ASPIRATION: 1 Just a Dam Slave

Slave Falls, Manitoba, Canada

I am not what happened to me, I am what I chose to become.

― Carl Gustav Jung.

This is the story of the first decade of my working life, a tale that took ten years to unfold between July 1961 and July 1971. It is a tale (I trust) a touch out of the ordinary that unfolded in the thick of scenes and settings of two very different countries, both of which have altered colossally since the time they formed a backdrop to the events set forth here.

The Provinces of Canada

Sisler High School, Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada

Looking back, I see the path opening upon this story when I left Sisler High School for the last time in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada, at the malleable age of 18. That moment was not much a matter of pride to me because I had manifestly failed to 'graduate', a fact to be clarified later.

For now, the critical thing was my emergence into the world of work, much like most kids, with no clearer idea of how to seize hold of my blossoming life than a young dog. I hadn't even any clear notion of how to go about getting a job. Luckily, the matter was settled for me by a neighbour who found me work at the place of his labours in the Winnipeg division of the great American corporation of Westinghouse as a trainee assembler of lighting panels.

But, as fate would have it, just as I was beginning to feel at ease with my work there, I was despatched on a weekend's notice to the remote location of Slave Falls on the Winnipeg River, right on the doorstep of the great Canadian wilderness.

Southeast Manitoba

In that isolated place, I was attached to a gang of men slaving away at a colossal generator that had burned out in the powerhouse of the hydroelectric dam that spanned the river there.

The Slave Falls Generators

The part of the monster in process of overhaul was the ‘stator’, that is the enormous stationary section that encloses the part that moves: the ‘rotor’. After dismantlement of the entire structure of the device, the stator had been lifted by some unimaginable means from the floor and then lowered upon a ring of massive timber blocks permitting worker access to the circular space inside for the purpose of making the necessary repairs. But the project was behind schedule, as tittle-tattle had it, which was likely why I'd been drafted to join that gang of workmen condemned to toil for twelve hours every night inside that steel arena, twisting adhesive tape around the countless coils that clung to the guts of that colossal thing.

The Powerhouse of the Dam

The workers were housed at Pointe du Bois, some six miles up the river from the dam, where the road from civilisation came to an abrupt and unremarkable end in front of a couple of Nissen huts.

Nissen Huts

At the dusk of day the men comprising the night crew of this cheerless enterprise were conveyed from their drab encampment to the isolated place of their labours by means of a bus adapted to ride on railway tracks. This hybrid, like a steel umbilical cord, linked the nursling dam with its nourishing mother 10km down the river.

Modern railbus arriving at Pointe du Bois

The night's toil began when you climbed inside, chose a seat and waited while your fellow passengers had got aboard and slumped into seats. The driver then whirred his engine into life and engaged first gear. The old bus then began to grind along its rails, absurdly slowly at first, with something like a screech and a wail of pain. The sheds of the settlement began to glide behind outside the windows, and the chatter of the passengers swelled as the rusty iron wheels began to clatter and the seats began to shake as the driver rammed home his gears.

winnipeg-hydro-railway-rail-bus-number-b-1

The Railbus that I once rode to work upon

How strange it was for a lad like me, just a schoolboy several weeks before, to wake in the late afternoon to an evening meal eaten sleepily at a table crowded with workmen, and then to go clattering into the wilderness in that outlandish craft that scattered rabbits and deer from the fringes of the line in the fading sunlight of the forest. Strange, too, it was to labour all through the night in a floodlit hum, bandaging up the burnt-out guts of that monstrous thing, till it was time to come rattling back in the grey light of morning to a dozy breakfast in the cookhouse and a dazed slumber in a bunk.

The railbus is now in the Winnipeg Railway Museum

Inside the Railbus

The Controls

Since a road has now been built between Pointe du Bois and the hydroelectric dam at Slave Falls, the rail link is no longer in use.

The Railbus en Route

The Slave Falls generator repair project must have soon got back on track, because I was directed back to Winnipeg within a week. Yes, I spent just a week at that fascinating place, but I suspect I learned something crucial in the short time I spent there. On one of those days I met a fellow who coaxed me into being escorted to the very summit of the dam. Once at the height and standing before a knee-high parapet, I saw the river seething beneath and the vast landscape of forest stretching far to the four horizons.

Slave Falls, Manitoba, Canada

An exhilarating site. Especially for a denizen of the Prairies who had rarely seen anything of the world from higher than several feet. Maybe my guide had come from elsewhere, or, fed by fantasies maybe he had just accustomed himself to such heights at this very place, but now he clambered upon the parapet and invited me to join him there on the dizzying pinnacle of the abyss.

Much as I wished to prove myself apt at facing challenges, I declined this one. It galled me to think that this windbag considered me spineless, but in my own estimation it was simply prudent to prepare yourself beforehand for such high jinks.

1960s Canadian Forces Fighter Jet

At heart, what I wanted was not a life of daring, but a life of action. That is why I had decided to join the Canadian Air Force. But my designs were stymied on application when a medical check revealed that I had a slight heart murmur, a condition that rendered me unfit for service. Thus, fantasies of flying fighter jets had had to be scrapped and their place taken by reveries of leading my men over enemy hills. I then applied to join the Army, where my heart murmur remained undetected or ignored, and I was instructed to present myself at Camp Shilo, Manitoba, on the 12th of September, 1962. My dreams seemed then to be on the verge of fulfilment.