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Then we headed out of Stony on the only road in 100 miles, and traveled the 17 miles to camp. The camp is in a very scenic location on the Fond du Lac River where it flows out of Black Lake on its way to Lake Athabasca.
The next morning the camp manager asked me if I knew anything about mechanics. They had two broken springs on the school bus and had received new ones from Winnipeg; could I install them? I agreed to try. It was quite an experience. The bus was sitting on a
sandy area, so I crawled under it with some tools and proceeded to try to remove the broken springs. Naturally the bolts were well rusted and very difficult to remove. I also discovered I had to save all the bolts, including the U-bolts.
By lunch time I had managed to remove one spring. After lunch my legs started itching, so I rolled up my pants to discover that my legs were covered with oozing red welts. I was informed that they were black fly bites. From then on I made sure my pants were tucked into my socks. Black fly bites are very uncomfortable and take about two weeks to heal up. That was one uncomfortable experience, but I certainly learned quickly to protect myself during the black fly season. We wore 'shoo-bug' jackets, head nets and insect repellant for the two weeks the flies were out. Back to the bus after lunch, I removed the second spring, and then discovered that the springs that had been sent from Winnipeg did not resemble the ones on the bus. We could not wait a month to have another set of springs sent up, so I took the old ones and the new ones apart, borrowed a cutting torch, redesigned the springs and made them fit. A job that would have taken me a couple of hours in a well-equipped shop in Saskatoon took nearly three full days. Another lesson learned. I could actually do a fairly complicated repair job with a minimum of tools and no facilities. As far as I know the springs are still on the bus and still carrying guests from Stony to camp.
That evening I had a chance to go for a ride on the single Otter float plane. The pilot had to make a pick-up at one of the out camps, but I decided to forego the trip even though I had never been on a float plane before. I was just too tired and sore after my experience with the school bus, so the pilot left to make his pick-up without me, but took his eleven-year-old son with him.
A couple of hours later he and his son came walking into camp with a piece of the plane under one arm. The plane had gone down in the bush about 1/2 mile from camp, and we had to go and help get the guests and their equipment. The plane was a write-off but no one was seriously hurt. The floats had taken the brunt of the crash and the fuselage remained in one piece.
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