The Lansdowne Letters: Slick as a Wink

Our future trip is bearing down on us,

and I am determined not to be up really late the night before
madly setting up prescheduled posts!

I'm also determined to keep 

the new material coming,

which means the Ever-Patient

is tip-toeing around me
as I work in manic mode.

I swear, 

I am married to a saint!

google

I feel a little bit like Dad
trying to get everything done
before the real last plane
showed up in Lansdowne House.

At least I have a computer
and don't have to deal with
a portable typewriter
and carbon paper!

Late Nights, Getting It Done!

© M. Louise (MacBeath) Barbour/Fundy Blue

All Rights Reserved

So back in time we go for another look into life
in a remote northern community over fifty years ago.

Lansdowne House by the Hudson Bay Dock

Northern Ontario, Canada

Photo by Father Maurice Ouimet, c.1960

© M. Louise (MacBeath) Barbour/Fundy Blue

All Rights Reserved

Thursday, October 27, 1960 

My father wrote:

Hi There Everyone:

I hope you will excuse the paper, 

because I’m trying out an experiment 

with a different, lighter, and cheaper paper.  

The original won’t look so good, 

but I think that the carbon copies should be a lot better.  

If the experiment pans out, 

I shall be using this paper from now on.  

The uneven edges are explained by its not being 

quite the right size for the typewriter, and I had to cut it.


Note:  In case you have no clue 
what my father is talking about ...

You Tube:  SuperVpower

My how times have changed!  
Thank God!

My father usually typed an original letter and three copies,
which meant he had seven sheets of paper 
crammed rolled into Uno's little typewriter.


Well, here it is Thursday night again and still no freeze-up.
I guess I could have sent the entire letter by regular mail tomorrow.

However, if I had done that,
things would have been frozen up tighter than a drum by now.

Lansdowne House was treated to another spectacle 

of Donald making a fool of himself 

in that damned canoe again this morning.  

The narrow strip of water between the island and the mainland 

was filled with drift ice that had come down 

from the upper regions of the lake and lodged 

in front of the Father’s beach.

Map of Lansdowne House

by Donald MacBeath

© M. Louise (MacBeath) Barbour/Fundy Blue  All Rights Reserved

Mainland to the Left.  Island to the Right.

My Father's Canoe Route Between Them on Lake Attawapiskat (31)

The Father's Beach (27)

Hudson Bay Dock (17)

Dad and Uno's Cottage (7) 

Dad's School (25)

It didn’t look too thick or too solid, 

so I tried to take the canoe through it.

I got the canoe about half way out into it, 

or rather out on it, and it didn’t break through.  

A couple of Indians came along, 

so I got into the thing and had them give me a good shove.  

Away I went shooting across the ice 

like I was on a toboggan.  

I shot over the ice (along the surface) 

for about twenty-five feet, and then I stopped. 

As soon as I stopped, the canoe settled slowly 

through the ice into the water, 

and there I was – trapped as slick as a wink.  

I couldn’t go back or forward.  

To put it bluntly, I was in a hell of a fix.  

I was caught there for about fifteen or twenty minutes, 

before I worked myself loose and got back to the beach.  

All the time those cotton pickin Indians 

stood on the beach and just howled with laughter at me.

They were joined by the Brother, 

and I thought he was going to fall down, he laughed so hard.  

Brother Raoul Bernier
Photo by Donald MacBeath
© M. Louise (MacBeath) Barbour/Fundy Blue  
All Rights Reserved






I was about fifteen minutes late 
when I finally got to school, 

but all my children were waiting for me.  

They knew that I was coming, 

because they had watched the whole procedure 
from the mainland with a great deal of amusement.

There was a plane in today from Nakina 

bringing some freight to the Father, 

but the pilot didn’t hang around too long.  

The weather was closing in down south, 

and he didn’t want to spend the night in the bush. 

It is risky for the pilots to stay overnight 

in the bush this time of year.
  

If it should turn cold during the night, 

the lake could close up, 

and he would be here till freeze-up was over. 

His plane would be here for the winter, 

till break-up next spring.

© M. Louise (MacBeath) Barbour/Fundy Blue  All Rights Reserved

My plans for Halloween have been badly shot 

by the two clinics we conducted this week, 

but I guess that what we accomplished at the clinics was more important.  

However, I’m going to have a Halloween party Monday afternoon,
but there aren’t going to be many appropriate decorations.

I don’t know whether there will be a mail next week or not, 

but if a ‘last plane’ comes in any time next week, 

I’ll get whatever editions of the letter that are finished out on it.

We have reached the end of another week’s effort.  

I have run out of anything to say, except goodbye, 

so I’ll say that and leave you.

Goodbye,

Don.


I'd have given just about anything to have seen 
my father shooting across that ice! 

Till next time ~
Fundy Blue


Crossing Petit Passage to Tiverton
© M. Louise (MacBeath) Barbour/Fundy Blue

All Rights Reserved

Links to Earlier Posts:

HR10: Touchdown Lansdowne House ~ Finally 

TLL: The Beverly Baxter of the Bush


Notes:  

1.  Brother Raoul Bernier:
     Dad often referred to Brother Bernier as "the Brother,"
     just as he often referred to Father Maurice Ouimet as "the Father."
     
     Brother Bernier was a brother in the Missionary Oblates of Mary Immaculate,
     a missionary religious congregation in the Catholic Church. (OMI)
     Among the Brother's responsibilities was running the sawmill (4 on map).

     Dad boarded at the Oblate Mission in Lansdowne House
     and shared his meals with the Father, the Brother, and Uno.

     Brother Bernier and my father became good friends,
     in spite of the fact that neither spoke much of the other's language.
     The Brother was a quiet French Canadian with a great sense of humor.
           


2.  Wedding Anniversary:
     My parents were married 67 years ago today
     in at the Baptist Church in Smith's Cove, Nova Scotia.

     How I wish they were alive to celebrate it.
     We would have had one hell of a party!


            Leaving the Church:  September 4, 1948         Honeymoon in Sandy Cove, N.S.