c/o C. M. & S. Co.
Yellowknife, N. W. T.
via Goldfields
Sept 19th, 1937.
Dear Mother:
Your letter and Mary’s posted on the 10th arrived here on the 19th which must be almost a record. It was quite a day for the mail as it arrived from Goldfields by plane and from the townsite by canoe at approximately the same time. I also got some more photographs on the same day. A lot of them seem poorly developed and I will have to find some other place to do them I think.
My transfer to Giant is definitely off now. Some legal dispute resulted in C. M. & S. losing the property. Doug Wilmot will be down there all winter carrying on with a skeleton crew. The rest of the men are coming over here as we have acquired additional property adjoining this. So the carpenters are working harder than ever now putting up a third bunkhouse. The hospital is also going up now and the scene is much different from that at the time the picture of the lonely cookhouse was taken. A short while ago the oil tank was finished, waterproofed with cement etc and pipes laid down to the dock. Everything looked perfect and we all admired this feat of engineering. A few days later the oil tanker arrived with near 100,000 gals of oil. They started to pump the oil into the tank that night. The next morning I came down to wash and there was the construction engineer. “Well, how is the oil coming” I said, and immediately scented that something was wrong. They had got the tank about one quarter full and then found it was leaking. All the oil that was in the tank has been put into 45. gal drums and we are now wondering what to do with the tank. It is a great waste of money if it cannot be fixed.
Shortly after the oil tanker left another boat load of machinery and lumber arrived. The biggest thing on the barge was a tank thirty feet long and weighing about 15 tons. It was to be used for water but I expect it will be used for oil now. This boat was the third within a week. One of them was pushing three barges. I guess it isn’t so very far from freeze-up time although the weather has been perfect lately. It is beginning to get dark very early now.
I have got the details of the radio operation for Dick which will be used when we get the power for the new transmitter in about a week. We will transmit in either 34 m (8720 k.c.), 53 m (5705 k.c.) or 22 m (13,200 k.c.). Every morning at 10:00 we will get the time signal from CFU in Trail probably on 34 meters and immediately afterwards there will be communication either between CFU and CZ 3X in Goldfields or CFO in Yellowknife. This is the only definite time I can give you now as the schedules are to be changed. CZ 3X does quite a bit of ham work using the call letters VE4 AFP.
I saw a picture of Mary and Mrs. Matt. in the Nelson News.
I don’t think there will be much in the way of duck shooting. There are some in the smaller lakes surrounding us but I haven’t seen any.
Another man for the office came in yesterday. I wouldn’t have thought it was necessary after the summer rush is over as there won’t be nearly so much to do when we eventually get caught up. I imagine I will be doing time keeping most of the time especially when all the men from Giant have been transferred to here.
I have just heard that the final freeze-up last year was on Oct. 26th. The boat that is in here now expects to make two more trips.
I hope Peter manages to get his volume-sized letter finished before freezeup [sic].
By the way, I got the duplicate tennis pictures.
I am sorry to hear you are to have some of your teeth out.
With love
Tony