In 1973, I had taken a job teaching in a one-room school located at an isolated mill in the middle of BC, that had no road access. To get there, we booked a flight on a Beaver float plane. The Beaver was the iconic plane of the Canadian North, that carried people and supplies between the towns in the South and the Northern Canadian wilderness. Here is our experience on that first trip we made on a Beaver:
We loaded our gear into the de Havilland Beaver bush plane, which was tied up at a dock on Stuart Lake. Because it was a such a small plane, I sat right almost elbow to elbow, beside the pilot, while my wife settled into the backseat of the cramped little aircraft.
The plane was untied from the dock, the engine roared, and the Beaver slowly moved away from the pier. Droplets of water streaked across the windshield, as the whirling propellor blurred in front of the pilot and I.
Once the plane was away from the dock and far enough out in the lake to take off, the pilot slowly began to accelerate, the thunder of the engine became louder and louder, and gradually the plane began to move forward at first slowly, then ever faster across the water, skimming along the surface of the lake, until we finally took to the air.
Stuart Lake was soon behind us and we soared across miles of the unbroken horizon of trees, until ahead of us, the treed landscape was interrupted by Trembler Lake. There were no towns or villages, I don't even recall seeing any cabins. sometimes I could catch a glimpse of a gash through the forests, made by the BC Rail line, as it wound along the low terrain at the edge of the lake or Middle River, extending itself northward.
Traveling above the canopy of the coniferous forest, the small plane was periodically nudged by the wind, but not to the extent that it caused any abdominal stress.
The gray green carpet of trees stretched on and on ahead of us. Soon mountain slopes appeared on the distant horizon on my right, and then another mountain range appeared on the left, as Takla Lake, BC’s fifth largest lake and one of its deepest, began to show itself, stretching out in front of us. Takla Lake is 60 mile long, and easy to identify because it is long and skinny, and has a “Y’ shape.
I was sitting practically shoulder to shoulder beside the pilot in the tiny interior of the Beaver and I turned back to look at my wife who was snuggled in the rear seat between freight that the plane was also carrying.
We caught each other’s eyes and exchanged smiles then continued with our noses pressed against the side windows, scanning the wilderness below us. The pilot pointed out Takla Landing, a settlement along the lakes East shore that was part of the Carrier Indian Reserve.
The Silvacan Resources camp, which was where we were bound, was also located on the east shore, but 12 miles further north, nearer the top of the long arm of the lake, at a bay called Lovell Cove. We could not see the mill or camp on the gentle slope above the lake because the plane was beginning its descent.
After a flight of about 110 miles, the pilot began to slow the engine and the plane began to lower itself toward the rippled surface of the gray lake, as it prepared to land. My wife and I had never flown in a small plane before, and certainly had never landed on water, so we didn’t really know what to expect as far as landing on a lake’s surface. We were surprised at how smooth and uneventful the transition from air to water was, when it happened,. As the plane skied across the lake's surface, to my right, I noticed a wooden dock jutting out from the shore.
The pilot used the propeller to power the plane across the water toward the pier, where a man and couple of Indian kids were waiting to secure the plane to the wharf. When the Beaver came to a stop and the propeller stopped spinning, we unbuckled our seat belts, opened the door and climbed out onto the dock.
Once outside, we breathed in the clean air, looked down across the two miles of cold clear deep water of Takla Lake toward the far shore, and the distant mountains that rose above the lake. We had arrived at the pristine wilderness country we had sought.
Take a look at my paintings: davidmarchant2.ca
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