FED FROM THE AIR

Hokitika Guardian, 16 October 1933, Page 8

FED FROM THE AIR

FOOD SUPPLIED BY PARACHUTE GOLD-SEEKING IN CANADA An. English prospector and Its wife were snowbound in their wilderness camp with only a little flour left. A pilot cf the Canadian - Airways, learifig of their predicament, supplied them with food for the remainder of the white i> dropping it by parachute. This is one cf many incidents that show how now gold-mining camps are sustained almost solely from -the air, says life Vancouver j correspondent of the Herald.

Such air example is furnished at five i-anp at Swayze City. A big freight seaplane arrives daily with fresh meat, green vegetables, mail 1 and dynamte One would hear thrilling adventures '.f one could get these sub-Arctic airmen to talk. . They are as uncommunicative as the traditional' silent service, the navy. What cue actually sees ts an index to what they will not reveal. A F'reneh-Canadian pilot of the Eclipse Airways, who cf/ries the money for the mining camp stores and payrolls, took off from Cliapleau with a load of dynamite. A strut loosened and one of his skis fell off. Spectators on the ground watched to see the machine crash and he blown to- pieces. The airman, unperturbed held an aileron at the tilt and made a three-point landing on one ski.

There is a woman barber at Swayze OTy. Her husband works at the mine. Her mother runs a laundry, carrying the water a quarter of a mile from the lake. Their boarder runs a steam hath. A barrehtype stove is covered with concrete and stones. The stove is-fired up and ■ water is thrown on the stones. Naked bathers sit on benches in the steam.

Times have changed ‘in the generation since -the Klondyke stirred the world. The present-day rush for gold through-out-Canada is largely by air, summer and winter. One of the first to stake claims at Swayze City, a Yukoner, lands at the log boom jetty less than a day after leaving Toronto, crosses to the store after dinner, tw.rls the radio dial and picks up the Sharkey-Carnera fight from Madison Square Garden. “Yes, times are different,” says this sourdough turned cap talist, as he recalls the ordeals that awaited the hordes of 1 treasure seekers who stormed the .Yukon over the 1898 trail. Over the Chilkoot Pass by thousands, a steady black line against the snow for miles. In one snowslide 70 persons perished. There are no dancing girls in Swayze City or any of these new camps. The women who brave tlie northern wilderness nowadays go to nurse, to teach, -to cook, to share what their men go through. Their men are different. They are the same rugged, hardy type as thd’r Youkon forerunners, hilt they have a better knowledge of geology and minerals.