The
time we took the show on the road
Back in the late 50s and early 60s in the days of the cold war, there used to be an early defense warning system south
of the DEW line called the Mid-Canada Line or MCL.
We were approached to travel with a variety show to entertain the troops and civilians stationed at these outposts.
The tour was sponsored by Canadian Marconi and comprised a chorus line, folk singing duo, house band, male
and female soloists who also sang duets and a rock band (us).
We really hit the high spots.
Our Transportation
They told us we’d be
flying in the same plane as the Prime Minister did. What they didn’t tell us was that it was the
North Star that Prime Minister Diefenbaker used to fly in before he started using a sensible aircraft.
On
the appointed morning, our North Star began its sedate taxi ride from the hangar to the runway. To be fair,
the inside of the plane was very comfortable but any other illusions we had were shattered when they gave us headsets.
The headsets had no wires connecting them to anything so it was obvious they weren’t for listening to music.
We soon discovered they were earmuffs--the kind that people working in heavily noise polluted environments wear.
When the captain revved the engines and took off,
we found out why we needed them. Our North Star had to be one of the noisiest aircraft ever to roll off
any runway anywhere. In-flight conversation was impossible. We later discovered that
even if we wore the earmuffs, our ears would buzz for a minimum of three hours after every flight.
Our first stop was Schefferville, Quebec. We played in the rec
centre and even though it was the middle of winter, the weather was not too bad.
Our next stop was also in Quebec - Great Whale River. The pilot
warned us before the aircraft doors opened that it was 52 degrees below zero outside. That was Fahrenheit. If you have
successfully made the conversion to Celsius then you know that when the temperature gets that low, the scales are almost identical.
We
shouldn't have been shocked at the cold. It was just north of where Hudson Bay and James Bay join. The radar
base was right next to the southernmost Eskimo (they hadn't become Inuit yet) settlement in Canada
Next
Came RCAF Station Winisk Ontario, located on the mouth of the Winisk River, which flows into the southwest side of
Hudson Bay.
The airfield at Winisk was a very busy place with military and civilian transient traffic.
RCAF Winisk closed down in April 1965. The station is still standing, just as it
was when shut down. Unfortunately, the same can not be said for the community of Winisk. In the spring of 1986, the area was
struck by a massive flood, killing a number of people and destroying everything. The community moved up-river to a new settlement
and renamed itself Peawanuk. (Cree for flint)
The picture shows the recreation Centre where we put on our shows.
Our next stop was to be Bird Manitoba. First we had to land in
Churchill as Bird was accessible only by train. Churchill looked quite different in those days. This picture of
the Hudson's Bay Company was taken in summer. we arrived there in the middle of winter.
The trip to Bird was a real adventure- a 75 mile train ride that
took just under 7 hours. We travelled through some of the wildest country we had ever seen. As far as the transportation
went, some of the train cars had wood stoves. The bad news - there was no wood.
In Bird, we played at (where else?) the Rec Centre of course.
That's
where we were supposed to end the trip. There was a problem, however. After the return train trip to Churchill,
we found out that we couldn't return to Montreal because there had been a huge Ice storm.we were therfore, diverted
to north Bay, Ontario and therein lies a whole other story.
We'll save that for another time.
