Here is a winterSA国际影视传媒檚 bush tale and, like all good bush tales, I am sure it is part fact and part fiction.
Bear in mind, it happened decades ago. It had been a slow summer for bush work so when a company down south put out the word that they were looking for two people to run a geophysical survey out on the tundra, on a property that was mostly lake, it sounded like a sweetheart deal. The company would pay all the expenses, including food, plus a good wage. Two bush workers who had some experience, but mostly in the trees, took the job.
It had been a lean summer, so this was a good time to put in a good food order that would last for three or four weeks. Bacon, eggs and toast for breakfast. Sandwiches and candy bars for lunch and T-bone steaks for most dinners. They even decided to take a small Coleman oven, and some cake mixes and icing sugar. They wanted to take their cake and eat it too. They planned to eat well, and both were pop drinkers SA国际影视传媒� two or three cans each per day. That worked out to six cases of pop. They would be flying out on a Twin Otter on skis, so they had lots of room. Although rumour has it they substituted a couple cases of beer as well.
It was during a mild spell in Yellowknife that their departure day arrived. Maybe -5 C to -10 C. They helped load the plane and the Twin Otter flew to the lake where they would camp. They offloaded the plane which later left them virtually in the middle of nowhere, hundreds of kilometres from the nearest settlement. The temperature was suddenly an unexpected -30 C with an added windchill. They were dressed for winter in the bush, not winter on the tundra.
They had to get more clothes out of their packs and struggled to get their tent up, which was a new design for them. Like all the camp set ups, some things went wrong and had to be redone. They eventually got the tent up and one of the fellows worked on getting their main heater up and running. It was an oil stove and it needed filling. The other fellow set the tent up inside and started moving all their food, supplies and gear into it.
Unfortunately, it had been sitting outside for a couple of hours and that is when the pop and beer cans started exploding and spewing near-frozen slush everywhere. It got on their clothes, in their hair and beards, all over the tent and coated the rest of their gear and supplies. It seemed like cans were exploding everywhere, and they described it as being in a war zone.
If you take a can or bottle of pop and shake it before opening it, it will spray pop everywhere. Well, much the same thing happens when a pop can freezes and bursts open, only it is spraying slush around. Once upon a time, pop cans were made with a lot of metal in them but over the years, companies kept cutting back on the metal and the cans become thinner and thinner. Now, when they are shaken and freeze, they burst or split open.
I wasnSA国际影视传媒檛 there so I didnSA国际影视传媒檛 witness the armageddon, but, from the descriptions I heard, it must have been quite an event. It was, in a way, an omen. They had visualized the job as being a well-paid walk in the winter wonderland. Instead, it turned into a gruelling ordeal, and they were lucky they survived. It was colder and windier than they expected. The days were shorter because they were farther north, and frozen pop was everywhere. When the tent heated up, partially-frozen globs fell off the tent ceiling. Plus, they had no shower or real way to clean up, so when they returned to town, they still had remnants of the sugary drinks in their hair and on everything they had taken with them.
Now it is true that no one perished, got injured or lost, but for years afterwards, in bush camps across the North, someone would tell the tale of the 'Great Soda Pop Massacre.' Two cases of beer and four cases of pop were destroyed, and to bush workers that certainly would count as a tragedy.
Wishing everyone a good winter solstice and remember if you put refreshments outside to cool down, be sure they donSA国际影视传媒檛 freeze and explode.
