Charlie Leake, (Above) a retired long-time McBride resident who had flown jets in the Canadian Forces, was a local aviator. Often during the summer, he was hired by the Forest Service to fly his private plane on “Fire Patrol”.
During the summer of 1989, the Robson Valley Forest District experienced a high fire hazard, and Charlie was contracted to fly his small plane along a designated route, criss-crossing over our Forest District to spot any smoke from forest fires. His route took him over mountains, river drainages, the valley bottom, isolated lakes and glaciers, and included Mt. Robson Provincial Park; some of the most dramatic and beautiful pristine mountain scenery in the world.
On his patrol flights, Charlie always needed a passenger to also act as an observer, as he piloted the plane. The observer job required someone with a strong stomach, because Charlie’s small plane often encountered turbulent weather that buffeted the aircraft around.
In 1989, it was my wife that was hired as Charlie’s observer, and she spent many a summer’s day high above the Robson Valley looking for forest fire smoke. While I envied her views of the scenery, I didn’t envy her the bumps and rolls of the small plane that sometimes had to be endured. During times of extreme fire hazards, Charlie’s patrol plane had to sometime flight twice a day.
On one of those days of two flights, my wife had spotted and reported two small spot fires early in the morning. Back at our Forestry Office, a three-man crew of firefighters were dispatched to the fire at 10:00 AM. They had a long rough hike into the fire, and weren’t able to start fighting it until 4:00.
They radioed into the office reporting that they figured they would have the fire extinguished by 7:30. Facing another 5 hours to trek out, it meant that they would have ended up hiking in the dark, so it was decided to drop some camping equipment and food in to them so they could overnight.
I was on Forestry warehouse standby that day and, just when my wife got home from her fire observer job, and as I was about to ask her about her day, I was called in to the warehouse to get the camping gear together and take it to a helicopter which would dropped it off to them. (The rough terrain they were in prevented the helicopter from making a landing.)
After getting the camping equipment out, I had to continue working in the warehouse until 9:00. It was another long day during fire season.
I thought it was interesting that both my wife and I contributed, in our different roles, to getting that spot fire extinguished.
View my paintings at: davidmarchant2.ca
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