In which our hero ventures northward [Bearskin Lake]

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I have discovered the greatest feeling in the world: having a backpack full of clothes on, a fishing rod in one hand and coffee in the other, wearing jeans and a plaid shirt and thinking: "This is me going to work on a Monday morning." A guy could get used to this.

I just returned from my first trip into a remote community (i.e. small village that is not connected to the grid) and it has definitely left me looking forward to my next one. This trip involved 2 days in Bearskin Lake to take some samples and oversee some soil work. There were just two of us going up: myself and Adrian, an environmental tech who also comes from a biology background (although with quite a bit more experience than myself) who will likely be my travel partner for the majority of my excursions. The trip itself was a little bit eye-opening to say the least, but more than anything it was a refreshing (and even slightly relaxing) change from working and living in Toronto.

Before the trip even got started, I got a taste of the logistics required to run regular flights to these communities. All flights are chartered, usually through Wasaya Airways although there are a few smaller airlines to choose from if nothing is available through Wasaya. I was amazed at how little notice is needed to book flights: obviously the more notice the better, but our flight was only confirmed a few weekdays in advance, and on the way back (due to a slight plan change) our flight home was arranged that very day. On top of this (and this is where it gets really amazing), flights are simultaneously coordinated for multiple groups working on multiple tasks and projects all over northern Ontario. For example, our plane may have gone from Thunder Bay to Bearskin Lake and dropped off the two of us, picked up someone else, dropped them off at another remote site such as Sandy Lake, picked up a load of cargo there and either returned to Thunder Bay or if necessary, stopped at one or two more places. Several flights are coordinated every week, often with more than one on a given day, and this is all organized from the Thunder Bay office by a single person.

There are staff houses at all the Remote stations, but they may be unmanned for extended periods of time and therefore everything comes up with us. There is a locker in the storage room that contains nothing but bags of freshly-laundered bedding (mattress cover, sheet, comforter and pillowcase) that we bring up with us. When we return, we throw the bedding back into the bags and it is carted off to be cleaned. I got lucky on this matter for two reasons: 1) This year all the staff house beds have been or are being replaced with new mattresses and 2) I got a new set of bedding that fit these mattresses (Adrian was not as lucky with respect to the latter). All our food is also sent with us, but I will get into that later on.

So I arrive at the office on Monday morning, backpack-on-back and fishing rod-in-hand and meet Adrian for the first time (he spent the last week in Kingston attending a conference on soil remediation in arctic permafrost). The first thing he does after shaking my hand is help me find an old map tube to house my fishing rod, and I immediately know that we're going to get along just fine. I call the Bearskin Lake garage operator to confirm that the backhoe is ready for us and we jump in Adrian's car and head to the airport. Also joining us for the ride is Sean, a linesman (remember when I said that they coordinate everything efficiently?) who is being dropped off at the 'nearby' Sandy Lake First Nation reserve after Adrian and I get to Bearskin. The advantage of having another person with us on the trip up is that I get to hear twice the number of stories about all these places I'll be visiting, and have another person to talk to as we sit crammed in our tiny little plane.

And a tiny little plane it is. A single-engine turboprop, maybe 30' long... if you want more info, detailed profiles of the vehicles are on Wasaya's web site. Adrian's minivan (which drove right up to this thing to load on our stuff) was about as big as the cabin section of the fuselage. The cargo bay was only separated from the seating areas by a nylon mesh net, presumably to keep our stuff from bumping into us if we hit turbulence. There were 6 seats in the cabin, two of which were occupied by the pilots. Yes, there were less seats in this airplane than most SUVs, and that's exactly what it felt like sitting inside the thing. We throw our bags into the cargo area, duck under the wing and hop into the cabin. Finally, I get to live my lifelong dream of flying in a tiny plane that has a single propeller on its nose.

I am amazed at how quickly the pilots get this little thing in the air. There is almost no taxi-time (i.e. plane driving around to get set up on the runway) and the liftoff takes no more than a few seconds- going back to the SUV analogy, it's like the pilots were just pulling out of a parking space (which, by the way, the plan was actually sitting in since the charter section of the airport is almost exclusively used by these sorts of tiny planes). Despite lacking flight attendants, there is actually a cooler of snacks and drinks that they pilots tell us to go wild on. I open it up, looking for something to help my ears pop as we ascend, and am a bit startled by what I find- all the bags of chips are puffed up like balloons and look as if they are about to explode! Apparently the cabins of these little planes do not automatically pressurize like those of their larger cousins (they do pressurize a bit, but only near maximum altitude), and the air trapped in the chip bags has greatly expanded to keep up with the dropping atmospheric pressure. This explains why my ears are unusually poppable, and also why Adrian and I have to leave some air in our water sample bottles later on. I gingerly open a bag of sunchips and after a bit of deliberation, decide to skip the carbonated cans of pepsi. The takeoff is fairly smooth but Adrian (who is quite the experienced charter passenger) tells me to keep an eye out for flat-topped or flat-bottomed layers of clouds: this means that there is a relatively heavy gradient between the atmospheric layers on which the clouds rest and is indicative of a bumpy ride.

Sean (who is quite a character) has brought his car's GPS unit on board the plane. This allows us to track not only our location but also our current and top speed. I ask him if this is so that we can know how far we've gone without bugging the pilots- he responds by stating that the device saves the top speed of any trip, and that the only way to set the top speed is to actually travel with the GPS at that speed, and he has brought it so that he point out to passengers in his car that he is capable of driving at 530 km/h. If you are ever in a car and see that the driver is capable of ludicrous speeds, they have likely recently been on a small plane. This brings me to another point- how nice it is to fly charter. No security, no showing of identification: we show up, head to the Wasaya office, they open the gate, we drive up and load our stuff on and we are ready to go. Remember that Smith & Wesson knife I bought and was raving about in the first blog post? It was clipped to my belt the entire plane ride back.

The flight itself is smooth: I enjoy the view and snap a few pics from the window. The plane is quite loud- Wasaya provides ear plugs but I have Adrian and Sean's stories to drown out the noise. The flight is about as long as the flight from Toronto to Thunder Bay, and on a map it appears fairly close distance-wise. I did not have many assumptions about the airports up north, but one of those assumptions was the existence of paved runways. Incorrect. The airstrip is made entirely of compacted dirt and sand, and when I step out and see that I'm leaving footprints in the stuff my respect for the pilots increases exponentially. Sean helps us unload our stuff and hops back in the plane, which takes off immediately. The pilots just shut the doors and turn around and take off. I marvel again at the speed at which this whole charter flight process operates before I gradually come to another realization.

There is no one else at this airstrip. Not a single person.

The 'airport' (again, really an airstrip) is composed of a few buildings, a fuel tank, and an open gate. Adrian walks over to the garage and comes out driving our truck, a diesel F250 that for some reason has a spare radiator in the backseat. We load our stuff and drive off to the station. Like the runway at the airstrip, none of the roads are paved (in fact, the 'main road' was in the process of being graded by a bulldozer, which was a slight annoyance as it left sizable rocks all over the ungraded sections). The station is kept padlocked (I have heard a few of the stories about the bill collection guys' trips up here) and so is the staff house. The staff house itself is nicer than I expected- it reminds me of some of the mediocre-to-nicer student houses I lived in at Waterloo. The beds all have the new mattresses (score) and there is satellite TV available. We check to see that the water works (it too has to be ordered before we head up) and call the office to let them know we've arrived. Then we start unpacking the food.

And food there was. "Food for two guys for a few days" turned out to be larger than the most gluttonous grocery run I have ever done -- the food literally does not stop coming out of these boxes. Bob had hinted that we eat pretty well in the field, but I ask Adrian why they sent us such a clearly excessive amount of food. He explains that they always send extra in case bad weather halts flights for a few days, but also it is a way for the company to 'unofficially' give back to the communities: a lot of the things we bring up (fresh veggies and fruits etc.) are expensive at best and impossible at worst to get up here so they are real rarities. We says that we eat what we need, and then donate the rest either to the local nursing station (Remote version of a small hospital/clinic) or to the shelter house in Thunder Bay. I can't stand wasting food, so this pleases me immensely.

We do a quick tour of the town... while the main buildings are about what you'd expect, a lot of the other houses are in fairly rough shape. Some yards and buildings look fairly maintained (such as the school, new church and band office), but once you leave the main road (and even at some sections along the main road) there are some pretty run-down buildings. Some, like the old church, probably just haven't been used in ages but others are still in use. Everyone is extremely nice (although several people avoid us because they assume we're either there to collect for bills or cut off someone's power), and after a few quick stops to take care of some quick jobs we head back back to the staff house for the night.

I mention to Adrian that I might go throw a line in the lake and see if I can catch something- he is hesitant at first because he has brought some work to finish up, but he eventually decides to come along. A good thing too, as he turns out to be an experienced northern fisherman who teaches my newbie ass a few tricks and techniques. We find a little spot on a bridge just outside of the town and after about 20 minutes of casting out, I manage to catch a small to mediocre (1-2lb) jackfish. Satisfied that I caught something on my first fishing attempt (Adrian assures me that we'll eventually get some local guys to take us to the best fishing spots in Ontario) we head back to cook dinner. We ate like kings and didn't even put a dent in our food supply- again, extra is added in case we get stuck for a bit... just means there's more stuff to donate to the community.

Day 2: Sample time. It was a little bit odd rolling out of bed and opening the door only to find yourself in a hydro station. Since these places aren't connected to the provincial grid each community has its own set of diesel generators and fuel tanks- this is also where the staff houses are located. Fuel levels are monitored from Thunder Bay (Hydro people: there is actually a mini little OGCC for all the remote communities at TB9. It consists of just a few workstations and is actually quite cool) and fuel is flown up whenever levels get below a certain point. Of course, despite the strictest of precautions sometimes environmental cleanup is necessary with such a system, and that's where Adrian and I come in.

We head to a plot of land where we have to check up on a soil remediation project that is the primary purpose for our trip. The contaminated soil is contained in a Bio-Cell, a large coated basin where water can drain into a blocked-off pond and the microbes and bugs in the soil can work to break down the contaminants. As soon as we get close to it, Adrian can tell (from a very apparent diesel-smell) that the soil is far from clean, but we take soil and water samples regardless to take back to the lab in Thunder Bay. We also bring in a local backhoe operator to flip the soil, which should help speed up the microbes that are doing the actual remediation.

Despite my brief description, it took quite some time to finish up at the Bio-Cell so we went straight to the station to pack up our stuff and get ready for the flight out. We end up with four boxes of leftover food and we make a quick stop at the nursing station to drop it off. I am shocked by the health facilities, in a good way: the nursing station is by far the best-kept building in the entire community, and is nicer than most health clinics I have been to in Southern Ontario... I don't know if it's just a new building but it certainly stood out. Don't get me wrong, it was still quite tiny considering that it's probably the only healthcare facility within a few hundred miles but it was definitely well-kept.

And then came probably the biggest surprise of the trip.

I don't think I've ever gotten to watch someone's face light up as much and as quickly as that nurse's did when we brought in the food. It was amazing, when we asked if there were people that were short on food or cash that could use some of this stuff she just began stammering out how great this was, and although it seemed like tons of food for Adrian and I, it probably didn't even amount to the average family's weekly trip to Sobey's. I was thrown off but also a little proud (which was probably quite misplaced; it's not like I had bought the food) that just by dropping off some leftovers we could provide so much help to this woman who was running the best-kept operation in town. As someone who has spent his entire life being able to run around the corner and buy a fresh apple, I was caught off guard. I mean, I knew that things like fresh vegetables and fruit and even some of the canned/boxed stuff was hard to get up there, but I had no idea how rarely stuff like that actually makes it to these places. Just goes to show how different things can get without even leaving your own Province.

Moral lessons aside, the important thing was that nothing was wasted and everything will end up where it should; I can see what Adrian meant by "unofficially giving back to the communities". All in all it made for a good first trip: not too eventful, but it gave me a chance to lose my 'remote community virginity' gradually, with a short and easy trip to just get a taste for life in the north. Nothing is confirmed yet, but it's looking like the next flight up will be to a different community sometime next week... expect a few more blog posts in the next little while 😉

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Photos

Inside
The cabin/cargo bay

The view from my seat
I was in the back row

The Bearskin Lake 'airport'
The main building at the airstrip. Notice the lack of people

Cargo, I guess
A cargo dump of some kind.

My room for the night
Inside the staff house bedrooms. Notice the nice new mattress

The Main Drag
The main road of the Bearskin Lake community

Old church
A bit worse for wear

The school
Oddly enough, way nicer-looking than the middle-school I went to in Oakville

Development?
A clearing through a section of forest

The beach
Checking out another view of the lake from the other side of town

Gettin' my rod wet
This is what it's all about

Sample time
Taking water samples (i.e., why we came up here)

So this is a Bio-Cell
Adrian checking out the Bio-Cell drainage pond

Soil time
Overseeing the local operators turn the soil to get those microbes workin'

Leftovers!
The food we had left to give to the community

Bearskin Lake Nursing Station
The newest (and nicest) building in the community

Heading home
The beautiful view on our ascent out of Bearskin.