Selwyn House School - Yearbook (Montreal, Quebec Canada)

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30 SELWYN HOUSE SCHOOL MAGAZINE Literary Competition The quality of this year's entries fell short of the standard of recent years. Too many boys submitted slovenly transcripts of class essays, so that certain dreary themes appeared repeatedly, too many contributions were not signed and were therefore automatically reiected. Once again far too many showed a curious misunderstanding of the kind of subiect suitable for a school magazine, and too many regarded a few lines of pitiful doggerel as easier than a longer prose passage. Parental assistance, on the other hand, happily seems to have waned, even if it has not entirely disappeared. Of what remained, the short stories were the least successful. Several cases of unabashed plagiarism occurred, most of the others consisted merely of trivial incidents, largely criminal in nature. The winning contribution admittedly shows the influence of past reading, but it is given preference as an excellent piece of work by a boy whose English is comparatively recently acquired. Much of the poetry limped badly, but several entries showed at least some understanding of the form the writers were attempting. Among the essays, unpolished resumes of encyclopaedia articles were passed over in favour of those in which some attempt was shown to choose words to produce a pleasing effect. Future competitors are reminded that the ultimate test of their work is whether it is enioyable to read. The Junior School is to be congratulated upon the entries which it submitted. Many showed a refreshing zest for the simple things about them, and the standard was most praiseworthy. The prize-winners are: U. Scheel, D. McMartin, J. Allison and A. Victor. A TRIP IN THE ARCTIC My uncle is an engineer for the Department of Northern Affairs, and is stationed at Frobisher Bay. Quite often he has to go on trips to the outlying settlements. Last August he went to Pangnirtung, Broughton Island, Clyde River, Pond Inlet and Grise Fiord. Grise Fiord is on Ellesmere Island, about as far north of Frobisher Bay as Montreal is south, and the other places are either on Baffin Island or on small islands off the coast of Baffin. My uncle and his crew made this trip in a Canso aeroplane, and at Clyde River the wind and sea were so rough, that they had to let a construction crew and their gear off into big freighter canoes and then take off immediately as the aeroplane was dragging its anchor. They had to keep the engines running to keep from being dashed onto the rocks. They had intended spending the night there, with the plane at anchor, but instead they had to go fifteen miles to the United States Coast Guard station at Cape Christian, where there is an air strip on the beach. Next morning, they left at about five thirty, and arrived at Pond Inlet in time for breakfast. They refueled the plane, having to pump gas with a hand pump from forty-five gallon drums in a canoe, into the wing tanks of the plane. Then they headed for Grise Fiord, but were unable to land in the mouth of the Fiord, because of the gigantic icebergs. So they had to fly further up the Fiord to find a stretch of water clear enough for a landing. Landing on ice or water, the plane has no brakes and has to coast to a stop. Two hours later, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police Boat reached them and took them to the settlement at Grise Fiord.

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32 SELWYN HOUSE SCHOOL MAGAZINE While on the boat, they saw seals and stopped so that the Eskimoes could shoot them. The mountains on each side of the Fiord were about three thousand feet h,gh with steep cliffs to the water in most places, so their radio was completely shielded and they could neither send out their location nor get weather reports. As the clouds had closed in to a height of one thousand feet and the temperature was close to freezing, they were not able to take off for fear of ice forming on the wing and the plane crashing into a mountain side. So they sat in the plane for thirty hours without heat, and much of the time without drinking water. At low tide, when they were stranded in the mud, they went ashore to a stream of fresh water, drank their fill and filled any container they had. Their food consisted of cold beans, cold tuna, cold gooseberries and bread and butter. They sat in sleeping bags for warmth most of the time, but climbed out on the wing now and again to stretch their legs. Finally the helicopter from the icebreaker UCD. Howe reached them, took off some men and gave them the weather report, which told them they could leave between four and five next morning. When the time came to take off, the water was just like glass, and the plane had to taxi up and down the Fiord to make waves or the suction on the bottom of the hull would have been too great. Finally they were airborne and headed south down the east side of Devon Island towards Broughton. All went well for an hour and a half, but then they met a solid wall of cloud and fog right down to the water. They changed course and headed west to Resolute Bay, where there was a Royal Canadian Air Force base. That far north, the time zones are so close together that, when flying east or west, you have to change time every hour. Between Grise Fiord and Resolute Bay, they passed through three time zones and so landed at about seven-thirty in the morning, although they had been flying about four and a half hours since leaving Grise at five o'clock. They had a hot meal and then had their first good sleep since leaving Frobisher Bay. The following morning they left Resolute Bay and headed again for Broughton. The weather had warmed a little, so they could fly in the clouds. Even so, the wings did pick up some ice and when the sun melted it, great pieces would break off with reports like a gun shot. Going south-east they changed time zones again. Though they were only in the air about four hours, it was supper time instead of lunch at Broughton, and getting dark, whereas at Grise Fiord and Resolute Bay it was light twenty-four hours a day at this time of year. lt is really amazing to travel North of 62K Robert G. Monteith, Form 5. THE HAUNTING OF THE OLD MILL Not so very long ago, people were very superstitious and they believed that little things, such as the position of the stars foretold their future. They also held the assumption that demons, evil spirits and ghosts walked the earth at night. Of course, modern science and most people have logically proved that there cannot and is not any such thing as a ghost. However, I wonder how many of these people lived in a house about which many supernatural incidents are said to have happened? I myself was born and raised in the type of house just mentioned, and before I relate to you what happened on a night, the date of which has no significance, you must first be briefed on the history of the house. In 1790 the seigneur of St. Eustache had a mill built and called it t'Moulin La Dalle . ln the war of T812-T4 a soldier in the British Infantry fell in love with a local French girl. He would meet her secretly at the mill. They planned to elope. Unfortu- nately some of the Frenchmen, who bitterly hated the British, found out about one of the rendez-vous, and on the appointed night they crouched near the mill to catch the unsuspecting lovers. The girl arrived early and they took her home to be dealt