Catholic Mission In Canada

At the hospital, Sister Superior told me a pilot flying to Atikameg had taken the dead body, but would I take a woman, Evelyn Thunder, with a small child, back to Atikameg. She was the wife of Henry Thunder, chief of the Indian band of Atikameg. We headed back to Atikameg around 8 p.m., a two-hour trip.

On approaching the lake, I noticed a long pole placed across the ice road. I slowed: could it be a warning sign? But I decided to continue on the ice in the dark. Near the middle of the lake, a distance of about one and a half miles, a shining oval area ahead was clear of snow. What could it mean?

The warm west wind had stopped suddenly in late afternoon and the temperature dropped back to minus 30. The water before us had already frozen an inch thick and, as we approached, reflected back our lights. My truck skidded and fell in the trap with big splashes of water. I didn’t know the two big banks of ice pushing down were about 30 feet wide and 100 feet long, sufficient to prevent the truck from going to the bottom of the 14-foot lake.

Surprised and scared, yes, but not panicked, I told Evelyn to quickly open the door and to get out before the truck sank to the bottom; she didn’t understand and was confused. I climbed through the window to the top of the cab and helped her up after she handed me her child.

I noticed the water staying at window level: so, was the truck resting on a sandbar? Still, I felt it was dropping slowly! What then? If we were really on a sandbar, I thought, I could wade in the water to where the moonlight shone on a solid patch of ice.

I opened the tailgate, and stepped in to see if I could reach the bottom or the sandbar. To my surprise, the bottom was not sand but slippery ice slanting downwards. I couldn’t stand, but was slipping each time under the truck. Wet to my waist, I noticed an eight-foot wood plank on the truck floor and used it to push myself away from the truck and reach the solid surface ice. I was finally free to walk the mile-and-a-half distance to the mission; however, I soon felt my body turning into a solid block of ice. I couldn’t even bend my knees. But I saw someone walking towards us with a flashlight. It was the Hudson’s Bay clerk who spoke, "Father, we knew you were coming and knew the condition of the ice after the Chinook. Then I saw the light of your truck disappear under water so I came to help." He returned to get help to save Evelyn and the baby. I arrived at the mission at midnight, my heels frozen and black. (I found out a month later that they were okay.)  

In the morning the Hudson’s Bay manager, James Smith, came from the store to our mission with a few native people. The Anglican minister Rev. Blair Brown offered to take us to the truck in his Volkswagen van. He wanted to return the favour I made a week earlier: I had saved his wife and baby from freezing when their vehicle had stalled on the lake. With ropes and hand winches, my vehicle was soon pulled out as easily as if it were on a ramp.

I got in my truck pulled by the Volkswagen driven by the Anglican minister, with the manager of the Hudson's Bay Company beside him. On our way back home, the lake ice was cracking everywhere from the suddenly-falling temperature; we were concerned and scared. Then the Volkswagen stopped and Mr. Smith got out and ran to me, saying: "Father, I am so worried about this cracking noise, I am afraid we might all go down under, and in that case, I prefer to be sitting beside you!"

Two days after our adventure, I had drained everything and was able to drive my truck again.  

But what about the miraculous side of this adventure? Right after the mission truck was pulled from the water, the flooded area showed little circles on the surface. I thought they were whitefish happy to come up and catch some dead flies or insects, but I was mistaken. The two big banks of ice that joined under the truck had pulled apart slowly under its weight letting it drop lower, yet they had also kept the truck from sinking to the bottom! These once-solid banks of ice had become many small pieces of broken ice returning to the surface. How could all that crushed ice support three tons of weight? It was obvious to all of us that only Heaven could have intervened!

Now retired from active ministry in the Archdiocese of Grouard-McLennan, Oblate Father Virgilio Baratto, 87, lives at Foyer Lacombe in Saint Albert, Alberta.