The Lansdowne Letters: Bush Planes and the Puzzle of Thanksgiving

Have you ever flown in a bush plane?

I have a number of times.
It's a noisy, vibrating, 
raw experience,
and the trees, rocks, 
and water sliding below
look starkly, solidly real.




View from a Norseman

on the Way to Lansdowne House
Photo by Don MacBeath,  September 13, 1960

© M. Louise (MacBeath) Barbour/Fundy Blue

All Rights Reserved

Taking off isn't the hard part for me.
It's the landing!
Two skis on ice,
two floats on water,
or in the belly of a seaplane ~
It's mesmerizing to watch 
the ice or water racing at you
as the plane closes in to land.

Oh thank you, God!
always flashes through my mind
when the plane slows in a splash of water
or in a rooster tail of snow. 

Touchdown

Austin Airways Norseman

canavbooks 

Bush flying can be treacherous,
and I never forgot one letter my father wrote,
especially if I were flying in a small plane.


Friday, October 7, 1960 
My father wrote:

Hi Everyone:
Here we go on another Lansdowne Letter.  
I hope that it will be more interesting than the last one.

I had a very bountiful mail this week:  
five letters from Mother, 
five from Sara, 
two from Louise (daughter), 
and one from Grammie.  
I had a wonderful time reading and answering them.  
I am greedy, perhaps next week I’ll do even better.

Today was wonderful, 
a veritable Indian summer!!  
I went about all day in shirtsleeves.  
The lake was just like glass, not a ripple on it.

I was amazed when I talked to the Austin Airways pilot 
and found out that it is very dangerous to land on the lake 
when it is as smooth as it was today.  

When it is real glassy, 
it is almost impossible to tell 
where the air ends and the water begins.  

After I was talking to the Austin pilot, 
I watched Harry Evens, 
a pilot for Superior Airways, landing.  

He glided just about two miles 
about three feet above the surface of the lake.  
Even after a long glide like this, 
he misjudged and landed 
about 2½ feet above the surface.  

This may sound strange, 
but it actually happens.

Norseman Taxiing

wikimedia ~ edited

The pilot does everything he would do on landing, 
except actually touching down.  
After he has cut down the motor, etc., 
the plane just drops like a brick 
and bounces several times before it really lands.  

This can really jar your back teeth, 
if the pilot lands about ten or twelve feet above the surface.

Touchdown

wikimedia

They had a bad accident last year at Armstrong 
when one of Superior’s pilots misjudged the water level 
and tried to land about ten feet below the surface.  
He went right in!!  

Two days later they managed to get his body 
out of the plane which was at the bottom of the lake.

Northern Ontario Lake

northernontario.travel

My father continued:

Some more of our furniture arrived yesterday: 
a nice large bookcase. 

Our little cottage is beginning to look quite homelike.  
I would not mind living here with Sara for the winter, 
but it would be pretty crowded 
if I had the whole tribe up with me.

This is the start of the long Thanksgiving weekend.  
Three whole lovely days with no Indian children to worry about.
As I said in one of my previous epistles, 
I love them all, but at times it is nice to love them from a distance.

I don’t know if I told you 
about Maureen making curtains for us, or not; 
but she did, 
and it is the most wonderful thing to have curtains, 
especially in our bedroom.  

She made café curtains for our bedroom, 
and now she is making full- length curtains for our front room.  
We just bought some printed material from the Bay, 
and she whipped them up on her electric sewing machine.


  

Dad and Uno's Bedroom Window
with pictures of Dad's mother, father, and wife Sara on the table  
Photo by Uno Manila, Fall 1960
© M. Louise (MacBeath) Barbour 
All Rights Reserved.

The reason that 
we wanted the curtains 
is because of 
the insatiable curiosity of the Indians.  
They are always 
looking in the window, 
and this begins to bug you after a couple of weeks.














Considerable difficulty was encountered 
when I tried to explain to the children 
why there was going to be no school Monday.  
They just could not seem to grasp the idea of Thanksgiving.

The First Thanksgiving in America, 1621

by Jean Leon Gerome Ferris

wikimedia

  

I took over some of my books 
and spent most of this afternoon 
reading them stories and poems about Thanksgiving.  

I told them about the first Thanksgiving in the New World.  
I suppose it is ironic for the poor creatures 
to have to talk and think about Thanksgiving, 
because the poor creatures have so little to be thankful for.

The First Thanksgiving in Canada ~ 1578

Martin Frobisher in Frobisher Bay

filmatidimare.altervista.org

Well, I guess that just about ties her up for today.  
Will be back again tomorrow.
  
I am not cheating you by just giving you a part of a page.  
This paper is longer than usual.  
I am using it because it is thinner, 
and I think it might make better duplicates.

Well, see you all.
Bye for now,
Love, Don

Dad Typing His Nightly Lansdowne Letter
Photo by Uno Manila, Fall 1960
© M. Louise (MacBeath) Barbour/Fundy Blue
All rights Reserved

I never forgot this letter my father wrote,
not the tragic story of the pilot and his plane
and not Dad's comment about his poor creatures.
Even as a young girl I wondered,
why is it that some people have it so good
and others have it so desperately hard?

Till next time ~
Fundy Blue