by Fred Allen
Once they reached the top of the hill they still had to make their way through heavy drifts up the road to the long, low building they could now see clearly through improving visibility. They managed to get into the building by breaking a window and were able to start a Coleman lamp, a small camp stove and the big kitchen stove. They were then able to change Wee Willie, give him a sponge bath and feed him with some pasta from cans they found in one of the kitchen cupboards. They gave Wee Willie one of the two bottles left in his travel bag and he was fast asleep on one of the cots before the bottle was half finished.
Robert’s father found a flare pistol with two flare cartridges in a kitchen drawer and several pairs of skis in the shed. In the shed he also found several toboggans and a pair of snowshoes. He told Robert that he had a plan. He would take the snowshoes and go back for Sandy and their mother. He told Robert that he wanted both he and Wee Willie to be safe regardless of what happened so if he was not back by first light Robert was to put the baby in his car seat and put the car seat on one of the small toboggans from the shed. He was then to take a pair of skis from the shed and a pair of ski poles. He was also to take the flare pistol and the cartridges and if his father was not back at first light he was to start down the road towards the main highway.
His father told him to watch for planes but not to use a flare unless he was sure the flare would be seen. His father had not returned at first light so Robert started down the road. After about three hours he saw a plane and as soon as he was sure they would see him he fired one of the flares. The plane was not equipped with skis so he signaled that they should go farther up the road. Someone with a bull horn on the plane told him to stay where he was and that a plane would be coming to pick them up. They were picked up about an hour later.
I was very impressed with the manner in which Robert described what had happened. I had made a few notes but his account had been that thorough that I really had no questions. I couldn’t help but notice that all the time Robert was talking Wee Willie never left the corner of the play pen and stood there holding the railing with his eyes fixed on his brother with his new friend Churchill resting quietly at his feet. “Thank you, Robert” I told him. “That was very well done. So well, in fact, that I have no questions. That will complete our Incident File. I can only congratulate you on your courage. You are a very brave young man.”
“No Sir,” he replied. “My father was the hero. He saved Willie and I and then he went back to save the others but he just couldn’t do it. But everyone knows that Dad was the real hero and Willie and I will never forget him.”
I went back to my office and added my notes to the file. This file was now complete and I was confident that this file was that complete that I could use it as a case study if ever I was faced with training my successor.
I sat back and looked at what was now a huge file. I looked up at the aerial photographs still mounted on the display board. When the photos had been taken there still had been very little ground activity and the scene looked so pristine and peaceful. I recalled that just before I returned from my one visit to the scene I had been standing at the top of the hill. All the traffic and rising temperature had changed the scenery from what I was now looking at on the aerial photograph. At the time of my visit it was all just a mess as the pure white snow had been muddied by the plows, recovery vehicles and the effects of melting with the return of seasonal temperatures.
Constable Huard was standing beside me also looking down the hill. “When these first snows of winter come, “he was saying, “everything looks so pure and white, just like a Christmas card. But it never lasts and then everything is the same again.”
The End
POST SCRIPT
Charles Frederick Allen
Fred Allen was born in Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan and raised in Fredericton, N.B. He was educated in several Fredericton public schools but, by his own admission, just didn’t make it through Grade VII when he landed a job as a bellboy in the old Barker House. There was no salary, just tips with a small guaranteed nightly income from delivering the wares of a well known bootlegger who operated from the hotel’s elaborate lower level gentlemen’s washroom. He also had the distinction of caring for the famous giant Coleman Frog which can now be seen in the York Sunbury Museum in Fredericton. As a term of his employment at the Barker House he was sworn to secrecy on the origin-and authenticity-of the famous frog. After six months of dusting the giant frog several times a week, he swears that the secret will go to his grave with him.
Fred was saved from cleaning spittoons and dusting the Giant Frog, and possible incarceration for his dubious extracurricular liquor deliveries, when he was hired in the same capacity-as a bellboy-by the Queen Hotel, Fredericton’s leading hostelry. There was still no salary but meals and a uniform were provided. Uniforms were “hot stuff” with the girls in the late 30s so there were certain fringe benefits.
Fred was then saved from a life of answering bells by the outbreak of war and the mobilization of the 104th
Battery, the militia unit he had joined at age fifteen. He spent five and a half years overseas with service in the UK and Northwest Europe. On demobilization in 1946 he was accepted as a mature student by the University of New Brunswick. He found university much more to his liking than public school and was a gold medallist and triple prize winner in his junior year. On graduation he was awarded a Beaverbrook Overseas Scholarship but was obliged to withdraw because of a prior military commitment.
He served in the Royal Canadian Artillery and the Royal Canadian Horse Artillery until 1968 with service in Northwest Europe, exchange postings in the United States and service with the ICC peace keeping mission in Indo China. He also served with the 79th Field Regiment, 1st and 3rd Regiments, RCHA, and as an IG (Instructor in Gunnery) at the School of Artillery in Shilo, Manitoba. His final posting was a Resident Staff Officer serving four universities in Southwestern Ontario. At the UWO and WLU he had the designation of Associate Professor of Military Studies but the true indication of his status in the academic hierarchy was that he had a parking spot in the “Red” lots.
On retirement from the Armed Forces in 1968 Fred joined the staff of Sir James Dunn C&VS in Sault Ste. Marie as a teacher of mathematics. He became well known to teachers throughout Ontario for his efforts to improve teachers’ pensions and served for seven years as the elected representative of Ontario’s Secondary School Teachers OSSTF) on the Teachers’ Superannuation Commission now the Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan Board. On his retirement he was awarded an honorary life membership by OSSTF for his service to education in Ontario. More important, the staff at his high school (Sir James Dunn C&VS) made him an honorary graduate of the high school leaving him only to find a cooperative public school principal to complete his academic record.
During the 1980s and early 90s Fred planned, conducted and participated in dozens of workshops and seminars on retirement planning for teachers throughout Ontario. For eight years he was publisher of Teachers Money Matters a monthly newspaper designed to inform teachers on all matters relating to financial security.
Fred has resided in Thornhill for eighteen years with his wife of fifty-three years, Nell. They have three sons and a daughter, six grand children and six great grandchildren.
This is his first novel, a second The Faith of Maria has also been completed and a third The Enclave is nearing completion. There is also a fourth book ….From Among my Souvenirs in what he refers to the gestation stage which will consist of reminiscences of his several careers and those wonderful years growing up in Fredericton.
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