I have to announce some progress with Deadly Enterprise this week. Lightning Source-Ingram have started producing POD paperbacks and the cost is a lot less than the Lulu PODs. Not only that but the novel is available on Amazon.com at
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1554044901/ref=cm_cmu_up_thanks_hdr/105-1777775-9048405

The Amazon price is $14.99 USD, which means that my selling price in Canada, with taxes, shipping, and currency exchange should be between $15 and $20. I’ve ordered some copies to take to book signings, through my publisher, and expect to receive them soon.

Beyond that I’ve done much less on the promotion front than I’d hoped. I have a full length novel clinic I’m working on, for a fellow writer, as well as the mountain exploits to complete the new fence line handcut before the winter snows arrive. That has been slowed because I managed to twist my ankle badly on Saturday when I was out cutting winter firewood. I’m not using the crutch as often today, but it will be awhile before I’m up to scrambling up and down mountain slopes again.



OG10

When I supervised saw crews cutting lines in the Canadian bush I met a lot of natives and Metis, as well as Newfies. The oil company clients were encouraged to hire local people for the work, and so it seemed I always had to explain what the men were allowed to do and what not when they went to work for the industry.

I had one job in the forestry just outside a Metis colony, and I could never convince them they had to abide by different rules whenever they crossed over the boundary. The whole crew and contractor were the colony’s own – and they were hoping to leapfrog from working in their own area to gaining contracts for jobs farther away. Even so, they didn’t take the regulations the company crews worked under seriously.

For access to their working area, the oil company was negotiating with the regulators to construct a temporary bridge across the small river running through the colony. The requirements seemed a bit excessive, extending as far as bringing in washed gravel for the bridge abutments and taking it away afterwards. The riverbed was already gravel and it still seemed safer to use it than import some. Maybe some deadly fish virus would be clinging to the underside of a stone. I guess that possibility wasn’t in the bureaucratic mind – washing was equivalent to sterilizing. No vehicles were allowed in the water either, so we were prohibited from fording the stream even though it was very shallow.

I dutifully drove the extra thirty miles every morning to take the appalling mud trail that avoided the river. And every morning I met my crews already waiting for me. They had forded the river and travelled the short way – of course. How could I convince them not to bring the quads and trucks through the river? They’d done it every day of their lives. I eventually quit arguing and became a temporary Metis every day.

The other rule they thought stupid was the prohibition against carrying a rifle in their trucks. Again, something they had always done. “You are not allowed to hunt during the time you are working for an oil company,” I reminded them almost daily.

They’d shake their heads. “Of course not. We aren’t.”

All the separate crews carried radios at work, and I monitored the traffic to pinpoint problems they were having – that they were usually too proud to admit. Part of my job was to add the survey input to their tree cutting, but they hated to ask for help. They usually used English on air, but sometimes they’d switch languages when they didn’t want me to know what was happening. Mostly the alternate language was Cree, but not all of them were fluent in it.

Whenever the radio burst out with excited transmissions in Cree, I knew they were up to something. Because not everyone could understand everything said, or couldn’t explain themselves fluently, they would use a smattering of English in the mix. By listening carefully, I could get some idea what they were doing – miles away on the other side of the job.

“You guys are not hunting that moose, are you?”

“What moose?” would be the answer.

“The one you’re all talking about on the radio. You are not allowed to hunt while you’re at work.”

“We don’t have rifle. You told us not to.”

“I know I did – many times. So what are you going to do with it – strangle it with your bare hands?”

The answer would be laughter and witty comments – in Cree – but I could read the tone of voice. I could always pack up what I was doing and drive, or quad, over to where I suspected they were. But this was rough country and getting from one area to another was a chore, likely they would be finished, hidden, or miles away by the time I’d managed the journey. I can’t help agreeing with the Taoist dictum – the more laws promulgated, the more thieves and bandits proliferate.

My northern crews were good guys to work with – except for the problem of keeping them within the rules we had to follow. I had to count vehicles and quads every day to make sure they weren’t charging for units that were broken down or away somewhere else – but that was an old trick in the business that not only Metis tried to pull.

They were hard workers and uncomplaining – always a bonus in an environment that was often miserable due to cold weather or dangerous terrain. One day two of them and I headed far south to where the Cats were working. I was on my quad and they shared another – against the rules, but if I enforced them I’d have no crew at all. The terrain was so steep the Cats had been reduced to winching one another up and down hills in places. The trail they’d produced had to be taken at a flying run uphill, and sometimes fast downhill to keep the back wheels behind the front. I used tire chains on the front of the little Honda and they would enable the wheels to bite periodically on those huge bounces as I rushed the hills. That helped me to steer, when each bounce aimed me into a different tree or debris pile. My two crew had no such luxury, and only the option of having the passenger jump off if their quad threatened to tip. Going home at the end of the day I complained to them about being sore from the rough rides. They grinned – and then told me they’d been thrown off three times that day.

On another job I worked on a native reserve with a construction company owned by the band. The manager was a cheerful scoundrel who adroitly spanned the conceptual gap between First Nation thinking, oil companies, and the tax man. Was there a need for an annual general meeting? Nothing wrong in holding it in Las Vegas, but half the band were shareholders and how could they get there? “You could charter a plane,” I suggested. A tax write-off.

Brilliant idea. Maybe this White-eyes isn’t so dumb after all.

The foreman of the saw crews was a chief’s son, who seemed to have the idea that operations could run themselves. One day he brought out a new worker to replace a man on a short handed crew. I was told he drove to a crossroads, waved a hand toward some trees and said, “They’re that way.”

The man had been on a similar job the year before and following an old habit started walking down the trail they’d used then. I called the crew several times that afternoon to see if he’d found them, and each time they’d said no. He carried a radio, but they said they’d not heard him for a long time. No one seemed put out. “He’ll show up eventually.”

Going home time came, and still no one had seen or heard from the new man. One of the saw men was a young fellow from another band who was living on the res with his local girlfriend. He grinned at me, when I started questioning everybody for ideas how we could find our lost man. “Don’t worry, he’s an Indian. A night in the bush won’t hurt him.”

“What if he’s had an accident and needs help? I said.

Another big grin. “The wolves gotta eat too.”

I sent the men home – except for the wolf sympathizer and his partner – and set out to drive as much of a perimeter as I could – given that half of my circle had no roads or trail access. In a search and rescue operation the first task is to establish the search perimeter – the line beyond which the missing person could not have strayed. I followed a new set of access roads to oil and gas wells near the river. At each well site I’d park and call the missing man on the radio. No answers.

At the very last well site I did the same and by setting the squelch of my radio down as far as possible, was able to hear a faint reply. I wasn’t sure if it was him, but I called my other crew of guys who had started walking through the bush in the direction they thought he’d gone, and told them to keep calling him.

After an hour, the radio reply was a little stronger and I was able to tell that this was my missing man and that he was walking back along a pipeline. I phoned the company manager but he was away in town. After another hour I was able to move to another well site and keep in touch with the man who had covered a few more miles toward us. As night fell I drove to the place where a pipeline crossed the road – the pipeline I guessed the man was following. I found the manager’s truck, the quad ramps down, and his children’s nanny who told me he’d quadded off to find the man.

I told the two walking searchers to go back to their truck and go home. It was dark when the quad lights returned. The manager rode in with the missing man riding behind – looking as unconcerned as it was possible to pretend. It was very late when I got back to my motel room that night and all the restaurants were closed.

The very next morning we sent out another new man called Jason in a six-wheeled all terrain vehicle called an Argo. These machines are like plastic bathtubs on wheels, prone to mechanical problems if used roughly but otherwise valuable load carriers for the saw crews. Jason took a short cut while I went the long way by road – and he didn’t show up. We did a short search for Jason in the Argo – me all the while regretting that the classical Greek education in the reserve was too weak for anyone to get my wisecracks about Golden Fleece, and Jason’s Argo. Oh well, he showed up after an hour and claimed he’d never been lost at all. I bet the ancient Greek hero always claimed the same thing.