c/o C. M. and S. Co. Ltd.
Yellowknife, N. W. T.
Via Goldfields
Aug 21st 1937.
Dear Mother:
I received a letter from you a couple of days ago from San Francisco. It sounds as if you are having a wonderful trip. I think it is quite a time since I wrote but I hadn’t realised this as one day is so much like the next. I have to keep a record of when I write letters. I haven’t filled out the insurance yet. I must try and do that tomorrow. Archie’s letter came yesterday. It was very interesting. I would like to have letters from all of you.
As to the “Lifes” I can’t see shy they cost so much to send. If they are open at each end and only wrapped in the middle each one should cost about 4¢ to send, as I have sorted mail that has come in that way.
I am enclosing a bunch of photographs that I am sure will interest you. I don’t think they are printed as well as they might be. I took 37 altogether and only one didn’t turn out at all. That was the one of the fire we passed over. I have taken thirty pictures on the second roll. This morning Eric who has a Ciné and I took some pictures of a few Indians who were collecting rubbish outside the staff-house. They are very shy of cameras and would hold big sheets of cardboard up before them to our amusement. They say these Indians are next to the aborigines in intelligence although they do use outboards.
Archie asked whether we lived chiefly on canned food and we do. All fruit, cabbage, corn etc is canned. Potatoes are fresh of course and fresh meat is flown in from McMurray. For a while we were out of meat and on another occasion out of potatoes for several days. Butter is also canned and milk is in powder form. In the winter we will gets [sic] lots of caribou meat from the Indians for next to nothing. They say it is not very exciting hunting caribou as it is too easy.
Construction is still shooting ahead. The addition to the cookhouse is practically finished, and the new stove which came in on the boat two days ago is already installed. A two storey food-warehouse is practically finished and foundations have been laid for the power house. Mr. Archibald was here last night and was the first to sleep in the guest house.
Up at the shaft foundations are being laid for the mill and another power house and the shaft is down twenty five feet in solid rock. I was up there tonight and had another shower and took some pictures. The muckers in the shaft have a tough time at present as the derrick is not ready and they have to use three platforms, one above the other in staggered formation, throwing the rock from one up to the next which is a slow process.
There are two diesel tractors working now. One is equipped with lights and keeps going all day and all night.
I am afraid I have run out of ideas.
With love
Tony.