In the mid-50’s I quit school in Grade 12 on the assumption that I knew it all. Since I wanted to see the world and experience some adventure, I needed to earn enough money to start my journey, so I started work as a shorehand at the family’s fish station at Albert’s Point on Humbuck Bay.

My chores at the station included shaving ice, packing fish and loading and unloading many, many boxes when the freight boat made its weekly call. We experienced a beautiful fall that year, with great sunsets and calm waters. But the calm would not last - the Lake was just biding her time until the arrival of her wild beau the North wind, and together they would dance up a storm.

About the middle of October, the Northern Greenback Pickerel began to show up in the nets. Up to this point we had mainly been fishing saugers, and the appearance of the pickerel was welcome from a financial perspective as they fetched a better price. However, they may have also signalled a change in the weather. My father, a weather-wise fisherman, was watching the sky closely and began to see signs that the weather was beginning to deteriorate. By the end of October, the fishing was still good but they decided it was time to pack up the gear for the journey home.

My Uncle Hannes and a small crew loaded Booth Boat #10 with all she could carry. Those left behind finished pulling up the nets and anchors. The remaining gear was packed into dozens of boxes and awaited the arrival of Captain Laxdal and the Baby Diamond. The weather was getting worse.

Boat captains are a breed all their own. Like train conductors, they are obsessed with timetables. To them, being on time is the Holy Grail that must be pursued, and a storm regardless of its size, is merely an inconvenience to deal with. And so, it was that promptly on schedule, Captain Laxdal bobbed around Icehouse Point.

(His freight boat, the Baby Diamond, was specifically designed to work on Lake Winnipeg and she could carry 200 fifty-pound boxes of fish in the forward hold. It was the first of the Winnipegosis V-bottom boats, oak-ribbed with every plank bolted, not nailed, in place. She measured 50 feet in length and had a small wheel house and with the smooth running Gray Marine, she was a superb hauling machine regardless of the weather).

We spent hours loading our 100 boxes of fish and many boxes of camp gear for the seven to ten-hour trip back to Gimli. I was getting tired of carrying so many boxes. We were finally ready to go and the storm was close at hand. I would not need to travel to experience adventure, it had come to me. In the small wheelhouse, the Baby Diamond’s crew of two was now joined by eight bulkily clad fisherman and one woman, my sister-in-law, Sigurros.

In preparation of a possible disaster, two 18-foot skiffs were tied behind the Baby Diamond and manned at all times by two fishermen at the stern of the boat. It was now getting dark and the waves deepened as we headed out into the channel.

We were under way and moving well through the heavy waves when the Captain got a call on the 2-way – could we possibly stop at Berry Island and pick up some freight at Dempsey Valgardson’s station, as they were trying to get out ahead of the storm and had too much for the boats that were there. This was about two hours away and in the middle of the channel. With a small shrug and a sad glance at his schedule, the Captain agreed.

There really wasn’t much of a dock but the island afforded some lea from the cruel North wind. We docked next to the M.S. Red Diamond and we could see a mad scene of people quickly packing fish by Coleman lantern in the howling wind, Dempsey and his crew had not been able to lift their nets until now, and they were loaded with tulibees. Boxes and boxes of them. They were frantically packing them 100 pounds to a box, shovelling ice on top and nailing them shut.  The scene reminded me of a Keystone Kop short with Dempsey calmly smiling through it all.

To load these oversized, overweight boxes in the crashing waves required some ingenuity. Two men lifted each box and then timed their swing so that when the boat rose two feet on a wave, they shoved the box into the forward hatch. Talk about bull work. So many boxes.

Finally, the Red Diamond and the Baby Diamond were loaded, and we prepared to get under way for a second time. Seeing how much worse the storm had become, Sigurros announced “I am transferring to the Red Diamond. It is bigger. I cannot swim and I get seasick every time I am in a boat”. She put on a lifebelt and went directly up into a top bunk on the Red Diamond. She said, “they will be better able to find me if I have a lifebelt on when we go down.” And she promptly went to sleep.

We headed South, pushed hard by the fair wind which was trying to drive our stout craft bow first, to the bottom of the lake. The waves crashed against the boat as we rode the waves through the night, the stoic captains calmly handling the wild dance, probably calculating the level of hurricane that would be necessary to get them back on schedule. We arrived in one piece in Gimli at daybreak.

Many hours later, bone-tired after unloading all the boxes of gear and fish, I thought that this adventure had included too much lugging of boxes back and forth. In fact, I swore if I ever saw another box, I would scream. Days later, I went into Tip Top to pick up some fresh groceries and Valdi Butch asked if wanted them packed in a bag or a box? Fighting the urge to flee the store without my groceries, through gritted teeth I asked for a bag.

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Ken Kristjanson

November 2010