The world headquarters of Wilderness Charters was not much more than a Quonset hut perched up on the hill overlooking Williston Lake. I arrived fifteen minutes before I was scheduled to take off in the float plane I’d chartered for the final leg of my journey to Cigar Lake. It was only 5:00 in the afternoon but I was already wiped. My packed morning Air Canada flight to Calgary had been uneventful, if you didn’t count the flight attendants dumping a glass of orange juice on my chest. As well, my so-called personal video screen nestled in the back of the headrest of the seat in front of me yielded a stunning crystal-clear picture. Unfortunately, the audio jack in my armrest was broken and could not be fixed by any of the five crew members who tried in turn, one by one. I’d already ordered up a movie so I just sat there and watched it as a modern-day silent movie. Halfway into the film I decided, based on the video, that not having the audio may well have been a blessing.
In Calgary, I hopped aboard a Rocky Mountain Airways connecting flight bound for Prince George in northern British Columbia. I’m not even sure what kind of plane it was, but I had thought that open cockpits and canvas-covered wings were long-gone relics from the early days of aviation. Apparently not. Okay, I exaggerate, but not much. In the twenty-first century, one does not expect to look around the interior of a commercial aircraft and see wood. Nine of us braved the flight to Prince George. I sat very still the entire time with my fingers in my ears, wishing I could turn back the clock to earlier in the day when my principal in-flight concern had been the malfunctioning entertainment system. Of course on Rocky Mountain Airways there was no in-flight entertainment, no in-flight magazines, no in-flight snacks, no in-flight beverages. As far as I was concerned, it was a miracle we were in-flight at all. We landed safely in Prince George. When the plane finally came to a stop and the ear-splitting engine died away, I was as relieved as Charles Lindbergh must have been upon touchdown in Paris. But Prince George was not my final destination.
My rental car was smaller than any automobile ought to be. I was trying to save NASA some money by opting for the subcompact. I won’t be doing that again. I had to use a bungee-cord to secure the hatchback because my rather small suitcase just wouldn’t fit in the back. What kind of car can’t accommodate a single small suitcase? As for the driving, well, my rental wasn’t exactly a speed merchant. As I headed up the Alaska Highway, the engine sounded like a sewing machine but lacked the power. The speed limit was ninety kilometres an hour but I could really only get it going up to about eighty kilometres an hour before the vibrations threatened to rearrange my internal organs. It took me nearly three hours to drive the 185 kilometres to Mackenzie.
Named for the famous explorer Alexander Mackenzie, the town was a lumber and logging centre built on the shores of Williston Lake. In fact, the world’s largest tree crusher (and no, I really don’t know what that is) sat on display at the entrance to the town as a symbol of Mackenzie’s roots in logging. Seeing it didn’t really help me understand its precise purpose. I parked in front of Wilderness Charters and headed inside.
“You have got to be David Stewart,” exclaimed the man sitting at a cluttered desk behind the counter. “Welcome to northern B.C. I’m Chatter Haney.”
“Um, yes. You’re right, I am David Stewart. Hello.”
“Well, Mr. Stewart, I’ve got good news and bad news,” he said. “The bad news is we blew an oil pump on our Cessna the day before yesterday and it won’t be fixed until next week.”
“Hmmm, the oil pump sounds like it plays an important role in the safe operation of the plane,” I said.
“That it does. But have no fear, there is good news, too,” Chatter assured me. “I mean, beyond the fact that you’ve chosen to visit one of the most beautiful untouched, unspoiled parts of this vast country of ours. The mountains and glacial lakes have this almost unearthly and spiritual restorative effect on people – especially those who come from the city. And if you happen to hail from Toronto, well then, son, you are in for the experience of a lifetime.”
This was a man who wore his name proudly. He stopped talking just long enough to take a breath before continuing to enumerate the wonders of Williston Lake and the surrounding region. When he paused again a few minutes later, I leapt back in, fearing I might never get another chance.
“So,” I interjected, “I think you were about to mention the good news part of the equation, weren’t you?”
“Right! I knew I was going somewhere with that.” He turned and looked out the window, down the hill to the dock, and then pointed. “You see that beaver down there?”
I followed his outstretched finger but could only see a red float plane. Ahh, capital B Beaver.
“That’s Doc’s plane. She owes us a favour and will get you out to Cigar Lake, and back when you want,” he explained.
“Um, okay. Is it safe?”
“A whole pile safer than a Cessna with a busted oil pump. You’ll be fine. She’s been flying these parts for most of her life.” He grabbed the mike attached to what looked like an old CB radio and squeezed the button on the side. “Hey Doc, he’s here. I’m sending him down.”
I watched out the window as the door of the Beaver opened and an arm waved back to us. I didn’t really have a choice. Besides, the Beaver looked at lot safer than the rickety bucket of bolts that had flown me to Prince George.
“Is it okay if I leave my finely tuned pocket rocket in your parking lot for a day or two?” I asked, pointing to the rickety bucket of bolts that had driven me to Mackenzie.
“Done.”
“I assume it’ll be safe enough in the parking lot. Car theft isn’t a problem around here, is it?” I inquired.
He looked out the window again at my car.
“Oh, I’m pretty sure it’ll be safe enough.”
“All right. Thanks for making alternative arrangements for me,” I said.
“Sorry for the inconvenience, but you’re in good hands with Doc.”
I darted out the door before he could renew his regional tourism patter. I walked back to the car, grabbed my wheelie suitcase, and pulled it behind me along the gravel path. On the polished floors of Toronto’s Pearson International Airport it had rolled quite smoothly. But it was not what you would describe as an allterrain suitcase. Halfway down to the dock, I picked it up and carried it.
A wiry and grizzled old woman climbed out of the cockpit of the Beaver wearing grey, grease-stained coveralls and well-worn hiking boots. At least I thought she was a woman. Her hair was also wiry and grizzled. She was all business.
“Hi, I’m David Stewart.” I extended my hand.
She offered her hand and we shook. It felt like one gigantic hand-shaped callous.
“Doc Lanny,” she replied, sounding older than she looked. And she looked old. Her voice tipped the balance in favour of her being a woman. But it didn’t tip it very far.
“Thanks so much for taking me.”
“No problem. Are you staying for a while?” she asked, gesturing to my suitcase.
“Um, no. I just wasn’t sure what to bring with me,” I explained.
“So you brought it all.”
She grabbed the bag. On instinct, I reached out to reclaim it, worried about her snapping a wrist or breaking a hip trying to wrestle it into the plane.
“Here, let me. I can put my own bag in,” I said, genuinely concerned.
She said nothing, but the look she gave me had me stepping back with my hands up in surrender. She swung the suitcase up as if it were a bag of marshmallows and pushed it through a small side hatch in the plane behind the cabin.
“You can climb in and sit in the front right-hand seat,” she directed.
I did as I was told, only bumping my head twice in the process. She followed, after casting off the line securing the pontoon to the dock and latching the door behind her. She slipped into the pilot’s seat and strapped in with the smooth and precise movements of someone who’d done it a thousand times before.
“Buckle up, Mr. Stewart,” she said, pointing to the seat belt hanging over the armrest. “And put those on. It gets pretty loud in here.”
I did as I was told, latching the lap and shoulder belt and pulling on the headset.
I figured that was the end of the safety demonstration. I knew where the exits were.
Doc Lanny seemed a bit preoccupied and sent a few quick glances my way as she went through her pre-flight checklist. She pushed various buttons on the instrument panel and punched the starter. The single engine sputtered to life and the propeller started its circular journey. We taxied out onto Williston Lake against a light breeze and small waves. Then when we were out from the shore a ways, she opened the throttle and the plane picked up speed. I could see one pontoon below me out the window and I watched as the water around it turned white. I’d never been in a float plane and was surprised by how rough the ride was until we lifted from the water. We climbed gently and she turned to the west, aiming the nose toward a pass between two lines of mountains. The scenery was breathtaking. According to the map, we were flying near the Rocky Mountain Trench that separated the Rocky Mountains to the east from the Omineca Mountains to the west. There were snow-capped peaks on either side of our flight path, with the sun slowly dropping in the west. It was stunning.
“So there aren’t many more than a dozen folks living on Cigar Lake,” she observed. “Where are you headed?”
I jumped when her voice crackled in my ears. I’d forgotten my headset was more than hearing protection. For the first time I noticed the small microphone that swung down from my left headphone. Right.
“I work at a big PR agency in Toronto, and I’m trying to track down the elusive winner of a contest we helped to run. We haven’t been able to reach him. He doesn’t seem to have a phone, and with the postal strike, well, it was easier and faster just to send me out to find him. The guy lives on Cigar Lake.”
When I looked over, she was staring at me. When she just kept her eyes fixed on me for what seemed like an unduly long time, I eventually pointed out the windscreen as a kind of subtle reminder that she was in fact flying a plane. She took the hint.
“What contest?” she asked.
“Well, I can’t really say, but the guy has truly won the trip of a lifetime. It’ll be out of this world,” I said.
She was staring at me again, for too long. This time her mouth was open. I pointed ahead, again.
“What’s the name?” she asked softly.
I really wasn’t supposed to reveal the winner’s name, particularly when the vetting process had not even begun. On the other hand, how was I going to be delivered to his place without giving up the name?
“All we’ve got is L. Percival.”
The plane violently tipped over on its right wing and nose-dived. I grabbed the seat and hung on. As we shot down, my lunch shot up. An instant later, she righted the plane and brought us back onto an even keel a few hundred feet lower than we’d been. I managed to push my lunch back down where it belonged. I’d already been feeling some nausea from the ups and downs of flying in a float plane. So the manoeuvre she’d just pulled certainly didn’t help settle my stomach.
“What the hell just happened!” I shouted into the mike. “What was that?!”
I could hear her breathing hard in my headphones.
“Sorry about that. We caught an air pocket. It happens. I’ve got her now.”
“Well, I hope so. I thought we were going down.” I was hyperventilating, too.
She looked flushed, and shaken, but said nothing more. We flew on and she kept her eyes front. A couple of times I noticed her shaking her head slowly, probably reliving the ride through the air pocket. About half an hour later, I realized we were turning and descending. Below us I saw the familiar long cigar-shaped lake I had seen before, but just as a map on the Internet.
“I can certainly see why it’s called Cigar Lake,” I noted as we swung down to start our approach.
She seemed to have regained her composure after the stomach-turning barrel roll and nose-dive we’d executed a half hour before.
“Well, it’s probably a better name than Test Tube Lake, or Lake Howitzer, or what some folks call it around here, Phallic Lake,” she replied.
As we circled, I quickly realized that it was not just the waves I could see rushing beneath us but the rocks below the surface of the lake as well. Then at the eastern end of the lake, the blue of the water suddenly deepened and the rocky bottom fell away and disappeared.
“That is one shallow lake,” I noted as we passed over land again and made one final turn.
“Yep. A glacier dragged itself through here gouging out a shallow trough except for the one end here where it somehow dug down deep.”
We turned again and were back over the east end of the lake heading west at an altitude of about a hundred feet or so. She pointed out a rustic cabin right on the eastern shore.
“That’s, um, the Percival place.”
Then we were down, touching the water in the middle of the lake, our speed taking us almost to the western shore, where we turned around and started the long taxi back to the Percival dock.
“Why not land from the other direction?” I asked. “It would save you taxiing the length of the lake.”
“You don’t fly much, do you? I have to land her into the wind. That’s how planes work. In this part of the mountains, the west wind is not just prevailing, it’s permanent. Every take-off and every landing brings me out here to the west end.”
“Do you fly here often?” I asked.
She smiled a little bit and nodded.
Ten minutes later, she eased us toward the dock at the “Percival place” and cut the engine. While we were still gliding through the water, she climbed out of her seat, out the door, and down onto the pontoon. She stuck out her foot to stop the float from hitting the dock and then stepped onto the two-by-eight planks, guiding the plane into position. It was a perfect parking job. She grabbed a rope already fixed to a cleat on the dock and snapped the metal carabiner to a steel eye mounted on the front of the pontoon. She did the same with a second rope securing the aft end of the pontoon. She flipped open the side hatch, reached into the compartment, and swung out my suitcase in one smooth, easy motion. By this time, I’d managed to release the safety belt and crawl out of my seat. I was reminded of my headset only when it pulled rather violently off my head as I made my way to the door. I stepped carefully down onto the pontoon and then jumped gracefully onto the dock. I would have preferred to have landed on my feet, but my knees and then back would have to do.
“Are you all right?” she asked, helping me up.
“Oh, I’m fine. That’s my standard float plane disembarkation technique.”
“I see.”
We stood facing each other. She didn’t seem eager to move off the dock. I looked up at the cabin expecting one of the Percival clan to emerge wondering about their surprise visitors. Nothing. All quiet. That was not good. I’d come all this way and no one was home. A red canoe rested on a wooden rack just beyond the dock, making me feel like I was stepping into a Tom Thomson painting. Doc Lanny looked out at the lake for a moment and then stepped toward me.
“Why don’t you and I start over?” she said, offering her hand to me for the second time in the last hour or so. She was smiling.
“I’m Dr. Landon Percival. This is my home. I’m the ‘L. Percival’ I think you’ve come to see.”
A raft of frenzied thoughts collided and collapsed in a heap in my head, which I guess is where thoughts traditionally collide and collapse. In no particular order:
He was a she.
She was certainly not twenty-one years old.
She wasn’t a young strapping lumberjack type.
My knees and back still hurt from my Beaver dismount.
How was I going to get back to Mackenzie after breaking the bad news to this old lady that she wouldn’t be going anywhere near the space shuttle?
Maybe our terrifying aerobatic routine on the flight here had nothing to do with a rogue air pocket.
Landon is a nice name.
Crawford Blake was going to hurt me. Amanda Burke was going to hurt me. It was quite possible Landon Percival was going to hurt me.
Despite “enjoying” the same lunch twice, once in a roadside restaurant and a second time in the plane, I was suddenly very hungry.
“But … I thought you were a twenty-one-year-old ‘he,’ ” I mumbled. “I mean, your entry said you were twenty-one.”
Landon looked puzzled.
“No, it did not. I wrote seventy-one. And I don’t know why you’d assume L. Percival would be a man unless you just believe that only men would enter a contest to win a trip into space,” she replied with an edge, lowering the temperature on the dock.
She may have had a point on why I assumed “she” would be a “he.” I opened the front pocket of my suitcase and pulled out the file Emily had given me to help authenticate the winner. I flipped through it, extracted a photocopy of Landon’s original entry form, and showed it to her.
“See, twenty-one,” I said, pointing.
“Look again, eagle eyes. That’s not a two! Do you not know your numbers? That’s a seven. That’s how I make my sevens, with a tiny little tail at the bottom. See, seventy-one,” she responded. “I’m a doctor. Bad handwriting comes with the job.”
I was forced to admit upon closer inspection that it did sort of look a little like a seven. But it still looked a lot like a two. I guess I’d just assumed it said twenty-one and that no one in their eighth decade – and their right mind – would be looking for a ride to the space station.
“Okay. So let me see if I have this right. You’re Landon Percival. You’re a seventy-one-year-old doctor. This definitely is your official winning entry in the Citizen Astronaut contest. You live here in a remote corner of northern British Columbia and fly a plane.”
“That about sums it up.”
Fantastic. A wasted trip. And now I was marooned here, at least until morning. The sun had finally dipped below the mountains, leaving us in fading light.
“Why did you wait until we landed to tell me who you were?”
“Am I going into space?” she asked.
Awkward. I had to let her down gently.
“Well, that’s hard to say, and it’s certainly not my call. NASA has the final decision, but with the considerable liability issues around the flight, and given the absolute requirement that you pass the rigorous training program, I suspect that your, um, maturity, sorry, may make it a long shot. I’m sorry.”
“Now you know why I didn’t tell you until we landed. You would have asked me to turn the plane around and head back to Mackenzie,” she replied. “We both know that when you report back to NASA, I’ll probably be off the list and you’ll just draw another name. Well, now I’ve got you here and …”
“Do you really think abducting me will change anything?” I interrupted. “I’m just the PR guy.”
“Abducting you? This isn’t a movie,” she retorted. “We were running out of daylight and landing on water in the dark is an experience I try to avoid. I’ll fly you back tomorrow. And if that doesn’t suit you, you’re perfectly free to make your own travel arrangements.”
I looked around at this idyllic remote lake nestled in the embrace of the Omineca Mountains and remembered the trouble I’d had earlier in the afternoon hauling my suitcase from the car down to the plane. Dragging it 150 miles as the crow flies through untouched mountain passes, lakes, and wilderness might pose a slight problem.
Landon Percival was still standing on the dock in front of me with her hands on what I assume were her hips. It was hard to tell beneath her loose coveralls. Her eyes were closed for a time but eventually she opened them and lifted them back to me.
“Mr. Stewart, I’ve been waiting a long time for a shot at this. I’m just asking you to hear me out. You’ll be back in Mackenzie tomorrow.”
She grabbed my suitcase and strode off the dock and up the path to the cabin. I stood there for a time cataloguing my options. It didn’t take me long. Then I walked up to the cabin, too.
Landon was lighting kerosene sconces in various locations in the room when I stepped in. The growing light revealed what seemed more a library than a cabin. Built-in shelves on three of the four walls of the main room were full of books. For a bibliophile like me, it was an unexpected and beautiful scene. Wood and books have such warmth. A couch and matching easy chair sat in the middle of the room around a faded Persian-looking area rug. An old pine box served as a coffee table of sorts. A galley kitchen to the left off the front door featured a pass-through to the small dining area with a table and four chairs.
“Tea?” she asked, heading to the kitchen.
“Please.”
She’d put my bag just inside one of the two doors that opened off the main room. I figured they were bedrooms. With Landon in the kitchen, I immediately went to the shelves. A quick scan revealed how her library was organized. One wall was fiction, mainly Canadian, American, and British it seemed at first glance. One wall was non-fiction with lots of history and biography. The third wall was dominated by a stone fireplace with a raised hearth and neat stack of wood.
The bookshelves on either side of the stonework were perhaps the most revealing about Landon. Aviation dominated one set of shelves. There was an array of very old books about bush pilots and their experiences opening up the Canadian north. There was an entire shelf dedicated to books about the de Havilland DHC-2. I recognized the plane on the covers of many of the books as the Beaver now floating at her dock. Another shelf featured books on the history of flight, including biographies of the Wright Brothers and Sir George Cayley, and a small volume on Leonardo da Vinci’s examination of birds and his flying machine designs.
The set of shelves on the other side of the fireplace was completely dedicated to the exploration of space. That’s right, space. Landon Percival was apparently just as much a space nut as was I. In fact, we had many of the same books chronicling the space programs of the United States and the then Soviet Union. Sputnik, Vostok, Mercury, Gemini, Soyuz, Apollo, Skylab, Salyut, the shuttle, the International Space Station, they were all there. There were also what looked to be more obscure technical and academic papers on rocket propulsion systems, space medicine, and astronaut training. A few of the books were written in what I assumed was Russian.
Finally my eye fell on the wide mantel above the fireplace. Lying flat was an old leather-bound notebook opened to reveal flowing cursive unmistakably written with a fountain pen. I was about to look more closely until I noticed what was sitting next to it. I have no idea why I hadn’t seen them as soon as I’d entered the room, but I hadn’t. There, in all its glory, was a well-read edition of The Complete Sherlock Holmes, the entire collection of Conan Doyle’s famous novels and stories gathered in one volume, published by Doubleday and Garden City Books of New York in 1930. It featured the famous introduction by Christopher Morley entitled “In Memoriam Sherlock Holmes.” It stood alone between quite wonderful black, onyx perhaps, Holmes and Watson bookends. I’d been on the lookout for the very same edition. It wasn’t a particularly rare book but you didn’t stumble across it very often, unless you were in the presence of a fellow Sherlockian.
“You have got to be kidding,” I said, just as Landon entered and passed me my tea in a large blue mug. “I fly clear across the country and find, in an old cabin on a remote mountain lake in northern B.C., the 1930 Doubleday edition of The Complete Sherlock Holmes. I’ve been hunting for one of these for some time now. What are the odds?”
“You speak like a fan, steeped in Sherlockiana,” Landon said.
“A devoted and long-time fan. I’ve had a subscription to the Baker Street Journal since I was sixteen,” I replied. Both of us were smiling now, standing on our patch of common ground.
“I can do better than that. I’ve had a BSJ subscription since 1953, when I turned fourteen. And they’re all right here, every single one,” Landon said as she lifted the lid on the pine box with a flourish to reveal several neat stacks of the journals.
I had the full set of the BSJ on CD-ROM, but I’d never actually seen any editions of the journal older than the year 2000 when my subscription started. I sat down on the couch and put my mug on the floor.
“May I?” I asked, as I leaned toward the treasure chest of Sherlockian delights.
Landon abruptly closed the lid.
“After.”
“After what?”
“After you listen,” Landon replied. “If I’m to be rejected as the citizen astronaut because I’ve got a few too many miles on me, I want you to know who you’re rejecting.”
“Landon, I’m sorry, I’m sympathetic, but NASA’S going to say that you’re a nonstarter. The Citizen Astronaut program is intended to ignite a passion for space in a new generation of Canadians and Americans. We need to build support in the eighteen- to fifty-year-old demographic if we hope to secure adequate funding levels from Congress and the Canadian government. I’m supposed to be finding a youngish, good-looking, strong, charismatic archetype with a Canadian flag tattooed above his heart. As much as I’d like to see you win this, I just don’t think it’s in the cards.”
She slipped past me to the fireplace, moved the screen, struck a wooden match on the bottom of its cylindrical container, and bent down to light the fire that she’d already built. The fire crackled and was soon blazing. A one-match fire. She stood up for a few moments watching the flames before nodding her head and coming back to her chair.
“I know I may not be the candidate you had in mind when you cooked up this contest. But my name was drawn. I won.”
I sighed.
“Yes, your name was drawn. I know. But you didn’t win a canned ham at bingo night. We’re talking about orbiting the Earth. So the stakes and the costs are high.”
I paused for a moment before continuing.
“I’m really sorry, but it clearly states in the fine print that the candidate must be accredited and approved by NASA and the Canadian Space Agency even before the winner’s name can be announced and the training starts. They hold all the cards. It’s their contest.”
“But I’m perfect for this,” she said, looking into the fire. “Winning this contest was justice delayed, but it’s justice nonetheless, and I want it. Don’t change it to justice denied.”
“I’m not following the justice angle.”
“Then get comfortable and listen,” she instructed.
“Hang on,” I replied. “Let me get my notebook.”
I owed my colleagues and our client a full briefing on Landon Percival. I knew that Emily would insist on due diligence and a corresponding paper trail from here to the space station if we were going to reject our first winner and draw another. I unzipped another pocket on my bag and withdrew my trusty Moleskine notebook and my favourite Cross fountain pen. In my mind, Moleskines required fountain pens. I had this romantic image of Watson recording his friend’s exploits in a Moleskine-like notebook with a fountain pen. I was back in my chair a moment later.
“Okay. My pen is poised and the night is young. You have the floor,” I said, with a grand sweep of my hand. Landon adroitly caught the lamp my grand sweeping hand knocked off the end table beside me.
“No, actually, right now I have the lamp.”
She did not look pleased.
“So sorry about that,” I said. “I’m quite clumsy, if that isn’t already evident.”
“No blood spilt,” she replied, restoring the lamp to its rightful place before turning her eyes back to me.
“When you’re seventy-one, few stories are short. But I’ll try to tighten it up, so stay with me. It all comes together. Are you quite ready, Mr. Stewart?”
“David, please.”
She nodded, sat back, inhaled deeply, and began.
“Hugh Percival, my father, was born in Vancouver in 1899. By the time he was nineteen years old, he was a decorated flying ace in the skies over France in World War I. Against the odds, and a testament to his skill as a pilot, he survived when so many others did not. After the armistice, he returned to Vancouver and became a doctor. As was often the case for returning fighter pilots, he grew bored of seeing patients in his office, and pined for his plane. He struck a reasonable compromise and became one of the first bush pilot doctors in Canada. He bought an eight-year-old Fokker Universal float plane and flew all over northern B.C. delivering babies, setting broken bones, operating when he needed to in less than ideal conditions, and of course signing death certificates when there was no hope. He loved what he did with all his heart. He’d been liberated from the drudgery of a traditional urban medical practice. And he could still fly.
“He met my mother, Dorothy, a schoolteacher in Fort Nelson in 1934, and they were married in ’35. The newlyweds moved to this very cabin that he’d built with the help of some local carpenters who were also patients. The barter system was, and is still, alive here, as it probably is in most remote parts of the country. On February 20, 1939, my father delivered me right about where you’re now sitting. I’m named after my father’s best friend, Rupert Landon, who died over France just days before the peace in 1918. I don’t think my father ever quite got over Rupert’s death. Perhaps to honour his memory, my father taught me to fly when I was thirteen, and I’ve been aloft ever since.
“I was home schooled by my mother and finished the equivalent of high school when I was seventeen. My father flew me down to Vancouver when I was eighteen and set me up in an apartment near the campus of the University of British Columbia. I earned a Bachelor of Science in physiology and then went on to medical school. This would have been in 1962. I would go home when I could, but I spent most of the year in Vancouver. When I was twenty-four and almost finished med school, my father flew my mother down to Vancouver, where she was diagnosed with brain cancer. She never left the hospital. They knew little about how to treat that wretched disease back then. Dad was with her for the entire seven weeks of her precipitous decline and I was there for most of it, too. After she passed, I wanted to return to Cigar Lake with my father and put off my final year of medical school, but he flatly refused. I stayed and finished. Then one thing led to another and I found myself living in a much nicer apartment with a roommate, Sam, and taking over an established practice from another woman doctor who had been killed in a car accident. A doctor usually has to start small and build a stable of patients over many years. But I walked into what was already a very successful practice and before I knew it, five years had passed.”
I was struck by the simple yet compelling storytelling. She covered a lot of ground with clean efficient sentences.
“Are you still awake, Mr. Stewart?” she asked.
“Of course. I’m not making a shopping list here,” I replied, pointing to the notes I’d been taking.
“It’s getting late and you’re still on Toronto time. I’ll just finish this leg of the journey and we’ll pick it up in the morning.”
“I’m in your hands,” I said. “As Sherlock Holmes would say, ‘Pray continue.’ ”
Landon took another big breath and resumed her story.
“On October 17, 1970, I got a message at my office to contact the RCMP in Fort St. John. I knew enough to know that it wasn’t likely to be good news. When I reached them, I was told that my father and his plane had disappeared on a flight to a friend’s cabin an hour northwest of Cigar Lake to deliver supplies as a favour. By then, he was flying an early de Havilland Beaver that he’d bought in 1958. No trace of him or the Beaver could be found. As you might imagine, I was devastated. I may not have been thinking clearly at the time, yet I’ve never regretted my decision. Not for a moment. In short order, I sold my medical practice, which was easier and faster than you might imagine. A husband-and-wife team of physicians had just arrived from Montreal and were perfectly suited to take over. I took their down payment and bought a twenty-year-old DHC-2 Beaver from a small charter company just up the coast from Vancouver. It was in good shape and had fewer hours on it than many planes two decades old. It all happened in the space of three weeks. I left my patients, I left my roommate, I left my life in Vancouver and flew my own plane back to this cabin. I was thirty-one years old and had no plan other than to find my father.
“The RCMP had suspended the search after two weeks. Officially, he was presumed dead in a plane crash, even though there was still no sign of wreckage anywhere along the route to his friend’s lake. It was odd arriving back here and finding the cabin just as my father had left it before his last flight.”
Landon got up and walked to the fireplace. I assumed she was going to stir the fire, although it was still burning nicely. Instead, she reached up and brought down the old leather notebook that was opened on the mantel. She sat down beside me and placed it on the pine box so we could both see it.
“This is my father’s. It’s a combination diary and flight log. He got used to recording his flights in the Great War and never gave up the habit. Here’s his final entry, almost certainly the last words he ever wrote.” She gestured towards the page.
I leaned down and read the words penned some forty years earlier.
In a rush to deliver tar paper and shingles to cranky Earl Walker on Laurier Lake. He needs it today so he can fix his damn roof and beat the rain. Damn EW today! Not feeling very well. But tanks are full. Gotta fly now. 2:17 p.m. HP
“Earl Walker was clearly in a hurry that day. Earl Walker never saw my father that day, or ever again.”
Landon reached in one of the bookshelves, brought out an empty pill bottle, and placed it on the pine box.
“I found this on the kitchen counter when I arrived that day.”
I picked up the bottle.
“Nitroglycerin? Isn’t that an explosive?” I asked.
“It can be, but in this form, it’s a very common heart medicine my father was evidently taking. It’s a vasodilator, probably used to treat angina. But the bottle was empty when I found it. Just another piece of the puzzle.
“So I took over my father’s remote practice and spent every other waking moment searching for him. I mapped out his course to Earl Walker’s place and then drew a circle demarcating the huge swath of territory my father could have reached that day, based on how far the Beaver could have flown with full tanks. With a range of about 450 miles in any direction, the search area is more than 635,000 square miles. I’ve spent the last 40 years covering every inch of that vast expanse and have found sweet nothing. I even looked beyond the 450-mile range in case of heavy tail winds. But nothing. It’s hard to miss a downed plane with a 48-foot wingspan, but I seemed to have managed it.”
I shifted my position on the couch.
“You’re about dead to this world. I can tell,” Landon said. “Let’s stop here and pick it up in the morning. You’re in that bedroom. The bed is made. We’ll talk when you’re conscious again.”
I had been caught up in her story but realized she was right. I was exhausted.
“Thanks for sharing your story with me. You’ve had quite a fascinating life. Quintessentially Canadian.”
“Well, there’s more to come,” she replied.
I looked around the cabin and realized I hadn’t yet discovered a bathroom. That wasn’t a good sign.
“Um, where might I find the bathroom?”
“You can brush your teeth in the kitchen,” she said as she reached for a flashlight and handed it to me. “Otherwise, head out the back door and turn left, down the gangway and you’ll find what you’re looking for.”
I did as I was told and stepped out into the night. To the left, the flashlight illuminated a wooden catwalk of sorts, elevated above the ground. I learned the hard way that it was narrow, with no railing. When I climbed back up onto the catwalk and confirmed that I had no broken bones, I stepped carefully along the wooden planks to what I hoped would be a newly renovated brightly lit bathroom with a full shower and Jacuzzi. Nope, just a classic one-holer outhouse. At least there was a door. I did what I’d come to do, aided by the sound of rushing water somewhere nearby.
Ten minutes later I was horizontal in a single bed with a mattress that I figured was manufactured before the Leafs won their last cup back in ’67. Not that it mattered. I was so tired I could have slept perched on a fence post. The mattress sagged and squeaked as I searched for a comfortable position. I eventually found one and started to drift. Landon stuck her head in just as I was heading under.
“I aim to be on that shuttle, Mr. Stewart.”
“I know.”