Odyssey Uno.

Early June 1978 I had my first flight on a small plane, the DeHaviland Beaver float plane.
I had been in HV-GB holed up in the Hotel Goose [no longer operational] waiting for the weather to clear for my final leg to Nain.
I had started the odyssey 5 days prior from Sydney Australia. Actually this trip was my first outside Australia and my first on any plane of any type.

I started off on a Pan Am [no longer operational] Boeing 747 to LAX, then onto a Air Canada L1011 to Toronto for an overnight. Onto a 737 the next morning to Montreal where I spent three days recuperating and sight seeing.
Left Montreal on another 737 of Eastern Provincial Airlines [no longer operational] to Wabush and on to Goose Bay.

So it was with some trepidation I finely boarded the Beaver at the float plane base at Otter Creek. I was to be one of four making the trip, plus mail and freight.

The first picture [at right] is of what passed as the waiting room those days.
Bob Palliser left [deceased] and John Igloliorte were very helpful in calming my nerves. I needed that too as it took two tries to get off the water, then it was mostly over land to Rigolet where we dropped Bob off.
Our next drop off was Makkovik, what looked to me like large hunks of ice were blocking the dock there, but we managed to get alongside and drop the fourth person off.
Just John and I left, and the scenery became more and more hostile looking to me the further north we flew.
All of a sudden John points ahead and says ‘Hopedale’. I’m looking real hard to make out something that was not rock, mountains, water ice, and tundra. All of a sudden there it was, perched atop the highest peaks, the radar antennas of the DEW line.

So we circled around and finely the community of Hopedale came into view, I will reserve my thoughts on that little impact, and we landed in very windy conditions. As a matter of fact the wind kept us from getting to the dock, the pilot had to get out on the pontoon and throw the couple of mail bags to some one on the dock. “Christ almighty” I said to my self, “what’s Nain going to be like”?

Any way off we go and about 40 minutes later Nain comes into view, trees, nice green coverage, big open harbor to land on, my spirits lifted. That is until the pilot started to circle several times then saying, “not sure if we can land due to the wind, may have to go back”.
The sprits dropped dramatically, but some how we got down, idled over to a buoy and the pilot tied off. “What now” a says to self.
We wait for a bit, I could see my sister on the dock waiving. Then a small speed boat with one person left the dock and came out along side. John starts handing his luggage and himself to the guy in the boat, so I followed along.

We get to the dock, climb up the ladder, reach down for the luggage, embrace my sister, introduced to some people there who came down to see my sisters brother.



These pictures of the DEW line in Hopedale were taken on my departure from Nain [not for the last time as it turned out] in October 78.


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The #2 picture shows the larger radar antenna facing to the north east; they were on a separate hill top to the main control/accommodation units. There were still quite a lot of those structures shown in the #3 photograph. The large building in centre of photo was the power station. The two white buildings to the right of photo were some of the accommodations from when the Americans were there. These two were being used at the time as a support and communications unit to the then offshore drilling program that was under way off the Labrador in the late 1970’s early 80’s.

Today there is only concrete structures and footings left, see an earlier post on those.