Vehicle Problems. The first vehicle casualty was the D4 Cat that had been on loan to Good Hope to install a radial ground. It was returned on the last southbound boat of the season and was received with a cracked block. Someone had not paid attention to the anti-freeze level before shipping it after freezing temperatures had arrived. The first problem was how to get a dead piece of machinery off the Barge. We used the D7 to winch it around the deck, then dozed a ramp to the deck, winched it off and hauled it into camp.

This left the D7 for airstrip maintenance and all the hauling duties. In early summer, 1949, Hal Zinn and I were bringing in a load from the beach when the Cat broke a track on the hill. We pulled the track back together with come-alongs and wove it with wire rope. The tractor was slowly moved back to base - walking alongside with crowbars to ease the broken part over the drive sprocket. We had no idea how to repair the tracks. Track pins are put in using a hydraulic press. That's when S/Sgt Alex Lowe came in from Ft. Simpson where he was in charge of the transmitters and the Cat 4600 power plants.

Alex had an interesting history. He came from the Yukon where he had his own gold claim and had worked the gold dredges in the summer. In the winter he took correspondence courses and attended courses on the "outside". He was a qualified welder, diesel mechanic, radio mechanic, and cat operator, and held a DOT 2nd class operator's certificate. Alex enlisted in the army in Dawson City in 1939 and was put directly on the circuit, spending his entire army career in the north. He knew what to do about the Cat tracks. With the broken track lying on the ground fore-and-aft with the track plates removed, oxy-acetylene heat was applied and the track pins hammered out. New track links and two-piece track pins were then installed, track plates replaced, and the track tensioned - we were back in business.

In late winter the RCAF delivered the new block and replacement parts for the D4. Alex had stripped the engine while waiting for the track parts, then started in rebuilding the engine. I was on evening shifts and was able to get in a week as mechanic's helper on the D4.

The next vehicle casualty was the 3-ton stake truck, the clutch of which gave out after too many trips to the beach while the cats were out of service. Cpl Ray Bebeau and Signm. Jack Unger, vehicle mechanics from Calder, came in to replace the clutch. That is when they had the Bear hunt.

The Starting engine of the D7 had been getting low on compression. after the cold weather and snow arrived it stalled outside the garage and could not be started. Hal Zinn thought he could repair it if we could get enough heat around the engine to prevent frost burn and fingers sticking to the cold metal. Parts came on the next CPA flight. By that time a structure had been built on the side of the Cat and draped in canvas. Snow was banked to block off the spaces around the tracks. The temperature was in the -25 Fahrenheit range I had managed to get one of the old worn-out Stewart Warner aircraft heaters running ,and with that bearing directly on the starting engine along with several 100 watt light bulbs, Hal installed new rings and connecting rod bearings. Calder was finding out that running a station that had an airstrip could be expensive.

To illustrate that point, the first boat downriver in 1949 was the Yukon Transport Company boat MV Sandy Jane, carrying building supplies for two of our station/quarters buildings, warehouses, etc. Lumber, bricks, cement, wallboard, furnaces and tanks, electrical and plumbing equipment, etc., were all dumped on the beach along with two 100 ft. antenna masts.

At that point our beach road was still out, with a huge ice flow jammed diagonally through it. We at first tried using the bulldozer to move the ice, but because of the angle the dozer blade deflected upward, so it was axes against a 7-foot thick barricade of ice.

Then the river rose!!!

There was no way we were going to move this mountain of supplies before it floated off or was destroyed. Panic messages went off to System Headquarters in Edmonton (Calder) for authority to hire local labour to rescue our supplies. Calder said OK, but at a rate of 90 cents per hour. The local rates were $1.00 an hour. Leo Kotowich, the local Hudson's Bay Company factor said "no problem". He was the one who was going to hire and pay the local help and then bill DND. Leo said to work them nine hours and pay them for 10. We had a dozen workers appear with Leo and we billeted and fed them for three days, almost round-the-clock, to move the stores with the water steadily rising. Steel mast sections, bricks, etc, were left to go under water, but everything else was saved.

When all this happened Scotty McQueen said he was not going to feed a gang of Indians - and quit. Cpl. Dick Bullock, the NCO i/c sent Scotty back to Ft. Wrigley with Leo, and I was nominated as cook. This was the second time I had been drafted into this chore, the first time being when McQueen got his feet frozen the previous winter.

A few weeks later Howie Crowell and Ken Stewart came in to oversee the erection of the 100 Ft. LF antenna masts. At this point half the steel antenna sections were still under water. There was nothing for it but to strip off and swim to find them. Some were easy - chest deep where you could feel for them with your feet, duck down and hook in a meat hook, then haul ashore with a rope. The ones in deeper water were harder to find, groping around in opaque water, icy cold with a 5-mph current. The ice had only been gone for a couple of weeks. Everything was found except for one centre splice (2 ft. x 2 ft. x 3 ft.) which didn't show up until the water went down. Eventually we got our masts up.