IT HAD TO BE DONE by Ralph Bice

From Wednesday, August 16, 1978

So often we read of happenings where men or women have shown great physical endurance like flying a balloon across the Atlantic, staying on your feet the longest at a dance marathon, swimming the English Channel and many others. (Marilyn Bell swimming Lake Ontario – Ed.) The only thing, people who did this were trying to set a record and were under no obligation to even start or finish the project.

I had planned to write about people performing deeds because they had to be done. It took a great deal of endurance and plain guts to do these things but they will not be found in any record book. The first I knew about, when l was a boy perhaps 70 years ago, was when a man had gone trapping when he was well past his allotted three score and ten. He was to have met another trapper on a certain day and when that day turned into three they went and looked for their old friend. He was in his camp, barely conscious. Days later when he had recovered enough to talk he told what had happened and there was no doubt he had had a stroke. To get him home their canoes were just two fathom birch bark canoes and there was no way they could transport him in such a small craft. Then there were the portages. So they made a stretcher of what material they could find and carried him more than ten miles to where they could get to a very rough road. While one stayed with the sick man the other went for a team and wagon. It took more than a day to get the old man back to his home and he lived several years after. But l often think of those two men carrying a sick man ten miles through the woods with no trail.

This next happened at Rainy (Rain) Lake many years ago. This man was working in the lumber camp at Casey Lake. This was when Brennans had their saw mill at Rainy Lake. His family was in Huntsville and he knew his wife was not too well. A telegram came during the morning, and it was sent on with the tote team. No one bothered to let this man who was working in the woods know of the telegram and he did not see it until he came in for supper. When he read it he just started for the station as there was a train leaving about 6:30 p.m. He had a walk of perhaps five miles to the station. He had worked all day and had not had any supper. He knew he had to hurry but just as he was in sight of the station the train pulled out. He tried to get a ride on a freight but that was not allowed. Undaunted, he started to walk to Scotia (then called Scotia Junction) another 22 miles. There was so-called midnight train going south which he hoped to catch. Again his luck was bad. Just as he stepped onto the platform the train left. This time a sympathetic dispatcher gave him permission to ride a freight but when he got to Huntsville it was too late.

Many years ago a woman lived at Sand Lake. Believe there was a family of eight children. The children had contracted diphtheria and the mother nursed them all successfully through their illness. The father was working in a lumber camp near Bracebridge. He had been home for Christmas and contacted the disease. Word came rather belatedly that he was very sick. Without any delay this woman put on her snowshoes and walked to Huntsville where she caught a stage to Bracebridge but again it was too late.

As a boy l remember this woman who after her husband’s death raised her family without the help of any monthly cheques that people in such circumstances get today. Most of her family are gone but two of her grandchildren were at church last Sunday.

Perhaps this was not such a feat to snowshoe 30 miles then raise her family all alone but I wonder who would care to do something like that today.

Another involved members of my own family. A young woman was with her husband in a lumber camp and was expecting her second baby. Word came to the young woman’s mother that the baby had been born but the young mother had died. Again there was no waiting. The grandmother got a pack sack, dressed warmly, put on her snowshoes and lit out across country all of which was bush, a distance of perhaps 25 miles and brought the baby boy home in the pack sack. The trip did not hurt him too much for he lived to be 84 and was one of the most powerful men of his time in the area where l lived. I knew him very well for the woman who made that trip was my grandmother.

Nothing exciting about those stories but it does show that when things happen and they go wrong people simply do what has to be done. No thought of praise, no pictures in the paper, just human beings doing what has to be done when the occasion made it a necessity.

Note: by B.M.

Circa 1958 I had a Globe & Mail paper route. Each day l arose at 5:00 a.m. and picked up my papers at the underpass of the bridge on Dixie Road where it crossed the Queen Elizabeth two lane highway. Rain, snow, sleet or fine. On Saturdays I had to visit each customer for payment for their weekly subscription. One Saturday I dropped by to collect and Marilyn Bell was getting married. I was tipped $2.00 – a considerable sum. I learned to swim at the Lakeshore pool where Marilyn Bell trained and she was always a lifelong ‘hero’ to me.