ODDS’N’SODS — Wind claimed northern pilot

Some peoples’ lives are altered drastically or fatally by a strong gusting wind. This story concerns one such accident which occurred on a summer’s day at a small rail station on the CN Rail line, 75 miles east of Sioux Lookout, Ont.

This station was built when the railway was completed in 1912 and the town named “Allan Water” after a lake in Scotland. The name is familiar to many as a military march — “On the Banks of Allan Water” — played by pipe bands the world over.

The discovery of gold at Red Lake in 1925 caused a gold rush the next year which established the first commercial aviation bases in Western Canada. James Richardson of Winnipeg, Man., obtained a charter to form Western Canada Airways on Dec. 10, 1926. He bought two new Fokker aircraft from the factory in New York City and had them flown to Hudson, near Sioux Lookout. He bought six more aircraft in 1927 and hired six more pilots to fly them. His company expanded greatly in 1928; it owned 28 aircraft with flight crews. One of these new pilots was Paul Garten, who was born in Germany in 1900 and had been trained to fly Fokker aircraft. He came to Canada in 1927 with his wife and 2-year-old son, Wolfgang, and in 1928 was posted to Gold Pines on the west end of Lac Seul, immediately north of Sioux Lookout, where the family lived in a tent during the summer.

In the summer of 1929, Garten was posted to Allan Water Station to fly a Fokker plane for Western Canada Airways. He brought his family and they stayed in a room in the station. Most of his flights were 85 miles north to Pickle Lake where gold had been discovered in 1928.

On May 30, 1930, he returned to Allanwater Station and made his regular flight north-east to Pickle Lake.

On June 2, he made a flight to Flint Lake, near Longlac. As he taxied the Fokker toward the dock, a strong gust of wind overturned the plane in the water. Garten drowned. His body was recovered and the Fokker G-CASF was returned undamaged. It flew for many years thereafter.

A large funeral took place at the Sioux Lookout air base on June 6, 1930. A wooden airplane propeller was attached to his tombstone — a fitting tribute to the airman. His widow became a registered nurse. She remarried and became successful in business. Her son, now retired, became a high school teacher in Winnipeg.

— Donald Parrott is a retired operating engineer in Thunder Bay, Ont.