![Bringing Home the Goods](/web/20061029115812im_/http://www.civilization.ca/cpm/courrier/images/wm05eng.gif)
Air transport and airmail breathed life into the isolated settlements that
constituted the Canadian outback. With the mail might come a word of comfort,
a message from the folks at home. "My missionaries are very isolated," wrote
one Oblate Father in 1932 to the Postmaster General, "the mail brought great
comfort to them especially at the approach of Christmas and New Year's."
Father Saindon was concerned about the need for a continued postal link to
his priests working the Moosonee-Great Whale and the Moosonee-Winisk coasts
of James Bay. His request ended up in the airmail file of the Post Office
Department, and Austin Airways was eventually awarded a contract for the
region in 1944. The airplane was everything to the people of the Canadian
North. It flew in dogs, dynamite, mining equipment and food; it brought in
what was known as "giggle soup," laughing water, cough medicine, fire-water
in a word, booze; and it delivered the newspaper and that faithful
fellow traveller of Canadian mail, the mail-order catalogue. In 1935, one
Manitoba postal official was moved to complain:
The mail order houses have derived so much business in Winnipeg since the
establishment of these airmail routes to the Northern Mining areas . . .
that they have decided to circularize all customers and supply them with the
latest catalogue, and one firm on Saturday last gave us over half a ton of
catalogue mail alone for which they paid fifteen cents a pound and we are
now facing the problem of transporting it all into the various sections
without delay.
The bush pilot was always a welcome visitor, by virtue of the variety of
items he brought with him. But news was obviously what the people expected
and hoped for most. In the course of one long summer day's work in 1938, the
pilot and mechanic on the Yellowknife-Gordon Lake run in the Northwest
Territories had brought all manner of mail and groceries to 10 or more
different camps, and were returning with requests for cigarettes, radio
antennae, boots that fit and news. Despite their efforts, one man refused to
pose for a photograph alongside members of the expedition because he had yet
to receive a letter.
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