Amesdale Emergency Landing Strip

Airport Construction - Unemployment Relief Camp 1936

 

In 1920, when the idea of a national air service was conceived, Canada was one of the very few countries of the world that had no organized air service connecting its principal cities.  Geography and climate conspired to restrict trans-continental air travel within Canada.  Owing to its numerous lakes and freezing temperatures, the Canadian airline industry operated on planes equipped with pontoons in summer, and skis in winter.  Twice a year, at break-up and freeze-up , operations were shut down for three to six months; a situation unacceptable for the establishment of a national air service.

Back in 1871, the encroachment of U.S. railroads on the 49th parallel, had alarmed the MacDonald government, and resulted in the construction of the Canadian Pacific Railway.  Similarly, the threat of U.S. inter-city air services extending into Canadian cities convinced the government that  developing a Canadian transcontinental airway was a national imperative, and in 1928 it was decided to span the breadth of Canada, from Halifax on the Atlantic to Vancouver on the Pacific, with a year-round air service. Like the railway before it, in the words of C.D. Howe, Minister of Transport in Prime Minister Mackenzie King's cabinet, the airway would “overcome vast geographical barriers, thwart the Americans, reassure the British and unite the country."

 

By 1930 the western section from Winnipeg to the Rockies had already been built, but if Canada was to have a national airway, the wilderness of Northern Ontario needed to be safely traversed.  Therefore, in the interest of safe travel, a chain of emergency landing strips at approximately 100 mile intervals had to be established through sparsely populated Northern Ontario.   Amesdale, like Sioux Lookout and Armstrong to the east, was among the 42 locations designated for the construction of an emergency airfield. 

By 1934, nearly 8000 men were mobilised for construction of Canada’s transcontinental airway.  At the worst part of the Great Depression, under the Unemployment Relief Scheme, the Bennett government provided food and shelter and five dollars a day for the growing numbers of single unemployed men, in exchange for their labour.   From Quebec to Manitoba an army of workers braved wintery blasts of twenty to thirty below zero and summer’s plague of big, black flies to cut down trees, level off fields, dynamite, and burn stumps and fill muskeg swamps with rocks and boulders.  Even after the fields had been cleared it was no small task to prevent the fast growing bush from reclaiming the land.  Thus were created small oases in the desert of forests where planes might land in an emergency.  Though rarely used, lonely airfields such as the one at Amesdale provided the security necessary for the establishment of Trans-Canada Airways, the forerunner of Air Canada.  

With its three sand runways standing like a white cross among the green spruce, the little airfield, situated one mile north of the Amesdale general store and train station and above what came to be known as Airport Lake,  was a beehive of activity during the Depression.   Construction was initiated at the south-east end of the lake.  Frank Douglas Austin came to Amesdale and worked as an engineer to build the airport at Amesdale in about 1936. He and his wife Hattie were housed in a small cottage by the lake near the construction camp site. Larry Pinkerton of Dryden, served as the foreman for the project.

Upon completion, Jack Nelson became the manager of the airport, and was assigned to report any activity, especially during the war.   He had a horse and a mower to keep the grass down.   He kept one building open and lived in a white frame cottage with red trim, where his wife Ella had a big garden and was noted for her lovely flowers.   For a time the five bunkhouses were used for summer youth camps, and Larry Sward eventually took over the foreman’s house down by the lake.  The large fields served as the ideal setting for Dominion Day celebrations, witnessing sack races, three-legged races, and tug of war games.  Softball tournaments, horseshoes, and a dip in the cool water of spring-fed Airport Lake which lay just over brow of the hill, became regular summer fare for the citizens of Amesdale.

With the exception of a pilot named Jones, flying across northern Ontario when engine trouble forced him to make a belly landing at Amesdale, it is uncertain how many planes actually landed on the 3700 foot long landing strip at Amesdale.  

The sandy clearings that still exist are a witness to Amesdale’s part in providing security for the establishment of the Trans-Canada Airways.  They also remind us of the many memorable community activities, as well as happy reunions of Amesdale family and friends, after the store and station were long gone.