This column first appeared in the Victoria Daily Times on Aug. 5, 1939.
When we left Vancouver on the plane for Ottawa, it was six o’clock on a fine, warm evening.
The small plane that brought us across from Victoria had flown over Lantern Lane and I could have thrown down a weighted message to the family who were watching my flight, but plane passengers are saved from temptation of this kind. Strapped into your round seat, you sit quietly and watch the earth or sea below, and hope the engine is hitting on all cylinders.
The plane leaves Esquimalt Harbour in Victoria and lands at Sea Island, Vancouver, and the fact that it is a seaplane is a source of comfort to the passengers as the flight proceeds across the Gulf of Georgia, whose deep waters roll sullenly between the islands. The distance is covered in 45 minutes.
I felt the real journey had begun when we reached Vancouver and boarded the beautiful silver ship, with its dual engines and two pilots, and two fine-looking men they were, in their neat, grey uniforms. They had nine hours of flying ahead of them, for there is no change until Winnipeg is reached at three o’clock in the morning.
We encountered some air pockets leaving Vancouver, in which the plane dropped suddenly like an elevator, recovering itself only to drop again. Twice it did this and I knew by instinct why one little article of equipment was placed within easy reach, but the brittle moment passed safely and the plane spread its wings and sailed serenely on, and peace settled down on the 10 passengers.
We ran first into fog, or clouds rather, as we rose higher and higher over the mountains. The plane grew cold, and frost ferns gathered on the windows, but I kept wiping them off. I noticed my neighbour across the aisle accepted the closure with resignation and began to read — evidently she hadn’t thawed as many eyeholes in frosted windows as I had.
We were riding high over white clouds like carded wool, which sometimes drew apart to let us see far below, mountains and valleys melted into one; patches of sunshine gave a friendly touch in this cold world of unreality. The rivers were threads, the forests pressed down into slashes of dark green. We were 14,000 feet above sea level, and the tallest trees had lost everything but their colour.
The moon was but one day past the full and all night long rode beside us, as Albert Noyes said, “a ghostly galleon tossing on silver seas.”
Once we saw a thunderstorm below us, shot through with lightning, which flashed out from the clouds as from an open door. Our speed was 200 miles an hour, so no scene lingered long.
Soon after we left Lethbridge, the dawn began to dye the clouds, and long before we reached Winnipeg the whole sky had a band of saffron. Regina was a beautiful golden brooch set with diamonds, lying on the mantle of night; and Winnipeg, as we circled over it to make a landing, was a vision of beauty, bathed in a crimson glow and sparkling with its miles and miles of street lights.
It was a cloudy sunrise, with the moon above and the sun below giving a resplendent lustre to the great banks of clouds, which glowed with shades of rose and pearl. I tried to describe their glory as I looked at them, but I found I had no words. I thought of that verse in the Revelation where the writer names the precious stones, chalcedony, jacinth, chrysoprasus. I would not know any of these if I saw them, but the richness of the words gave my mind release.
Flying back over the Prairies in the daytime was a perfect joy — every stream was brimming full, every slough is a lake with wild ducks on its surface. The good rains, so long prayed for, came this year, with hope and healing in every slanting blade.
There is grass this year in plenty and no soil drifting. Cattle stand knee-deep in the streams, a picture of contentment, and beauty dwells once more where the spectre of want and sorrow walked last year.
Flying at a height of 9,000 feet over the prairie, we could still see the pattern made by the strip farming, one band planted and one of stubble, making a gay pattern of grey and green, or brown and green, below us. Houses are all reduced to the size of children’s blocks, and the bridges over the rivers are like little rows of empty spools.
One place where we seemed to be particularly high, I saw a straight line far below which I took to be the highway, until I saw something long and white moving over it — something which looked like a piece of white wool. Then I knew I was looking at a long train, with its white plume of smoke the only visible part of it.
There is something sad about the prairie, too, this year, that put a lump in my throat, even as I rejoiced over the miracle of reclamation and growth. There is something left of the bad old years, with their disappointments and heartbreaks. The sun-cracked edges of the lakes are healed now with sweet green grass, and Nature in her lavish way has flowers growing on the hillsides to cover the whitened bones of the animals which perished; but there are scars in the memories of men and women what cannot be easily healed, and up from the earth, through the vibrations of the plane, there came a wishful sighing that I could not help but hear.
The vibration of the plane allows conversation, though limited in amount. One of my seatmates knew Nora Wain in China and told me of her painstaking ways when she writes, weighing every word and checking every incident.
Her new book, Reaching for the Stars, which pictures the Germany of today, is the most revealing book that has been written about the Nazi regime. She succeeds in making the reader sympathize with the German people, while hating the system under which they live. If Reaching for the Stars were widely distributed, we need not be concerned about the spread of Nazi doctrine.
This trip to Ottawa by plane, this delightful sensation of riding above the clouds and making a journey in a few hours, which, at the time my people came to the west, took months of painful effort, leaves me a bit saddened, too, when I think of the implications.
If we could think as efficiently and rapidly as we travel, we would soon solve our problems. But here we are, still in the ox-cart days, mentally, still believing in war, poverty, class distinctions and favoured races; still believing we can build a wall around ourselves and be safe within it.
But that is not the note on which the story of a delightful journey should close.
I want to remember that tense moment when the plane leaves the ground, with its bumps and jolts, and soars smoothly away with the ground falling below us. I want to remember the first sight of the mountains, all blue and gold in the morning sunshine.
It is even good to remember that moment when the plane dropped and rose and dropped again, and I felt for a moment what English people call “queasy,” but was restored just as quickly when that good fairy, the stewardess, slipped my chair back, put a pillow under my head and said something to me.
I have forgotten what she said, but I know her eyes were the colour of damson plums.
