The sub-Arctic oil strike

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Imperial's Norman Wells party reached its destination in early September. Their ox, Old Nig, was put to work. "There was a cabin to build, a derrick to erect, the boiler and engine to get up the hill, store­houses and a stable to erect and . . . a tremendous pile of wood to be stacked up against the -60°F of January and February," reported the Imperial Oil Review." Timber for the derrick and buildings was cut along the steep banks of the river, hauled by Old Nig, and the job was "nearing completion just as the river steamer came on her upward trip back to civ­ilization." Five of the party returned with the steamer---the other three remained at Norman Wells. Isolated for the next 10 months as the long winter night set in, their squat log cabin "marked an exclamation point in two thousand miles of frozen silence," while behind them the river swept on, "sheathed in a 10-foot coat of ice." They were assigned the tasks of northern watchmen and "getting the hole started before the bot­tom dropped out of the thermometer." By Christmas, Old Nig was being served as stew.

Ted Link, with another party of seven and 20 tons of equipment in two scows and a motor boat, left Peace River again the following May for Norman Wells. One scow was wrecked and lost in shooting the rapids on the Peace River. The whole party was very nearly lost in the Smith rapids on the Slave River. Several times the motor boat was grounded on sandbars, and freed only by men working up to their waists in icy water. By the time they reached Fort Resolution, the remaining scow, stripped to an essential 16 tons of equipment, was nearly 100-percent overloaded and leaking badly. Ahead of them lay 100 miles of open water on Great Slave Lake before they even reached the Mackenzie. Somehow, by July 8, they managed to reach the drilling site at Norman Wells. And none too soon for the men who had wintered there-for the past month they had lived on nothing but fish and flour.

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