In the summer of 1968, when I was visiting my parents at Meadow
Lake, Saskatchewan, where they had moved to from Winnipeg year earlier, we took
an evening drive out to the lake. There were some seaplanes at the dock there,
including a Norseman and a Cessna 180. My father looked at the Norseman and
said to me, "That is the one you rode on when you were a baby."
I am not sure if I had heard the story before, but I have certainly
heard it since, most notably from my mother's father, Grandpa Frank F Enns. He
felt he had to tell me it when I was doing a video-taped interview of him
near the end of his life.
My parents were working as a missionary couple, a young minister
and his wife if you will, for the United Church of Canada in Oxford House,
Manitoba, where they were stationed from 1945-1947. In the late summer of 1946,
my mother made her way to her parents' place on the farm where she had grown up
in the Burwalde District north of the town of Winkler, Manitoba. After I was
born and deemed old enough to travel, my grandfather took my mother and myself
by train to what was then the end of the railroad at The Pas. This was where
Tom Lamb would fly us out of to join my father in Oxford house.
I can re-check the details but it seems to me there were 2 problems.
This was early December. It was what we in the north called
"freeze-up." It was the time of year between when you could land on
the lake with pontoons and when you could safely land on it with skis. So, in
part we were stuck in The Pas waiting for the ice to be strong enough to land
on. However, I think we may have been delayed to that point because of
mechanical problems with the plane. The plane was the Nordouyn Norseman CF-DHS.
In any case, it wasn't until December that we took off from The Pas.
For some reason it was late in the day, which is short there at that time of
the year in any case, and we needed to make a landing in Norway House. Perhaps
we had goods to unload or people that were destined for that location as well.
In any case, it was really getting rather dark as we circled to land. The pilot
thought he saw the strip on the ice which we were to land on, as there were
evergreen branches on both sides of it. This was a common way of marking
landing strips on snow-covered lakes in the north. However, again, in the
deepening blue of the snow in the rapidly fading light, he could see figures
running back and forth across the strip brandishing what appeared to be burning
torches. There was nothing to it but to land somewhere else nearby.
Then the pilot and his passengers learned the awful truth. Those
evergreens were to mark out where the locals had just made their first cutting
of ice for fish preservation. If we had landed there, we would have gone
straight through into the freezing waters.
I suspect this story meant so much to my grandfather because, not
only was it an account of how his daughter and grandson were saved a possible
death. It possibly also indicated to him, man of faith that he was. that we
were destined for more.
In any case, it was not until my late 60s when I was thinking about
my past and looking into aircraft that have been part of it, that I discovered
more of the history of this aircraft.
Here’s a snapshot of its history:
New from the factory, the aircraft
was registered as CF-BHS to Tom Lamb of Lamb Airways of The Pas, Manitoba,
Canada, on October 4, 1945. Twenty-one years later, on May 16, 1966, the
aircraft was sold to G.M. Clark and John F. Midgett of Meadow Lake,
Saskatchewan, It was reregistered to C and M Airways of La Loche, in 1971,
while on September 28, 1989 it was registered to La Loche Airways.
While taxiing on Cree Lake on
October 11, 1989, fire broke out and the aircraft was beached on Prowse Island
and subsequently damaged beyond repair by the fire. The registration was
cancelled on April 4, 1990. Eighteen years later its remains had been rebuilt
to static display in the colours of Lamb Airways and on June 28, 2008 unveiled
on a pedestal in the Lions Park, Thompson, Manitoba, to commemorate the bush
plane and their bush pilots, especially Tom Lamb.
And here's Tom Lamb receiving it
from the factory a short while earlier:
Lambair has their own website at:
At the top of their website is a picture of Tom and his sons Greg,
Jack, Don, Dennis, Conrad (youngest), etc. Some of these names I remember well
from my childhood in Grand Rapids, Manitoba [1948-1957]. By that time, Tom’s
sons were already flying with him. The early Norsemen and Beavers were being
augmented by smaller, faster, more modern Cessna 170 and 180s.
Their history is summarized on their website:
Lambair, which was incorporated in
1935 as Lamb Airways Limited, began with one aircraft - a Stinson SR8 five
passenger plane. This plane was used to haul fish from The Pas, Manitoba to the
rail head at Cormorant before the fish froze and before the market fell in
Chicago. Tom Lamb, who established the airline, bought the Stinson in 1930 and
taught himself to fly it.
Lambair grew from public demand, as
there was no other means of transportation for fish to market at the time
except horse-drawn sleighs. Airplanes shortened the time to market and ensured
higher quality fish to the large North American market. While transportation of
fish, fur, trappers and fisherman were its primary business, the largest
expansion of Lambair was during the construction of the mid-Canada line during
the 1950's. The airline served all of Canada and parts of the United States and
Greenland during its years in service. Lambair continued to haul fish, but its
primary cargo was people - Inuit families from Resolute, Northwest territories
to the far Arctic island hunting camps; equipment - oil drilling rigs to Sable
Island from Halifax and food supplies. Medical evacuations and emergency mercy
flights also accounted for a substantial amount of the company's traffic from
the far north.
I still remember one of those
"mercy flights." Again, it was "freeze-up." Some of the men
of the community, my father included, had gone out to begin to cut their wood
supply for the winter before the snow got too deep and made it more difficult
to call their loads back to the community. Suddenly, one of the young man,
Norman McKay, severely gashed his foot. It was thought he needed to be taken to
the nearest hospital, which was The Pas. A huge crew of men where quickly
gathered together to hack down enough trees and pile enough snow together on
the strip of land so cleared for a plane with skis to land on it. Lamb air was
contacted by one of the local trader's radios and I think it was one of their new
Cessnas that came in and took Norman out to get his foot fixed up. That was the
beginning of the Grand Rapids air strip.
As development in the north
progressed, Lambair opened new bases and served Wabowden, Thompson, Churchill,
Norway House and Gillam as well as The Pas. These bases were established to
serve all of northern Manitoba and the North West Territories. It carried out
its own maintenance operations in its hangers at Churchill, Thompson and The
Pas and in 1965 built a new headquarters at The Pas.
At the time, Lambair was Canada's
oldest airline still under the original management. Upon the death of Tom Lamb
in 1969, the founder's six sons, all pilot-engineers, ran the airline. By 1979,
Lambair had a fleet which included Bristol freighters, twin otters, Otters,
Beavers, Cessna 180s, Bell G4A helicopters, Twin Islanders, Aztecs and DC-3s.
The planes were purchased from all over the world including Norway, England and
Afghanistan. This fleet offered the greatest variety of aircraft to look after
the traffic of the north, according to Donald Lamb, President of Lambair, in
1973. The combination of heavy freight aircraft with short takeoff and landing
aircraft, to the fast light instrument flight rules (IFR) twin engine planes
allowed the company to take on assignments for governments, oil companies,
mining operations and continue to haul passengers throughout the north. The
helicopters were for prospecting, hydro-electric development and forestry
operations.
Lambair's history is detailed in the
autobiography of Jack Lamb, "My Life in the North".
The youngest of the six flying Lamb brothers,
Conrad Lamb has written his memoirs of living and working in northern Canada.
"From Tractor Train to Bush Plane" is a series of stories about
Conrad and his adventures while aiding in the development of the north.
In 1984, Pulitzer
Prize winning author Leland Stowe published a biography of Tom Lamb called The Last Great Frontiersman. The book was based
on a series of taped interviews (available on this website) with Tom Lamb prior
to his death and with family members after. The book is out of print.
Gladys Lillian Lamb
Allan also known as Billie documented her family’s early life at Moose Lake
Manitoba in the book “Dew Upon the Grass”. This book is out of print.
And the BHS Norseman is featured here:
The slogan Tom and his pilot sons went by was: "Do not ask us
where we fly . . . Tell us where you want to go"
Here is also my
father's photo of the Norseman he remembered unloading supplies at Oxford House, MB in 1946. And look at the license letters on the side: BHS!
Here is probably how it looked when my mother and I rode on it in
December 1946 [photo from Lambair website]:
Photographed ca. 1954, from Jack
Lamb via Bill Ewing, it looks like it is being overhauled:
Here is, I believe, Tom himself
with it in Grand Rapids, or a different one - Lambair had 6 of them: MK4 CF-FUU Leased, MK5
CF-MAM snN29 26, MK5 CF-BHS snN29-7 1945, MK6
CF-GUQ, MK6 CF-INN and MK6 CF-ILR [photo from my father]
Here it is on some remote northern lake with a Husky and a Bell
helicopter [photo from Lambair website]:
And finally, here's my photo of BHS 22 yrs later as I finally saw it again in Meadow Lake SK, in 1968.
And, finally, it’s
last resting place [photos from the Thompson tourism website]:
Here’s another version
of the story behind that:
A dedicated group of
volunteers worked evenings and weekends for over two years to restore this
crashed Norseman float plane that lay in the swamp near Garden Hill, Manitoba
since 1969. The rusty shell was rescued and brought to life in Thompson
under the supervision of Fred Palmer and Marion Morberg. The plane, now
fully restored sits atop a 14-ft tall pedestal in the Thompson Lions
Club Park and is part of Thompson's Spirit Way
walkway.
Norseman float planes were the only such planes
built in Canada. These workhorses were critical in the development and
evolution of Northern Canada. Their unique three bladed prop and fabric
skin made them legendary. Only a few still fly today.
Dedicated pilots
in the North risked their lives to move supplies and people across the wide
expanse of Northern Manitoba tundra and boreal forest.
This stunning
site pays tribute to the pilots, mechanics and support staff in northern
aviation.
Location:
Mystery Lake Road,
right before the Miles Hart Bridge.
Website:
Lorne Brandt, acknowledging these photos, except for the ones my father took in Oxford House and Grand Rapids and the one I took in Meadow Lake are all 'borrowed' and can be found on the internet as cited.
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