Lucky Idiot

So, you think this is cold.

In the early 1980s, I worked for the Ministry of Natural Resources at Queen’s Park. (The provincial government in Toronto.) The Ministry was launching a series of public meetings for its 20-year Strategic Land Use Plan. (Did you just say, ‘wow!’ No?)

The high-paid help in the government was so intense about these meetings that the content of posters about provincial goals was not approved until the very last minute. That resulted in the posters not being done in time for any delivery service to get them to Fort Frances for the first public meeting.

Fort Frances is on the Ontario--Minnesota border in an area that was called Mooselvanyia in Rocky and Bullwinkle cartoons. I was asked to take the poster boards as luggage to Dryden and drive them to Fort Frances. [At this point, you may like to take a second to go to Google Maps and get directions for Dryden to Fort Francis]

It sounded like fun. I’d never been to Fort Frances and I like seeing new places. I jumped at the opportunity – stupidest thing I ever did.

It was a Saturday. Nordair’s flight landed in Sault Ste. Marie and Thunder Bay before stopping in Dryden. I knew record low temperatures were being recorded through the prairies and Northern Ontario, but I had lived in Ottawa and had learned to accept cold weather, but I was clueless.

When I got off the plane in Dryden, the air was eerily still and heavy. The snow on the runway was solid and cracked like old concrete. Breath hung in the air in front of faces as people tried to talk, but taking a breath was difficult. I felt like my lungs were going paralyzed.

The guy from MNR who met me said no Ministry vehicles would start but a rental agency got a Pontiac station wagon running. He said some pick-up trucks had block heaters and the batteries had been kept inside so they would not freeze. He got a truck started but the wheels were frozen solid. He advised that we not turn the Pontiac off because we might not get it started again. We put the poster boards in the back. The exhaust from its tail pipe laid around our legs like fog in a bad horror movie.

The guy said that the temperature had been as low as -60 F but that it was now -40 something. It was hard to say. Most thermometers didn’t go that low.

I knew my way around Dryden because I had been there one June to work on a forest fire emergency. I went into the town and stopped at the Canadian Tire to buy candles, chocolate bars, an extra scarf to wrap over my head and ears … the kind of thing they tell you to have in case of emergency. The parking lot was a fog. You could see peoples’ heads but not bodies as they moved through the exhaust cloud that kind of swirled but did not blow away. All the cars and trucks were left running.

I drove to the edge of town to take Route 502 south to Fort Francis. Smoke from chimneys ran like a thick rope along roofs, down the side of homes and along the snow for yards before they disbursed. I turned onto 502, past a couple of remote homes and then saw a sign: “No habitation for 180 KMs.”

I kept going – stupid, stupid stupid. The evergreen forest was still. All bright white and dark green. The white crust on the road sprouted a silvery grey crown of smooth ice in the centre. I tried to keep at least two tires on the white part, especially on hills and curves. I drove slowly, often passing areas where the earth fell away, perhaps to a lake or marsh covered by the deep snow below. I thought, ‘if the car fell over a bank, no one would know I was there.” After 15 or 20 minutes, I realized that no car had caught up to me, nor had passed me going the other way. I was the only car, the only person, on the 502.

The Pontiac’s heater worked well. The windshield stayed clear, although the back windows were frosted. I looked at the gas gauge and my heart bounced. It showed all the way full. It stayed that way through the trip, frozen in place, not registering the gas that I was using. I was worried that the rental guy looked at the gauge, thought the car was full. “What if I do not have enough gas to get to Fort Frances?” (By the way, kids. Cell phones had not been invented.)

The drive took all afternoon, but when I got to Fort Frances, I could tell the people who met me and invited me to supper, and put me up at their house because everything was closed because no one could get to work, thought I was an idiot from Toronto. They were right. A very lucky idiot.