS A FIELD EXPLORATION MAN IN THE MINING INDUSTRY.
EACH DAY SEEMED TO HAVE A NEW ADVENTURE.  SO GLAD YOU HAVE TAKEN
THE TIME TO READ THESE NOTES.

ALAN SKEOCH
FEB. 8, 2019

P.S. There will be some short notes coming…such  as the GOOD FOOD note below


THE GOOD LIFE : GOURMET COOK 

    (And a game for you to test your vision)


Envy?  I can understand why many readers are envious when the descriptions of life in the
wilderness are sent.   I have noted that some recipients only look at the pictures
and ignore the rich prose that I take a long time to string together.  So here is a very
short descriptive essay that is really a game.  See if you can find each of the items
listed below.  The picture underscores just how wonderful life in the bush can be.

photo  Taken: Yukon job 1962 



See if you can find the following from list under the photo




1) Spruce pole bed
2) Gold Pan
3) Bird’s Custard can
4) Bird’s Cutard with stale bread and Klim milk powder
5) wash basen/ dining bowl  (double duty)
6) Candles  (indication this camp has been used for week)
7) Instant coffee cans
8) long underwear
9) fancy boots
10) Mattress
11) Alarm Clock, wind  up kind
12) tarpaulin floor
13) discarded  matches
14) Two spoons (evidence of communal dining)
15) Clothing storage area
16) Mystery: A boot lace? string? heavy duty tooth floss?

    17) One reader noticed the person in the photo is left handed…as I am.

          But I did not own such a fancy pair of long underwear.  We shared
          the meal, however, both left handed cooks.
   18) Another reader commented  on his clean feet and wondered
         whether he had  washed his feet in the wash basin before making
         the skim milk, custard  and stale bread gourmet dinner.  It is  just
        possible he did do that which would add some fine particles to the meal.

alan skeoch
Feb. 8,2019
(picture was taken on the Yukon job in 1961 or 1962)