Just up the hill from Campbell River is Elk Falls and its eponymous suspension bridge, a local Rotary Club project.
Vehicular bridges look different from different angles and vantage points, and pedestrian bridges are no different. Some vantage points make it look, well, pedestrian. Others make it look a little, umm, steep and scary.
Not much to see from here.
The gorge a little more in evidence.
The steepness at the ends of the bridge very much in evidence.
There’s a book.
There’s a National Film Board animated documentary.
There are YouTube videos: here’s one.
There’s a display/event at the Canadian Aviation and Space Museum (on Sunday 17 Dec!).
What’s missing is the standard Wikipedia article, and the entry in The Canadian Encyclopedia. Yet the Kuujjuaq Christmas Candy Drop was made possible by Johnny May, the first Inuk bush pilot. The best I could find on him was an article in Nunatsiaq Online:
May, born in 1947 in Kangiqsualujjuaq to Bob Martin May of Manitoba and an Inuk mother named Nancy, decided to become a pilot during a flight to his father’s fishing camp when he was six. The pilot let Johnny take the controls and after that, he knew he wanted to fly for a living. He flew his first solo flight at age 16 and has since logged more than 34,000 hours of flying time during a career that spanned 51 years.
May had his own air-charter company (sold in 1988) and was still flying a few years ago. It looks like 2015 or 2016 might have been his last candy drop – and at 70, who can blame him?
“I made up my mind a few years ago that if was I fortunate to be in good health
and do it for 50 years in a row, that I would make it my last candy drop.” – CTV News
But May is famous for more than his Christmas Day activity.
For most of his career, he flew in areas where topographical maps didn’t exist, and neither did rules about the maximum hours a pilot can fly before taking a rest. It was a vast and uncharted frontier where he landed on tundra or ice, depending on the time of year and the weather.
But despite ample stories to tell, Fafard (Ed’s note: producer of the NFB film) said it was difficult to convince May to agree to a film about his life. A humble man despite his accomplishments, May attributes his flying prowess to years of practice and said had he been a cook for 51 years, he would have been a great cook instead.
In June of this year, CBC announced the production of an animated holiday special, based on the book.
In July this year, he was appointed to Air Inuit’s Board of Directors.
“Not bloody likely.” That’s my first thought.
Scanning the Smithsonian email for signs of intelligent life in our solar system, I have spotted a rude headline.
Your Oldest Ancestor Was Probably Sponge Like
Now, my oldest known ancestor was a Bamford who was married in Plymouth in 1722, and there was nothing remotely sponge-like about him. But to be fair, I read on.
A new study may settle a long-running debate
about which creature was the first to evolve
from a universal common animal ancestor.
Oh. That sort of ancestor. Continue reading
In the early spring of 1883, about the time that the weather had turned warm enough for the Chief Engineer to spend some time outdoors in the garden, the bridge was finished. There was no one moment, no particular day, when he could have said as much, nor would there be. Bridges did not end that way. There was always something more to finish up, some last details to attend to. The final touches at Cincinnati, for example, had dragged on for nearly six months after the opening ceremonies and it looked as though the same might happen here. But the bridge he saw standing now against the sky half a mile in the distance was the finished bridge for all intents and purposes.
As I read this in The Great Bridge — the story of the building of the Brooklyn Bridge — I was surprised. My work experience was largely with hard-deadline projects, where delivery of a document (whether 20 pages or 72 boxes) was timed to the minute. There was never any doubt about when it was finished.
But when I went back to Edmonton this November, although I found the old Walterdale Bridge torn down and the new one open to traffic, I had to admit that it was not quite finished. There was evidence of ongoing construction all around it. And I thought of the Chief Engineer of the Brooklyn Bridge back in 1883, and understood his world a little better. And, by extension, the worlds of a lot of other people, too. Thanks to David McCullough for making that insight explicit.
Sometimes I have to know stuff to see it.
Something more to finish up . . .
Some last details to attend to . . .
The finished bridge for all intents and purposes . . .
In the 1958 “Have Space Suit, Will Travel,” Robert Heinlein‘s teenaged hero is captured by aliens while wandering around his neighbourhood in a refurbished space suit.
If that seems like an unlikely plot contrivance, just wait. The teenager then uses his knowledge of solar system distances, possible/probable spaceship speeds, and the gravity he experienced aboard the ship to figure out (correctly) where they have likely ended up, when their trip does end. Continue reading
Who knew that red-winged blackbirds could be inveigled into eating out of a hand? Well, the guy ahead of us on the path at George C. Reifel Migratory Bird Sanctuary apparently knew, because he had a pocketful of sunflower seeds and shared them with us. A lovely experience on both counts.
Hand courtesy of sister
As I see videos sort of randomly on Facebook, I find new techniques to try. Split screens (also known as picture-in-picture or PIP) are clearly essential to modern story-telling.
This week’s movie wasn’t my first time using PIP techniques, but I tried something for the first time: duplicating video for effect.
I’m also discovering that my original target of creating a movie every week has to change. Now that I can do the basics, I want to tackle more complex projects, which take correspondingly more time.
Ontario in the late fall after the leaves have dropped is not my favourite spot on the space/time continuum. Too much of it is wet for the feet and dreary grey for the eyes.
So on a short walk in the countryside, it was nice to see some things worth seeing, even if they were wet.
What goes up, must come down.
Spinning wheel, got to go round.
The son of a decorated WWII Canadian soldier and a British woman, David Clayton-Thomas was sleeping in parked cars and abandoned buildings by the time he was 14. A previous inmate of a reformatory left a guitar that Clayton-Thomas picked up, and the rest is history:
I ain’t scared of dyin’ and I don’t really care.
If it’s peace you find by dyin’, well then, let the time be near.
But he didn’t die, and at 76 he’s still writing and performing.
Edmonton Journal – Sep 2017 article
Posted: 2025 Jun 13
Thanks to John Whitman for this slightly dismayed face from downtown Ottawa.
This space is available for other submissions.
