POSTING # 28

Chocolate; Fighting a Forest Fire in Northern Ontario in 1956: Part One; Short Stuff (Mini-Stories about Kids and Pets)


Chocolate

Pat wasn’t feeling too well this week---and then had a miraculous recovery.

She emailed a friend about her illness and has agreed to let me share the email with you:

“Yesterday I had an upset stomach and headache and my intestines were not too good either. Food did not appeal to me at all - soup was fine - and maybe a bit of toast. John was going out grocery shopping and asked me if there was anything not on the list that I might want. I said, "Um, just chocolate cake," and then my head
realized that chocolate cake was EXACTLY what I wanted.

So he went to Willows [Willows Cakes and Pastries in Niagara-on-the-Lake] and told the fellow that his wife was not feeling well and she needed some really disgusting chocolate - something that was pretty well only chocolate. So he suggested the perfect thing. By the way, another customer who was dithering about what she wanted, heard the exchange between John and the server, and uttered the now famous line "I'll have what he's having."

So I got my chocolate cake (which fixed my ailments by the way).”

Willows is one of our favourite places (it is also a favourite of our children and grandchildren when they come to visit). We like to go and pick up a loaf of artisan bread and something disgustingly sinful. If we have time, we enjoy sitting down with a cup of great coffee and a French pastry, and watch---through a window into the bakery---the staff icing cakes, baking bread, and doing unbelievable things with chocolate.



Fighting a Forest Fire in Northern Ontario in 1956: Part One

There was a TV program this week about a modified Boeing 747 that is being tested for fighting wild fires. In a demonstration, the huge plane, flying at 160 mph and just 400 feet above the ground, dropped an ocean of water on an imaginary fire. The engineers say there are some safety concerns to be sorted out (I guess!) but they are optimistic that the plane could help with fires in California and elsewhere.

That all reminded me of June 1956 and my one and only forest fire experience (we called them forest fires, not wild fires in those days).

I was working as a labourer-teacher for Frontier College at a bush camp on Dog River, north of what is now Thunder Bay (see Posting # 9 March 1, 2009 for more details about that summer job).

It had been a very dry spring and we kept hearing about fires many miles north of us. Then, one day, we saw what looked like a light fog in the distance up the river valley. The next day, we could smell smoke.

In the bunkhouse that night, the old-timers speculated about where the fire was and whether some of us would have to go to fight it. They had all been on fire lines before and talked about living in tents, about the black flies, deer flies and mosquitoes, about back-packing water pumps, coils of hose and shovels through the dense bush, and about the heat and smoke.

They talked about the powers the Ontario Lands and Forest officials had to conscript workers---you could be enjoying a brew in a beer parlour one minute and out on a fire line the next. They said that pulp and paper companies like ours were expected to contribute workers if fires became serious.

After work the next day, our foreman came into the bunk house. He said there was a 1000 acre fire north of us that was in danger of getting out of control. The company had agreed to provide ten men to fight the fire. As he read out the names, the affected men groaned.

My name wasn’t on the list, and I talked to the foreman afterwards. I told him I would like to go.

“I don’t think the company would let you go,” the foreman replied (companies tended to be a little protective of Frontier College students), “But are you sure you want to go?”

“Sure, I would like to go.”

“OK, I’ll check with the company.”

He came back in a few minutes and told me I would go in place of one of the older workers. He said that I should be ready early the next morning for a ride to a nearby lake where a bush plane would meet us.

A friend my age, Sven (not his real name), who was born in Canada of a Swedish father and a Finnish mother and worked full-time in bush camps, was on the list to go. He had fought several forest fires and thought I was crazy to volunteer.

Sven and four other fellows decided that since fighting a fire would be hot and thirsty work, they should have some beer before setting out. There was a beer parlour up the road in Raith. Would I like to go? Sure, why not.

The six of us piled into a battered car and took off for the beer parlour. At a quarter to twelve, the waiter came around for last orders. One of the fellows suggested that we skip the last orders and instead drive to Upsala, thirty miles west of Raith, which, since it was on the other side of the time line between Eastern and Central time zones, would give us an extra hour of drinking time.

Back in the car, and off to Upsala.

We closed the Upsala beer parlour and headed back to the camp. A few miles down the road, in the middle of the bush, I smelled smoke, not cigarette smoke (there were two or three smokers in the car) not forest fire smoke, but burning fabric smoke.

From inside the car.

When we got out, we found a red-ringed hole in the bottom of the back seat. We got the seat out of the car and looked around for some water.

No water.

One of the fellows, a short guy who had fought in World War II with the Polish Free Army, and who had a great capacity for beer, had the solution. He pulled down his zipper and extinguished the fire with a steady and copious flow of recycled beer.

We put the seat back in the car, covered the wet part with an old blanket from the trunk and got back to the camp around 3 AM.

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Awakened by the foreman at 5.30, I stumbled around threw some toilet items and clothes in a duffle bag and went to the cookhouse for something to eat. Although none of us was very hungry, we managed to get down some coffee and toast.

A van picked us up and took us to meet the bush plane.

The pilot of the pontooned Lands and Forest plane (a de Havilland Canada Beaver, a wonderful, wonderful plane) told us that he had a part load of water pumps and fire hose so he could only take 3 of us and would have to come back for the others. Sven, another guy and I clambered onto one of the pontoons and up into the plane. Sven and I sat on the coils of fire hose while the other fellow sat up front with the pilot.

“Hang on”, the pilot shouted as he gunned the engine. There were no seat belts and not many places to get a hand grip. We pulled free from the water, just clearing some trees at the end of the lake, and headed for the fire.

We saw the fire as we got closer. Now, a 1,000 acre fire doesn’t sound like much when compared with some of the California blazes we see on television that are 50,000 or 100,000 acres in size.

But, it was the size of ten 100 acre farms.

And, that’s not peanuts, especially when one is flying a few hundred feet above it.

It was early in the morning and there wasn’t much wind to stoke the fire. We could see smoke and glowing embers beyond the part that had been burned over.

The pilot swooped down over the lake where Lands and Forest had decided our camp should be. The lake, which was smooth as glass, seemed to be about a mile from the fire, which was comforting but also meant, as Sven shouted to me, that we would have to trek a long way through the thick bush to get to the fire line.

The pilot suddenly opened a side window and threw out a cushion. He shouted that when a lake was very calm it was hard to judge the plane’s height above the water. The ripples from the cushion would help him judge where the surface was.

He came around again, looked at the ripples, and landed. He taxied over to a point on the shore where a couple of tents had already been set up. A fellow waiting for us grabbed a rope that the pilot threw and looped it over a stump.

As soon as we had unloaded the plane, and given the pilot his rope, he took off down the lake to get more workers.

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The fellow on the shore introduced himself as the Lands and Forest fire ranger. He was a thin, wiry Franco-Ontarian, who looked both tired and sullen.

“Pitch a tent over there somewhere, behind the cook tent.” Pointing at Sven and me, he said, “You two can be cooks.”

Sven was delighted--- trudging through the bush with 70 pounds of gear was not for him.

I was upset.

I had come for an adventure, not to peel potatoes.

When I told the ranger I would prefer to be out on the line, he snarled, “You’re not happy and I’m not happy. Just do it.”

Sensing, I guess, that he had been a bit out of line, he explained that he had been fighting fires for six weeks straight. His boss had told him that he would have a week off after the last fire, a chance to be with his family in Sudbury.

Then, the boss had changed his mind, and told him he would have to spend another week or so at this fire. He was tired and angry, and he missed his family.

The plane ferried in more workers, until we were about 20 in all, and then brought in more fire-fighting equipment, food stocks and some naphtha gas stoves.

That first day we fed ourselves, as we set up camp, sorted out the water pumps and hoses and in general prepared to start the fire fighting the next day.

The fire ranger’s mood didn’t improve as the day went on. When he was asked a question, he shrugged and said, ”Do what you want.”

The men had experience and they generally knew what needed to be done.

After dinner, someone built a camp fire and we sat around it, chatting about the next day.

The ranger didn’t join us. Instead, he crawled into his pup tent, and tied the flap down.

Before we fell asleep, Sven and I talked about what we would feed 20 hungry people for breakfast the next morning. We decided on coffee, bacon, eggs, porridge and white sliced bread with peanut butter and jam.

In Part Two, next week, I will tell the rest of the story of John’s not-so-excellent adventure.


Short Stuff (Mini-Stories about Kids and Pets)

I’ve told many Cassidy stories, the American Cocker Spaniel that helped raise our children.

Now it is the turn of Nanny, the white-and-liver Springer Spaniel that helped raise Pat and her brother.

Nanny understood that she was not allowed in the dining room in Pat’s Aurora home. She would lie on the floor of the kitchen with her front paws positioned precisely at the dividing line between the two rooms. When she thought Pat’s mother wasn’t looking, Nanny would quietly push her paws a few inches into the dining room. Pat’s mother would pretend not to notice, and Nanny would push the paws a little further into the dining room.

When the paws were a foot or so into the dining room, Pat’s mother would give Nanny ‘the look’, a stare---eyeball to eyeball---combined with a little tilt of the head. No words were spoken, but Nanny would grumble quietly and pull the paws back to the dividing line.

I was never able to figure out who enjoyed the game more, Nanny or Pat’s mother.

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My presence in the household, first as a suitor and then as Pat’s husband, upset Nanny. When Nanny and I were alone together, we got along well enough but when Pat or other family members were around she gave me the cold shoulder. As Pat’s father used to say she was treating me as ‘the new boy’ to whom she owed no loyalty, and no show of friendliness. More than that, it was clear that she thought I was someone who had to be viewed with a good bit of suspicion.

The night we came back from our honeymoon, we slept in Pat’s old room. In the morning, Nanny came upstairs while we were still asleep and pushed open the door with her nose. She saw what she had expected all along. I was up to no good.

Quickly, she leapt onto the bed and then squirmed, lengthwise, between us. She became a kind of bundling board that was used by Ontario pioneers to keep a courting couple from getting up to any hanky-panky.

Then, she put her head down and pretended to be asleep.


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See you next Sunday for Posting #29 with more stories from our family’s universe! If you have comments or suggestions, please leave a comment at the bottom of this posting, or email me at johnpathunter@cs.com.