Giant Yellowknife

Wed, 28 Feb 2007 16:26:34 GMT

Giant Yellowknife

I don’t know how they got me into the car and enroute to the North West Territories. I can’t remember being taken captive or tied up. Maybe they tricked me. Maybe it was the pictures of Yellowknife’s swimming beach where the locals played. These beach pictures of Frame Lake were the only things that seemed to appease me. I loved water and swimming.

My first view of Yellowknife was from the window of Pacific Western Airline’s DC-3; the same window that my brother Keith tried to push me through as I looked down at the scenery on the ground. We had driven from Salmo through to Hay River, N.W.T. in the summer of 1958. The road around Great Slave Lake had not yet been built so the car had to be barged across the lake to Yellowknife before the lake froze. This enabled Dad to drive around the twenty odd miles of road in Yellowknife…. half of them paved.

I remember McNiven Beach where the water was comfortable to swim in once you got past the bloodsuckers that lurked just under the water along the sandy shore. The small island out from the beach was there to test your swimming prowess and endurance. The diving board on the platform always drew a crowd.

I remember my first friend. It so happened that his last name was MacLeod also. Daryl and his sister lived with their parents near the Public School. His dad worked for the Royal Canadian Signal Corp.

I remember jumping up to Boy Scouts from Cubs. Peter Bromley and his wife Barbara officiated in the ceremony. It was a big night joining my brother in Scouts.

I remember Yellowknife when there were only two gold mines supporting the economy of the town. The population was somewhere between 2500 and 3000 people.

I remember the first winter. We were living in town across from St. Pat Elementary School while our house was being built at the Giant Mines campsite. Bjorg Carlsen and Vicki Barraclough lived across the alley. I remember playing street hockey with Jackie Weatherlee from four houses up the street. I remember playing with Glen Weatherby. He had older brothers by the names of Gary and Gordie, who I got to know later.

I remember the good times playing and going to school with Steve England. Boy, did we get into trouble…. all the time. We were classmates and buddies from grade 6 through 12 and later.

I remember skiing through town with Peter Frang with .22 caliber rifles on our backs. We were probably 14 or 15 years old at the time. We were off hunting Ptarmigan around Frame Lake, Jackfish Lake, the old cemetery, the old ski hill and down to the Big Lake. We skied everywhere together. He was the younger brother of Ole who also became my buddy as we got older.

I remember living at Giant Mines while I went through my teen-age years. The mine property was located three miles from Yellowknife along a windy dirt road. The campsite with its collection of homes, bunkhouses, staff-house, recreation hall, commissary, fire-hall, boiler house and pump-house were situated along the shore of Yellowknife Bay. The main office and mine structures were located 1 ½ miles up Baker Creek in a small valley surrounded by Precambrian Shield rock hills. I explored every bit of the mine property with various friends as I grew up.

We lived in the Staff House for a couple of months while our house was being built beside others perched on a small bluff overlooking Yellowknife Bay. All our meals were taken at the cookhouse where I got to know the cooking staff and many of the miners and surface workers who lived in the bunkhouses. I got to know more by spending “many a hour” down at the recreation hall playing all sorts of games under the watchful eyes of Elda Dundas, who was always liberal with her portions of chocolate ice cream when I ordered my cones; and Dragi Jovanovic who taught me how to operate the movie projectors after giving me a few tips on the ping-pong table. The miners taught me games and treated me like a son. They told me many stories of their lives. Many of them were from Europe and came to Canada after the Second World War. We finally moved into our three-bedroom house.

I had to catch a bus to go and come home from school. All the children were collected and returned on two buses. One went to the elementary and junior high schools and the other went to the senior high schools. I knew everybody on the buses and for that matter I knew everybody that went to my schools. Susan and Pam McCorquodale, Ted and Bill Brown, Mike and Nancy Smith, Ben, Guy and Michelle (Mimi) Dagenais, Lee and Audrey Ann Ross, Billy Smith, Carol and Bruce Nikiforrow, Brenda Stalker, Vicki Barraclough, Bruce Florence, Karen Foster and Francis Ekins lived at Giant and were close to my age so I knew them better than the other kids – some younger and some older. Ted Brown, John Carter, Darcy Taylor, George Florence, Mike Smith, Mike Ekins, Ben Dagenais and Lee Ross were older.

The job of being a eleven to fourteen year old boy at Giant Mines was not that difficult although my territory was limited until I got my first bike. In summer, you could find me riding around in a dump truck of Frenchie’s Transport that was hauling waste ore from the waste ore chute at C-shaft to the various waste dumps and road projects around the site. It was not unusual to go and watch Nick O’Brien pour the molten gold into ingots at the Refinery located across the road from the Mill Lab and Assay Office. That was where I first saw gold bricks being loaded onto a two by twelve wood plank laid across the back seat of the company car. Art Coogan, a thin elderly gentleman who worked in the Lab, would then drive the car via the windy dirt road to Yellowknife’s Post Office where the bricks were registered, put in mail bags and delivered to the airport for shipment to Ottawa. Many people are still in awe at the seemly method of operation to the Canadian Mint, however it must be remembered that it was one thousand road miles to Edmonton on a dirt highway with few places to hide.

Jim Hooper, the Mine’s expeditor and Watchman, always had a blind eye to my wanderings around Giant. He would observe me as my travels took me to the old machinery graveyard where all sorts of rusted weird machinery lay about. Rusted ball mills, Granby cars, containers, trucks without engines became my personal playground. Eventually I would arrive at the Main Office where I would pass Bing Rivett’s office, past Cam Russel on my way to chat with Bruce Nikiforrow. He and his family lived next door to us however I was always too busy to see him at home. I didn’t hang around C-Shaft very much although it was not unusual to see and say “hi” to Bill Stalker and George Taylor in their offices in C-Dry. George with his family lived across the street from us. The Blacksmith’s Shop would hold my interest for a while if they had the fire stoked up and were bending and pounding red hot metal into useful items for use underground.

Time flies when you are having a good time however my driver would surely be waiting for me if I didn’t hurry up, so my route would take me through the open doors of the Machine Shop where a potpourri of sights and sounds awaited. It was easy to be distracted in there with the steel lathes spinning, drills spewing long entrails of shiny shavings, and arc welders and cutting torches spraying molten sparks across the floor. Past Jim McKay’s warehouse into the Assay Office where I would quietly walk past Hugh McCorquodale’s office then watch Frank Pelechaty, Eddie McLeod and the boys as they assayed the ore samples brought up from underground. Out the back door and over to the Lab.

My choices at this point were to see if my car was waiting in front of the Lab or go into the building to get my driver. Most times I had to go get the driver. “Are the keys in the car”, I would ask and Dad would look up from the paperwork scattered on his desk, smile and throw me the keys. It was the time in my life when driving a car was critical, and, it just so happened to be the time of day that Dad normally went home.

Water, essential for a growing boy. We were very lucky to have a huge lake full of it. Giant Mines town-site sat on the shore of Yellowknife Bay. Our house sat on a small bluff overlooking the part of the Bay that stretched from the Yellowknife River to Back Bay and Old Town. The view on summer evenings was spectacularly beautiful. The sun slowly set and rose over the dead calm water of the lake that vividly mirrored the brilliant images painted in the sky. The tranquility of these colourful evenings usually transfixed people with its splendor and was further amplified by the distant lonely cry of the loons. This was my playground for years.

I graduated from a log to a raft to a canoe to a boat in those years. Floating and paddling a log around the pump house, rafting at the mouth of Baker Creek and the oil barge dock where a few small boats were tied up beside the rickety wooden floats spread like fingers in the water. I used to watch the water-skiers take off from there. I even saw Fred (the cat-skinner) Holland’s handy work after he crashed his boat up against the dock after one of his adventures on the water. We canoed and boated all around the bay and up the Yellowknife River to the Rapids. Yes, you can swim down the rapids without getting hurt and yes you can sunbath on the sand/tailing that spilled over the tailings dam and formed a beach on Yellowknife Bay. And yes you need lots of shear pins for your propeller when you go up Yellowknife River…. or you will end up getting towed home by boaters like Mike Ekins in his homemade speedboat.

Winter, although very cold, was not a match for children. The typical school day apparel consisted of penny loafers, white socks, blue jeans without long johns underneath, t-shirt, and shirt. This ensemble was then covered by a three quarter length coat. Earmuffs were optional since they would mess up your ducktail haircut that was normally wetted down just before going out in the cold. Your frozen hair would stay in place as long as you stayed outside. I will admit to dressing differently when going out to play. Mom had an “Eskimo” parka made for me and I had a couple of pairs of Mukluks. These were essential for my day trips up and down the lake looking for rabbits and Ptarmigan. My partners and I would ski, snowshoe or walk. It was always nice to have the wind at your back. We had skating rinks scraped clear of the lake’s snow, a two sheet covered, but unheated, curling rink and the ever available recreation hall. And our own ice road that started just below the staff house and ended at the Flats in Old Town.

Finally got my bike. I bought it from Kenny Embleton. A good one-speed bike that took me to far away lands like Con, Kam Lake, airport, bridge at Yellowknife River, Christourm. I decked it out with mirrors and flashes for the handlebar. Cool.

McSnowWriter's Pamphlet: 1.3 - Giant Yellowknife

Giant Yellowknife