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November/December 2002 issue	In this issue Table of Contents Editor’s Notebook Feature: Bighorn sheep The Inside Story Reverberations À la carte Mosaic

Patrick McGee, Port Credit, Ont.

The pilot of the F-3 photographed by Carl Linde at Kenora was my father, Robert Leckie, a Wing Commander on loan from the Royal Air Force. He was the lead pilot in the first trans-Canada flight, which started in Dartmouth, N.S., on Oct. 7, 1920. He used three different aircraft to cover the seven legs to Winnipeg. Once there, the team switched to a DH 9A bomber, piloted by Flight Lieutenant J. B. Home-Hay and others. They reached Vancouver on Oct. 17.

Robert Leckie, Nepean, Ont.

Having been born in Kenora and having lived there throughout my teens, I found "Poetic poses" stirred pleasant memories of the past. The pictures not only are a tribute to Carl Linde's artistic genius but are especially authentic for those of us who are old enough to have seen much of what he portrayed. For example, in the excellent photograph of the station, one can see in the distance Central School, where generations learned to read and write.

One wonders whether somewhere in this collection there is a picture of the steamboat Argyle, a local icon, fired by wood, that ran a regular summer schedule on the Lake of the Woods between Keewatin, Norman, Coney Island and Kenora. Unlike Stephen Leacock's Mariposa, it did not sink. It just disappeared.

Lorne D. Hamilton, Pointe-Claire,Que.

Delta black and blue
The article "Delta hues" (CG Sept/Oct 2002) presented a stunning Landsat image of the Mackenzie Delta. Some accompanying information, however, is incorrect. I carried out vegetation research in all parts of the delta between 1980 and 1993. It is not blanketed by tamarack and black spruce but by white spruce and balsam poplar. The former are found only on a few very isolated sites, primarily in the west part of the delta and close to East Channel; these sites have not been flooded during spring breakup for probably 100 years or more. White spruce is common only in the lower two-thirds of the delta.

As well, the "black" lakes on the Mackenzie Delta are not necessarily deep. The dark tones of the lakes indicate that they were not flooded during spring breakup (and so did not receive sediment) the year the satellite data were collected. "Blue" lakes did receive sediment and so appear in the same tones as the channels that carry the sediment.

Cheryl Pearce,
Associate Professor,
University of Western Ontario, London, Ont.

Shine a light
The article regarding the Ontario Mining Act (Discovery, CG Jul/Aug 2002) caught my attention because I own 310 hectares of Lake Superior watershed and shoreline, and I do hold both surface and mineral rights. Bitter experience has taught me that the remark by Graphite Mountain chairman David Houston just about typifies the mining mindset.

I pay more than $1,200 a year in mining tax to protect the land, but that does not protect my privacy. Two years ago, two men on an all-terrain vehicle who, it turned out, were hired by the Ministry of Northern Development and Mines, drove over my fence into my yard despite the No Trespassing signs. Because I was alone and this area is isolated and lacks phone service and because hunters are a problem, I confronted them with a shotgun. They left when I told them to. Nothing further transpired.

Recently, I wrote the minister with a list of grievances and a plea for a tax exemption. Shortly after, the police visited me to investigate a report that I had pointed a gun at the two trespassers. Does reprisal come to mind?

I am feeling alone and abused and am actually frightened by the perfidious doings of the bureaucrats, and I feel some light should be shed in the troglodyte recesses.

Catherine M. Bayne,
BayNiche Conservancy,
Montreal River Harbour, Ont.

Temperature rising
Thank you for your excellent map of the Northwest Territories (CG Sept/Oct 2002). A statement on the map legend, however, perpetuates an error. It says, in part, "Warming temperatures in recent years shortened the season when these roads are usable." Temperature is a quantitative measure of heat. As such, it can be high or low, but it cannot be hot, warm, cool or cold. Rising temperature, yes; warming temperature, no.

Richard Baine, Professor Emeritus,
University of Toronto

Phantom connection
"Territorial time travel" (CG Sept/Oct 2002) says Yellowknife was connected by road to northern Alberta in 1945. I lived in the Yukon from 1946 until 1950, and before I left, there was no road other than the winter road, which existed when the ice on Great Slave Lake was thick enough to support the cat trains. Otherwise, transportation was by barge in July and August or by air.

Kenneth F. MacKnight, Sidney, B.C.

100-year mark
Perhaps we could refrain from the temptation to name anything for a politician, even a dead one (Editor's notebook, CG Sept/Oct 2002). But if the urge to do so is that great, we might work with the proviso that the politician be dead for a hundred years. Sometimes, the hype of the moment may lead to regret at a later time. As for renaming some feature for a politician, the operative word should be never. In Newfoundland, we have a roll call of names that we have used for what is now Churchill Falls and River.

Clarence Dewling, Trouty, Nfld.

Poetic licence
I wonder how many of the Pottawatomi people (Mosaic, CG Jul/Aug 2002) are aware that their nation figures into some curiously twisted fiction, courtesy of early American radio? When radio station WXYZ in Detroit launched a new program in 1933 called "The Lone Ranger," the unexpected popularity of the show created some immediate homework for the writers. Charged with creating a biography for this "masked lawman" — a Texas ranger named John Reid — they explained that he was the sole survivor of a deadly ambush. Although severely wounded, he was nursed back to health by an Indian named Tonto who stayed on to become a "faithful companion." That necessitated a biography for Tonto, and presumably because they were writing and broadcasting in Michigan, they reached into local geography for a native name they knew and made Tonto Pottawatomi. How a member of that nation got himself a thousand miles south into Apache country, where he often spoke phrases in the Navajo tongue, was never explained.

Incidentally, the writers didn't find out until too late that Tonto means "stupid" in Spanish and Kemo Sabay, Tonto's nickname for the Lone Ranger, means "soggy shrub" in Navajo.

Ken Weber, Palgrave, Ont.

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