more; what a grand and glorious feeling.
The menâs waning optimism almost instantly rebounded. The food was plentiful, the temperature was dropping, the ice was forming ⦠all was good. Alex Milne celebrated his twenty-sixth birthday with a caribou feast and he said it was his most noteworthy birthday on record. After living for a month on five ounces of food per day each and then to have plenty was beyond their expectation. Preparations were now back on track for the trip to Cambridge Bay. With sufficient food intake, the colonel had the men begin to build up their strength for their sixty-mile trek for help.
What could possibly stop them now?
| Four |
Moving Northward
October 18, 1929
Richard Pearceâs Diary, Dease Point
Last night was an awful one. A real gale blew, probably up to sixty miles an hour, driving the snow so that it felt like bullets. Everything in the lean-to tents was covered and the snow oozed through the cracks into the mud shack, making us very uncomfortable. The tarpaulin roof split in several places and we spent an anxious time while repairs were made. We ran out of thread and were at our witsâ ends until someone hit on the happy idea of using surgical thread from the first aid kit ⦠Jimmie stayed with us last night, crawling in with Alex and Mac in their doubled-up sleeping bag. That made nine of us in a row.
The menâs spirits sank like stones. The storm was a painful reminder of their precarious situation. The gale continued to blow during the day. Ice fragments crashed against the shoreline, obliterating the waterâs edge in blinding whiteness. One of the Inuit children had wandered into this howling gale, and Pearce joined in the desperate search for her. Caught in the wind, the five-year-old girl was swept perilously close to the shore. It was sheer luck that she was found before she was dragged in and drowned in the frigid surf.
Just when they thought things couldnât get any worse, the father of Jack, one of the Inuit, told the men he would be leaving for at least two days to get more fish for the trek out. Morale dropped even further with this news because the Inuit sense of time did not always correspond with theirs. The thought of another two days (or more) delay dampened what little hope the Domex men had of ever getting out of there. Their thoughts continually wandered to subjects âOutside.â
Front page headlines of The Northern Miner , October 17, 1929, announced a story on their plight, âThe Arctic Rescue Effort Boldly Begins Next Week.â The paper continued to report that although the pilots were grounded due to weather conditions, the rescue team actively continued to plan their next moves. The two- and three-plane aerial searches would scour a three-hundred to four-hundred mile area between Baker Lake and Bathurst Inlet once the lakes had become frozen. This large area held the most promise of locating the missing men.
As Canadians gobbled up news of the missing expedition, optimism remained high that the men could survive in this land of eternal snow and ice. D.M. LeBourdais, Vilhjalmur Stefanssonâs biographer and Arctic companion, was quoted in The Northern Miner on October 10, 1929, as saying, âIf there is one man with Arctic experience in the group he would see them through, but with all the men experienced and resourceful it is idle to worry about them.â He continued with his thoughts of Stefanssonâs The Friendly Arctic , [1] âIt makes a great newspaper yarn, but I have no doubt the men are enjoying a splendid outing and hunting party. They should be able to live off the country and make themselves fairly comfortable for a very considerable period.â
Members of the Dominion Explorers might have shaken their heads grimly at LeBourdaisâs blithe comments as they eked out the bare minimum for survival, depending both on the weather and the Inuit. At least their Inuit friends had finally
The menâs waning optimism almost instantly rebounded. The food was plentiful, the temperature was dropping, the ice was forming ⦠all was good. Alex Milne celebrated his twenty-sixth birthday with a caribou feast and he said it was his most noteworthy birthday on record. After living for a month on five ounces of food per day each and then to have plenty was beyond their expectation. Preparations were now back on track for the trip to Cambridge Bay. With sufficient food intake, the colonel had the men begin to build up their strength for their sixty-mile trek for help.
What could possibly stop them now?
| Four |
Moving Northward
October 18, 1929
Richard Pearceâs Diary, Dease Point
Last night was an awful one. A real gale blew, probably up to sixty miles an hour, driving the snow so that it felt like bullets. Everything in the lean-to tents was covered and the snow oozed through the cracks into the mud shack, making us very uncomfortable. The tarpaulin roof split in several places and we spent an anxious time while repairs were made. We ran out of thread and were at our witsâ ends until someone hit on the happy idea of using surgical thread from the first aid kit ⦠Jimmie stayed with us last night, crawling in with Alex and Mac in their doubled-up sleeping bag. That made nine of us in a row.
The menâs spirits sank like stones. The storm was a painful reminder of their precarious situation. The gale continued to blow during the day. Ice fragments crashed against the shoreline, obliterating the waterâs edge in blinding whiteness. One of the Inuit children had wandered into this howling gale, and Pearce joined in the desperate search for her. Caught in the wind, the five-year-old girl was swept perilously close to the shore. It was sheer luck that she was found before she was dragged in and drowned in the frigid surf.
Just when they thought things couldnât get any worse, the father of Jack, one of the Inuit, told the men he would be leaving for at least two days to get more fish for the trek out. Morale dropped even further with this news because the Inuit sense of time did not always correspond with theirs. The thought of another two days (or more) delay dampened what little hope the Domex men had of ever getting out of there. Their thoughts continually wandered to subjects âOutside.â
Front page headlines of The Northern Miner , October 17, 1929, announced a story on their plight, âThe Arctic Rescue Effort Boldly Begins Next Week.â The paper continued to report that although the pilots were grounded due to weather conditions, the rescue team actively continued to plan their next moves. The two- and three-plane aerial searches would scour a three-hundred to four-hundred mile area between Baker Lake and Bathurst Inlet once the lakes had become frozen. This large area held the most promise of locating the missing men.
As Canadians gobbled up news of the missing expedition, optimism remained high that the men could survive in this land of eternal snow and ice. D.M. LeBourdais, Vilhjalmur Stefanssonâs biographer and Arctic companion, was quoted in The Northern Miner on October 10, 1929, as saying, âIf there is one man with Arctic experience in the group he would see them through, but with all the men experienced and resourceful it is idle to worry about them.â He continued with his thoughts of Stefanssonâs The Friendly Arctic , [1] âIt makes a great newspaper yarn, but I have no doubt the men are enjoying a splendid outing and hunting party. They should be able to live off the country and make themselves fairly comfortable for a very considerable period.â
Members of the Dominion Explorers might have shaken their heads grimly at LeBourdaisâs blithe comments as they eked out the bare minimum for survival, depending both on the weather and the Inuit. At least their Inuit friends had finally
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