| Author |
Message |
smitty
Member
Post Number: 1
Registered: 05-2004
| | Posted on Saturday, May 1, 2004 - 11:49 am: | 
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Loved the story, it truly described Rusty as the man I, and my family remembered.
I was one of those kids he used to take flying with him, it was a big thrill being his co-pilot from time to time. My father, Bob Moore, was a pilot at Ramsey for a short time, I believe it was late 70's or early 80's. I used to enjoy hanging around the planes and fishing for perch off the docks...and especially being in the company of Rusty. He was always a good laugh.
I'l talk to my dad and see if he has any old picks I can post here....of the Cessna he was flying and of Rusty and the Beaver ( recall seeing some packed in box somewhere at my parents home )
I was told that the Beaver at Lakelands was from the fleet at Ramsey...is this true?
I've been on it quite a few times over the past few years on fishing trips, brings back memories everytime.
I may be heading up to Temagami soon ( live in North Bay ) if the "new look Beav." is out...I'll take some pics and post them. |
paul_hammersten
Member
Post Number: 43
Registered: 03-2004
| | Posted on Saturday, May 1, 2004 - 4:51 pm: |
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buckmaster...thanks!! Wonderful photo of a great guy!!!
I promise to ' try ' to post my story tomorrow - Sunday.
Best
Paul |
paul_hammersten
Member
Post Number: 44
Registered: 03-2004
| | Posted on Sunday, May 2, 2004 - 12:16 pm: |
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GOD'S COUNTRY
The sky was a clear soft robin's egg blue, and the water, a calm deeper blue-green.
Late August 1999, in the noonday sun, I shot the float plane's picture the moment of touch down.
A few minutes later a young man approached us as we waited on the porch of the Trout Lake Bait and Canoe Company.
"Paul?... Sharon?... I'm James - your pilot." James tipped his oil stained, weather worn Lake Land Fly Boys cap and gestured toward the dock where he had securely tied his plane.
The plane was old - over 20 years old (some thought it was 50 years old!) and definitely not running with its original engine.
Right from the start you could tell how proud James was of the plane. I heard later that he had done some amazing things with it. He admitted that the plane badly needed another paint job. But all the duck tape didn't bother him - nor us.
The 3 seat Cessna 185 float plane flew due north to Lake Temagami, Ontario. Temagami, from Teme-Augama in Ojibway, means The Deep Water. Looking down from the air you could see areas that were dark blue green where the lake was over 400 feet deep!
What an adventure!
Over the years while on canoe trips deep in the Canadian Wilderness, we would anxiously await the drone of the float plane's engine, as it broke the silence of the north, when flying in at re-supply. I never thought that I would fly in one.
"Do you want to go higher?"
Before take off, I had told James that I wanted to shoot some photos of Devils Island. I would need the air views to help me paint a picture for my friends at Ojibway and Keewaydin Canoe Camp, whose tents and cabins were nestled below in the stands of Jack Pine and Cedar trees growing on Devils Island.
The word "devil" is a misnomer and refers to Gitchy Manitou, the Trickster God of the Ojibway. Tradition has it that the mountain, northeast of the island, is the home of Gitchy Manitou. The place of refuge when, in the Ojibway flood myth, he turned himself into an eagle to carry his people on his back to safety.
Our Refuge on Devil's Island was thus sheltered under the feather of the Almighty. Papa Hemingway would have liked the cabin where I wrote ASANTE PAPA!
"It's Gitchi Manitou, the Mighty [Papa exclaims in True At First Light using a line from his favorite poem The Song Of Hiawatha] versus all others".
The sighting of an eagle in the Temagami skies is a very rare experience. No one that I know of had seen one fly over Devils Island in recent times.
My painting will be of a lone eagle soaring over the island, the waters below flowing along with the soft warm breeze of gentle Shawandassee, the South Wind - flowing to the regions of the Homewind, the Northwest Wind - Keewaydin.
Below the eagle and south of the island, a lone canoeman in a scarlet shirt, with gentle Shawandassee at his back, will dip his ashen paddle as he and his bright forest green canoe become one with "The Deep Waters".
"On joyful wing ... cleaving the sky ... upward we fly ... still our song shall be ... nearer our God to Thee."
An old hymn - sung anew. "God's Country" - that will be the title of my picture!
NEARER MY GOD
Nearer, my God, to Thee,
Nearer to Thee! E'en though it be a cross
That raiseth me;
Still all my song shall be
Nearer, my God, to thee
Nearer to Thee !
Though like a wanderer,
Weary and lone. Darkness comes over me,
My rest a stone;
Yet in my dreams I'd be
Nearer, my God, to Thee,
Nearer to Thee!
There let my way appear
Steps unto heaven; All that Thou sendest me
In mercy given;
Angels to beckon me
Nearer, my God, to Thee,
Nearer to Thee!
Then, with my waking thoughts
Bright with Thy praise.
Out of my stony griefs
Altars I'll raise;
So by my woes to be
Nearer, my God, to Thee,
Nearer to Thee!
Or, if on joyful wing
Cleaving the sky. Sun, moon, and stars forgot.
Upward I fly.
Still all my song shall be
Nearer, my God, to Thee,
Nearer to Thee!
NEARER MY GOD was often sung during the evening services of the Oak Park Congregational Church where Ernest Hemingway worshiped as a boy.
GOD'S COUNTRY
This picture was created in homage to the Great Northwoods artist Frank E. Schoonover in memory of the boys and men with whom I paddled and portaged the Great Keewaydin Wilderness during the twilight of the era of the wood and canvas canoe.
Two lines from Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's poem The Song of Hiawatha inspired the making of God's Country.
Ernest Hemingway's favorite poem was Longfellow's The Song of Hiawatha. As a child, dressed in his Indian costume, he loved to enact passages from the poem. Every year with his family, he would see the outdoor productions of Hiawatha at Wa-ya-ga-mung on the lake in Northern Michigan and would watch his Indian friend sail off into the sunset in his birch bark canoe.
The Ojibway stories in Hiawatha and his Ojibway friends and their culture that he knew as a youth, had a profound influence on Hemingway's writing. Their influence can be found in his earliest story The Judgement of Manitou, which was published with two other stories in the first Valentine issue, February 1916, of the Tabula, his high school literary magazine, throughout the Nick Adams stories, and up to and including True At First Light.
God's Country is dedicated to James Belch. Less than two months after James safely flew Sharon and me to Ojibway of Keewaydin, his Cessna 185 float plane crashed in the heart of Temagami's old growth forest. The aircraft, James, and his two passengers were lost. James received a copy of my story God's Country before the tragic accident. ASANTE JAMES!
"Thus departed Hiawatha,
Hiawatha the Beloved,
In the glory of the sunset.
In the purple mists of evening.
To the Regions of the Home-wind,
Of the Northwest-wind, Keewaydin,
To the Islands of the Blessed,
To the Kingdom of Ponemah, To the land of the Hereafter!"
God's Country from ASANTE PAPA!
http://www.asantepapa.4t.com
Best
Paul |
buckmaster
Member
Post Number: 2
Registered: 05-2004
| | Posted on Sunday, May 2, 2004 - 2:22 pm: |
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I posted a picture of James Belch earlier and did not like the way it turned out. I have redone it and am trying it again. Please bear with me.
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steve
Member
Post Number: 1
Registered: 05-2004
| | Posted on Tuesday, May 11, 2004 - 12:30 pm: |
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Here is a shot of JKT getting ready for the water last spring with a new paint job and new interior. |
steve
Member
Post Number: 2
Registered: 05-2004
| | Posted on Tuesday, May 11, 2004 - 12:39 pm: |
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steve
Member
Post Number: 3
Registered: 05-2004
| | Posted on Tuesday, May 11, 2004 - 12:41 pm: |
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steve
Member
Post Number: 4
Registered: 05-2004
| | Posted on Tuesday, May 11, 2004 - 12:52 pm: |
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JKT Warming up Sept. 3, 2003 \
(Message edited by steve on May 11, 2004) |
steve
Member
Post Number: 5
Registered: 05-2004
| | Posted on Tuesday, May 11, 2004 - 12:56 pm: |
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tsm
Member
Post Number: 15
Registered: 03-2004
| | Posted on Tuesday, May 11, 2004 - 4:45 pm: |
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Nice shots Steve. I think last year was the first year I DIDN'T take a photo of either the Cessna or the Beaver. I'll try and take some interior shots next month when we head up. |
alscool
Member
Post Number: 33
Registered: 02-2004
| | Posted on Wednesday, May 12, 2004 - 9:53 am: |
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BushPilot, me and my pals will be up on Lady Evelyn late in the month, howabout you drop in with a flat of beer and stay a night. We can devise a signal to guide you in. |
bush_pilot
Member
Post Number: 40
Registered: 03-2004
| | Posted on Wednesday, May 12, 2004 - 11:57 am: |
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Thanks Al, sounds tempting. Unfortunatly they won't let me use the air ambulance for my personal pleasure, go figure. Give me a lat. and long. and a sucking chest wound and I'll be there in a flash. Enjoy your trip. |
dan_carpenter
Moderator
Post Number: 8
Registered: 03-2004
| | Posted on Sunday, May 16, 2004 - 8:28 am: |
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In response to Smitty's question about the origin of the Beaver at Lakeland, I believe it came from Austin Airways, where it was stationed in the 1970's.
For several years, the long trip at Keewaydin travelled in NW Quebec and would fly with Austin from Eastmain to Moosonee to take the train south at the end of the trip. A variety of planes was used (Canso, Otter, Beaver, and Norseman), and on a couple occasions, we flew in the Beavers FHX and JKT.
The float planes were all sold off by Austin in the late70's when airstrips were built in all the northern communities. Larry Milberry's book Austin Airways states that those two Beavers were sold to Lakeland in 1979. FHX went down on maple Mountain in 1981, and JKT is the Beaver that is in use at Lakeland today. |
paul_hammersten
Member
Post Number: 50
Registered: 03-2004
| | Posted on Thursday, May 20, 2004 - 8:28 am: |
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" We have come to regard the incredible faet of flying as a commonplace, but, flying over a stretch of country through which you have previously passed by canoe, the magic, the profound leap into a new dimension, becomes so sstartling as to impress upon you the greatness of the miracle you are experiencing..."
" The bush flier was and is no ordinary flier, for his flying, though now considerably more controlled, demands the qualities which the North has demanded of the pioneer. Here, in a land which had no weather statios, he must know his weather. Here he must be his own ground crew and skilled mechanic, his own guide and mapmaker. Stories - authentic, too - are still told of those perilous and ingenious early flights in the North: landings on one ski, propellers falling in mid-air, the plane on the lower Mackenzie on which the damaged ' prop ' was replaced by one carved out by habd and stuck together with glue. Extraordinary flights were made and all in the face of rigorous elements. Where talk had once been of great hunters and pathfinders, now it was of equally great fliers; and to have flown with such and such a man was immediately a badge of distinction. '
SLEEPING ISLAND: The Story of One Man's Travels In The Great Barren Lands of the Canadian North
by P.G.Downes 1943
Canoebear...put this book on your ' to read ' list!
He mentions ARCTIC PILOT by Walter Gilbert as told to Kathleen Shackleton 1940.
Best
Paul |
lake2034
Member
Post Number: 1
Registered: 12-2004
| | Posted on Wednesday, December 1, 2004 - 1:40 pm: |
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Hello All,
My family has owned a camp on Chambers Lake for over 50 years. My grandfather and father flew into the lake on the first float plane flights with Lou Riopel (spelling?) and Bob Gareh many years ago. I have met all the pilots who worked for both Lakeland and Ramsey for the last 40 years. My Dad actually had the door to a Cessna that went down over 35 years ago. I see all the questions about the origin of Lakeland's Beaver and it was my understanding that this plane is still the original pre-Ramsey flown by Bob Gareh, and now his son, Daren. Daren knows that plane's history if anyone wants that answer and he is quite proud of the recent makeover. I have many pictures dating back to the early 1960's of Lakeland's planes and pilots. Most are on the walls of our place at Chambers. I also flew with James just weeks before the accident. He was a good person, and a great pilot whose time was too short on this earth.
Lynn}} |
paul_hammersten
Member
Post Number: 148
Registered: 03-2004
| | Posted on Wednesday, December 1, 2004 - 5:07 pm: |
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Hi Lynn
Thanks for your post.
You must have some wonderful memories and neat photos.
James was a special person to my wife Sharon and me.
Just a short flight and a short length of time.
We are glad somewhere along the trail we learned it is not always the lenght of time that is important in a friendship but the quality of the contact. [ I agree James time was too short on this earth. ]
Thanks again for bringing this all to rememberance.
Best
Paul |
bush_pilot
Member
Post Number: 53
Registered: 03-2004
| | Posted on Monday, December 6, 2004 - 10:08 pm: |
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Lakeland's Beaver was acquired from Austin Airways after the crash of the Stinson in the late 60's. |
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Temagami general 
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