POSTING # 29

A Lump on the Road near Virgil: Fighting a Forest Fire in Northern Ontario in 1956: Part Two; Short Stuff (Mini-Stories about Kids and Pets)


A Lump on the Road near Virgil

A few nights ago, Pat and I were taking ‘the back way’ from Niagara-on-the-Lake to Virgil, along some country roads.

As we turned off one road onto another, we saw a man with a photographer’s tripod in the middle of the road beside a large, dark lump. He waved us around the lump, which from a distance looked like a large piece of tire, or clump of sod.

As we drove past, we realized that the lump was a large turtle. We turned around and came back to have a better look at it.

The man explained that he had been driving home and when he saw the turtle he became concerned that someone might drive over the turtle accidentally (or perhaps even intentionally---there are some odd people about).

He said he had tried to prod the turtle with the tripod in the hope of speeding up its trip across the road. The turtle had taken umbrage at the prodding and had bitten off---quite cleanly---the foot of one of the tripod’s legs.

The man looked at us and said, “I know you are supposed to be able to pick them up by the shell, but after I saw what he did to the tripod…”

Some Google research later on, confirmed what we suspected at the time, that this was a larger-than-normal Snapping Turtle. He (or she---we didn’t check for gender) had a shell that was about 20 inches long and 15 inches wide, a huge head with a vicious jaw, massive feet with long sharp claws and a long tail with scales that gave it a prehistoric air. The turtle also looked quite heavy.

As we stood looking at it, I was debating about suggesting that the man and I each grab a side of the shell and lift it off the road. Before I could say anything, a large, black Lexus pulled up and a woman jumped out of the passenger seat.

“Leave it alone, I know what to do.”

She bent down behind the turtle, grabbed each side of the shell and straightening her knees picked it up, and carried it toward the ditch.

The turtle was outraged. It was snapping its jaw and kicking its legs in mid-air.

The woman hung onto the turtle despite all the movement, carried it to the ditch, and dropped it with a thud.

She wiped her hands on the grass, said it was the second turtle she had removed from the road this year, and got back into the car.

As the car drove away, we all clapped.

She nodded and smiled----and we felt like a bunch of wusses.

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

In the last posting (#28, July 12, 2009), I explained that a friend, Sven, and I had been appointed by the fire ranger, over my objections, to cook for some 20 fire fighters.

Our first meal was breakfast on the morning after our arrival in the fire camp.

I can’t begin to describe the challenges of cooking in the bush for fire fighters. We had a tent, some tables, naphtha stoves, a strange set of pots, pans and utensils, and no say in the provisions (the food was whatever Lands and Forests decided to send in on the daily plane).

Sven obviously had some experience in bush cooking and he set about organizing things. I became his ‘gofer’, fetching water for the coffee and porridge (from the lake, of course), cracking eggs, peeling strips of bacon into cast iron frying pans, that sort of thing.

It wasn’t a gourmet breakfast---the porridge was lumpy, the eggs were a bit runny and the bacon and the coffee were a little burned--- but it was edible. At least, there wasn’t much left by the time the men had finished.

We didn’t have to make lunch---the men made their own.

Once they had finished making their lunches, the ranger divided them into teams of four and gave them their tasks for the day.

As the men left the camp for the fire line---carrying their gas-run water pumps, coils of canvas fire hose and shovels---a plane arrived. The ranger helped tie it to a tree and an older man and the pilot came ashore. The older man and the ranger went off a little ways and were discussing something.

“The ranger’s boss?” Sven wondered.

We were cleaning the breakfast pots and pans but couldn’t help overhearing some of the conversation. The ranger was angry that he hadn’t been allowed to go home for a rest as the boss had promised earlier on. The boss, trying to mollify him, kept repeating that he had had no choice----he couldn’t have allowed the ranger to go home to his family. This was an important fire and he had no one else to assign to it.

Finally, the ranger stormed off to his tent, and the boss and the pilot returned to the plane. As Sven and I helped untie the plane, the boss said to us in a quiet voice, “He’s angry but he’s a good guy. Things will be OK.”

Sven and I started preparing the main course for dinner, which Sven decided should be a traditional Finnish beef stew. We had had it several times back at the Dog River camp and the Finns and Swedes liked it although I found it a bit watery and lacking in flavour.

We heated water in two large pots on the naphtha stoves and dropped in big cubes of un-browned beef. Later on, we added potatoes, carrots, turnips and heads of cabbage cut in eighths.

There is no thickening in the Finnish recipe, and little seasoning---just some salt and pepper. (The cooks at the Dog River camp sometimes added dill but we didn’t have any.)

We cooked the stew all day but the meat was still stringy, and gray, when we served it at dinner time while the vegetables were mushy and the liquid insipid. But, the workers were hungry and they devoured the stew along with loaf after loaf of sliced bread.

I heard some grumbling about the meal but by the time we had cleaned up I was so tired I didn’t care.

Sven and I talked about dinner for the next night. It turned out that he was a one-recipe cook. Dinner the next night would be the same stew, except that the meat would be pork, not beef.

The pork stew was better than the beef but not much. There was more grumbling, coming especially from Franco-Ontarian workers, who came from another camp on Dog River.

I should explain that the pulp and paper company had a number of camps along the Dog River. Several of the camps were made up of Finnish and Swedish immigrants and their Canadian-born sons, along with some other immigrants and some English-Canadians. The cooking in these camps tended to be Scandinavian style.

Other camps were made up of Franco-Ontarian workers and the cooking in these camps tended to be hearty, Quebec-style cuisine.

After breakfast the next morning, the Franco-Ontarians returned to their tents instead of heading for the fire line. We could hear some loud discussions. Later on, one of Franco-Ontarians went over to the ranger. We could see them arguing.

Finally, the ranger came over to Sven and me.

“They’re on strike and they aren’t going to leave the tents until we have new cooks. I tried to reason with them but in the end I had to tell them they could appoint two of their own people to be cooks.”

The ranger turned to me, “You didn’t want to be a cook anyway, did you?’

I felt a bit insulted that we hadn’t measured up, yet I was happy to be finished with ‘kitchen detail’.

But I felt badly for Sven, who was upset. He had tried his best under really tough conditions. He would now have to join the workers at the fire line, something I knew he wasn’t looking forward to.

As they say in the ‘soaps’, stay tuned for the next developments!


Short Stuff (Mini-Stories about Kids and Pets)

There was a recent article about the surprising intelligence of crows. Apparently a crow being studied by a psychologist demonstrated a tool-building skill. He bent a piece of wire to make a hook, which he then held in his beak and lifted a small basket of food out of a glass cylinder.

Pat wasn’t surprised at the news that crows are intelligent. When she was growing up she had two house pets---Nanny, a Springer Spaniel, whom we met last week, and a white (house-trained) rabbit called Thumper, both of whom showed considerable intelligence.

But the boy across the street had a pet crow that was remarkably bright.

The boy had rescued a baby crow from a cat and trained it to do some tricks. For example, the crow would perch on his shoulder as he walked along the street.

The crow had also developed some tricks on his own.

Once, while Pat’s father was doing some gardening he bent over and a set of keys came part way out of his pocket. The crow swooped down, pulled the keys out of his pocket, and took off, with a hearty ‘caw-caw’.

The crow also liked to harass Nanny. As she grew older, the dog loved to lie in the sun and sleep. The crow would come up behind Nanny and pull a single hair out of her tail. As Nanny yelped, the crow would take off, again, with her mocking ’caw-caw’.

Another time, an encyclopedia salesman was walking up Pat’s driveway when the crow tried to land on his shoulder. Thinking he was being dive-bombed, the salesman ran for the front door and rang the bell. Pat, accompanied by the white rabbit, opened the door. The poor salesman thought he had stumbled into an Alice in Wonderland world---being chased by a crow and greeted by a rabbit. He fled for his car, yelling, “What the hell kind of neighbourhood is this!”

oooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo

See you next Sunday for Posting #30 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.