EDITORIAL & OPINION — ODDS ‘N’ SODS — Getting the shaft in Winnipeg

In mid-November of 1926 at the Central Manitoba Mines’ gold operation, the main shaft of our hoist broke, and the ensuing tale illustrates the difficulties of working in the remote bush before the days of airplanes or two-way radio.

After working with the mechanic and shaft crew to free the broken shaft, I sent Clayt Bower to get a crew of three canoemen and a stout canoe with the camp’s only outboard motor (at the time, it was the only one I had ever seen).

With no competent mechanical draftsman in camp, we had to take the broken shaft to Winnipeg to serve as a pattern for the new one. My greatest concern was that the winter freeze-up might come at any time and delay our task further.

I set off with three men and the broken shaft as soon as Clayt had the canoe ready. At dusk, we holed up in a prospector’s cabin, glad that he was home and for the fire. We were off the next morning at daylight. Because of the shaft’s weight, we had to be careful loading it into the canoe — which was often, because of the number of portages we had to take.

We reached Lake Winnipeg just before dusk and, to my delight, encountered a small steamer that was to head down the lake the next day. I made arrangements to travel on the boat, and I went to bed thinking how lucky I was. Alas, the next morning a gale blew up and we spent the entire day anchored in the lee of an island. We were able to leave the following day, arriving in Selkirk at about 2 p.m. I left the steamer and took a taxi to Winnipeg. The shaft remained on the steamer, which arrived in Winnipeg soon afterwards.

In the city, I was fortunate enough to find a machine shop that could fashion us a new shaft and whose proprietor was willing to have work done day and night to enable me to get back to the camp before freeze-up.

I knew the dimensions of the shaft, which arrived the next morning; the shop now had all the details necessary to begin work.

At that time, there was only one way to get messages quickly to the mine: between noon and 1 p.m., the Winnipeg radio station would broadcast any message one might choose to send. If static was not too bad, the message would get through, provided someone was listening to a radio. The transmission was only one-way, however, and I could not know if the messages had been received. I told Clayt before I left that I would send a message each day of our progress and, when the shaft was ready, of my plans for getting the shaft back to camp. He was to make plans in anticipation of our arrival.

Before setting out on the return journey, I broadcast to him that all was well in hand. I told him that on the second day I would take the train to Riverton, then take Oder Olafson’s boat to Bad Throat River on the third. From there, we would travel along what we called the 10-mile portage, which was also a potential wagon trail from Bad Throat River to Manigotagan River. There was a horse team available there for such work if Clayt got word to it by canoe.

Clayt did get my radio messages, as I was to discover. We started up the Manigotagan River at about 2 p.m. on the third day. It was dark when we hit our landing, but Clayt was there with a good bonfire to land by and, more important, a drink of scotch for each of us. The drink was welcome, since we had come up the river in a driving November rain.

I left Clayt in charge of getting the hoist operating again while I went to my tent and bed.

The shaft fit neatly into place and the hoist was in operation late the next day, 11 days after it broke down. We were lucky that the machine shop in Winnipeg had been so helpful, working day and night, because the lakes froze over just two days after I got back. If that had happened before I got back, it would have meant a six-week delay.

Two years later, with airplanes, it would have been a two-hour trip to Winnipeg. What a difference bush planes would have made to an operation as remote as ours.

— The preceding is an excerpt from A Mining Trail: 1902-1945. The author, who retired in 1945, was a manager of the Dome, Sigma and Red Lake mines in Porcupine, Ont.