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42 U.S. Air Services November 1931
Transport Fish By Airplane
JAMES MONTAGNES
Canada's wheat-growing prairies have entered into competition with her Atlantic and Pacific coast fisheries. They are now sending fish to all part of North America. The fisheries of the prairie provinces are becoming increasingly more important with each passing year. Last year their output sold on the market for more than $4,000,000, an increase over previous year of more $500,000. Such increases have been regular. The fishing industry in the prairie provinces is but a few years old.
A shipment of fish, caught between dawn and 10:30 A.M. at Lac La Ronge recently, reached a department store in Saskatoon shortly after 1 o'clock and was served in the company's dining room at luncheon, having been brought down from Lac La Ronge--250 miles distant-- by airplane in a little over two hours.
Fish are now taking to the air, or rather are being taken by air to market. Fish caught in Lac La Ronge, in Northern Saskatchewan, are flown twice daily to Prince Albert, a distance of 200 miles and from there shipped by rail to Chicago, New York, and other American and Canadian centers. Each plane carries about 1,600 pounds of fish in an unfrozen condition and immediately on reaching Prince Albert they are iced and packed for shipment in 50-pound boxes.
While airplane transportation has been reported satisfactory, it was found that increasing demand for the northern fish made necessary an additional means of carriage. Two motor tractors, each hauling a heated caboose with a carrying capacity of about 7,000 pounds of unfrozen fish were added. A trip from the lake by the two tractors means approximately sufficient fish brought to Prince Albert to make up a carload lot of shipment.
Improved transportation facilities have substantially increased the commercial fishing area in the northern part of Manitoba, principally famous for its mining operations. Two years ago 18 inland lakes in the district of The Pas were being fished, compared with 38 at present. Last year more than 2,175,000 pounds of fish were caught in these lakes, compared with 2,000,000 pounds in 1929 and 1,400,000 in 1928.
In the late autumn, just before the freez-up, scows are built, motorized with an out-board motor, loaded with nets and other fishing supplied, as well as with food, clothing, blankets, and a radio, ready to set out to the winter quarters. There is not much time to waste, for winter sets in early and unheralded. A fine autumn evening may become a cold night with a layer of ice on the lakes by morning. Therefore time is money. The fishermen set out at once when their scows are ready. They make their way through big lakes and rapid strewn rivers. They battle rapids, winds and rocky island. They watch for good locations outside of the one that they are bound for, in case it should turn out to be a dud for that year. Once they reach their destination there is a cabin to erect, if the location is new. There is furniture to build, provisions to store, nets to fix, and the radio to set up to keep them in touch with the outside world. By the time that all this has been done the ice has covered the lakes to sufficient thickness to allow the men to go out on it and dig holes for the insertion of the nets. On December 1st the season usually starts to last through two months and a half. A hole is dug in the ice and a net strung under the ice for a hundred yards to another hole in the ice, through which the guide line is hauled up, thus allowing the net to spread the distance. Eight or ten of the nets are set out on the same line. A good area is covered by a number of these gang nets. The following day the catch begins to be hauled in, averaging 45 white fish of above five pounds each per net. The fish are dressed on the ice, packed in wooden boxes which hold 150 pounds, and stored ready for collection. 
Just south of the Northwest Territories in Saskatchewan and Alberta lies Lake Athabasca, a body of water about the size of Lake Ontario. Here the fishing industry has made a good showing, despite the fact that this lake lies in latitudes 58 and 59, and winter weather conditions keep the thermometer down to thirty below zero or lower. The fish from this lake, mainly trout are being marketed with great success. Special machinery has been shipped to this northern lake so that the trout caught there may be carefully sliced by machinery, frozen and packed in attractively branded wax paper right on the shore of the lake where they are caught. Steam tugs and refrigerator barges play the lake and the rivers to take the frozen fish down the Athabasca River to Waterways, where the railyway now ends.
The clear, fresh waters of these northern lakes, which remain cold the year 'round impart a firmness to the flesh which is seldom found in fish caught in warmer waters and this together with the fine edible qualities of the fish, has results in a rapidly expanding market.

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Peter J. Brady, whose death is a great loss to aviation, was a passenger last fall in a plane piloted by Capt. Ira Eaker, who tells of the trip in a recent aviation column sponsored by the North American Newspaper Alliance. 
"Last fall he flew with me from Chicago to Washington," said Captain Eaker, "through very bad weather. Over hilly country in Ohio we began to ice up. An hour later we had hundred of pounds of ice on our wings, fuselage and landing gear. There was no place to land safely. We remained in the air only by the use of full throttle. We made the airport at Moundsville, W.Va., by inches and landed with three-quarters gun, so great was the ice burden we bore. Yet Peter Brady, who sat behind in the cabin, cracked jokes and spun yarns to relieve the anxiety of less experienced fellow-passengers. Make no mistake. He knew our problem and possible fate. He knew we were zooming and rocking the ship to break the ice hold on controls. But Peter Brady was a fighting Irishman. He had more courage than most men are blessed with."