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    Going North
    Going North
    Going North
    Ebook77 pages1 hour

    Going North

    By Alfred Goodale

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    About this ebook

    “In the insanity of the oil rush, on a cold Canadian afternoon, the trucks arrived from Streeper’s Transport. The cook shack and fuel sloop, as big as fishing boats in dry dock, were winched aboard flatbed trailers. Groceries arrived from the Hudson’s Bay Company, and Dan Vann drove up with three Cat Skinners who had caught the last jet from Dawson’s Creek.

    Oversized load permits were issued, doors slammed and gears were engaged. In no close order the foreman’s pickup and two big rigs headed for the interior plain and the remote Sikanni Chief River.

    There was still light in the sky when we got where we were going. The Cats twirled about snowplowing a campsite. I stood and watched as the cook shack was shunted off its bed, teetering top-heavily past the point of balance.”

    "Going North" calls up the story of a prep school teacher who indulges his dream of finding work in subarctic Canada, and the adventures and experiences along a journey as wild as the frozen north.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherAlfred Goodale
    Release dateSep 24, 2015
    ISBN9781311511485
    Going North

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      Book preview

      Going North - Alfred Goodale

      Going North

      Published by Alfred Goodale at Smashwords

      Copyright 2015 Alfred Goodale

      This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy.

      Introduction

      With summer sessions ending at Deane Academy in Maine and ‘Go North Young Man’ as my motto, I said goodbye to Dixie, checked the oil and filled the tank. After crossing over the bridge I was waved into Canada.

      I liked the spruce scented campground overlooking the Great Lakes. I admired the plump bird that watched as I set up camp. It was a Canadian Jay – no relation to the American Jay.

      The lunch stop was above the transcontinental railroad tracks. Farther west in Alberta, I stayed in a country hotel that charged four dollars for a pitcher and basin room on the second floor. After lunch, it morphed into a crowded bar room, selling illegal beer for ten cents a glass. I wrote a postcard to Dixie, but didn’t mail it.

      In the big city of Edmonton, I looked up Volkswagen Canada and had a block heater installed in my car for easier winter starting. It was going to be cold, and I didn’t want to be messing with the engine when it was twenty below.

      While I waited beside the Alaska Highway, it was too cold to read a book but not too cold to sleep. The first sign that the cow moose season had opened was a series of rifle shots echoing through the hills and valleys. The shots seemed to come closer. A bloody carcass passed in the back of a pickup truck. The car was finished and I overtook the truck in short order as I hurried back to the dusty Alaskan highway.

      Two days later, I glided onto the paved streets of Fort Nelson, British Columbia in search of Canada Manpower and gainful employment.

      Part I

      Chapter 1

      Line Cutting with Dan Vann

      I looked at him first, my eyes floating into his. I did what he said and loved it. Either Dan Vann was the nicest person that ever lived, or he was a tough slob with charisma, one of the two. I knew that right away. He was my first foreman up north, a big burly guy who had fought in World War II and been wounded in Belgium. Having been hit in the throat, he had a hoarse voice that he couldn’t make much noise with. He had to whistle with his fingers out the cook shack door to get a Cat Skinner’s attention or to call somebody back.

      Not that his lack of voice prevented him from talking by the hour however. As one of the foreman on the Davis Copper Road when I started cooking that fall, he wasn’t above discussing with the new flunky the price of rapeseed and rye and the doubtful future of his two quarter sections--summers, he farmed down south near Grande Prairie--and after breakfast when Pete and I were cleaning up he stayed at the table getting underfoot, yammering away. Pete would kick anybody else out, but not Dan Vann. He’d cooked for him the winter before and he was scared to death of him.

      Dan’s order when I arrived was to shut down the summer road work. This had to be completed before the freeze-up, when heavy equipment could move into the bush to start cutting line, five crews with four or five foremen. That’s what the company did all winter – cut lines or roads for the seismic surveyors. They travelled up from Calgary and Edmonton exploring for oil. That’s where Harmon Haar earned his big money.

      Now men were leaving and the earth moving buggies and Caterpillar tractors were crowding back into camp for servicing. Doyle, the superintendent, spent less time in camp and more time in Fort Nelson at company headquarters. The camp mechanic had his coveralls washed courtesy of the bull cook, then promptly got in his car and left for vacation. The cook, Pete, spoke to Superintendent Doyle as well, and left me to do the honors of cooking for the remaining staff.

      It was a Sunday, when chicken or turkey was typically served for supper. Chicken every Sunday- that was the only way you knew it was a weekend, since the men pulled eleven-hour shifts, seven days a week. This particular Sunday featured a twenty-pound turkey, which I stuffed the way I’d seen Pete do it, brushing with cooking oil and seasoned with salt and pepper. I opened canned peas, mixed instant potatoes, heated Pete’s all-purpose gravy, dished up the cranberry sauce--and supper was a feast. Undoubtedly, it was a feast. The Cat Skinners couldn’t believe I was a stranger to the art. The turkey emerged from the oven tender and fragrant and crispy. The stuffing was all eaten up and there was even pie for dessert.

      Earlier I’d been promised that Dan Vann (then in charge at camp) would help with the cooking if needed, but all Dan had done was to peek in the oven in mid-afternoon, between cribbage hands.

      Sure, the old crow’s steaming away! Now, he sat toothpick in mouth with his shirttails out and wheezed in

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