Snow and the Bitter Cold

Note: Originally written Feb 9, 2011

El Dorado has a nice blanket of fluffy white snow tonight. It's kind of pretty. What makes it really nice is that it didn't bring with it any ice and the lights are still on. Driving through the snow today I was reminded of my first trip up north. Waaaay up north. And I remembered cold like I'd never known before.

It was the winter of '82, maybe February. Dad and I had a cleaning project at a paper mill in Amos, Quebec, about four hundred miles north of Montreal. When we got there they were enjoying a heat wave. Yep, just a few days prior it had been 56 below zero. It had warmed all the way up to 30 below when we showed up.

The mill was actually out from town. There were no motels anywhere near so we stayed in the "man camp". These are temporary housing units set up for the duration of the construction project. Imagine a bunch of single-wide house trailers coupled together into a maze of halls. Our bedrooms were spartan, to say the least. Twin bed, plastic chair with chrome plated legs and that's it. No TV. No radio. Nothing. Tile floors, wood paneled walls. Not even a window. Oh, it did have a gray metal trash can.

The eating is good up in these man camps. They have to feed the workers well or else they may not stay! Years later, I worked up near Mackenzie, almost 600 miles north of Vancouver. Up there they told me the average construction worker gained something like 35 pounds working on these remote projects. Being that far from home, guys may not go home for months.

I remember feeling like the first day at college walking into the cafeteria. We didn't know our way around and no one knew us. Everybody looked around at the two new guys. We didn't look like the Canadians. For one, we were clean shaven. Everybody has beards that far north. Besides, there are no women. Who cares what they look like? And two, we wore "consultant clothes". Back in those days, superintendents and specialists like us wore slacks, not jeans. I still don't wear jeans at work very much.

Bored to tears, I remember walking to the TV room where a bunch of French-speaking construction workers were watching the only channel available... Canadian public TV. In French, of course. No one spoke English. No one! Going back to my room, I read my Bible for a while though it was hard to concentrate. It was Friday night (we worked weekends) and the guy next door had apparently been doing some hard drinking.

That's when I found out that throwing up in French sounds just like throwing up in English. Not a bit of difference.

It was maybe a hundred yards from the man camp to the paper machine building. Opening the door, the cold hit hard and we didn't waste any time getting from point A to point B. Once inside the paper machine room, it was a nice 70 degrees as we had specified. Our chemicals need at least that temperature, higher is better.

It was a brand new paper mill. That meant a lot of the equipment hadn't been started up yet, including the firefighting equipment. We were spraying a solvent, a combustible chemical. While it was hard to get our solvent to catch fire, if it ever did, it would burn pretty well. It was safer than diesel or kerosene, but still able to ignite. They had to bring fire hoses from outside the building. This meant the exterior doors were ajar by about four inches. In no time at all, ice grew up the hose about four or five feet. In the end, those doors were frozen closed.

The only other door was big enough for an 18-wheeler to drive through. Just imagine. Seventy degrees inside. Thirty below outside. That's a one hundred degree difference. Opening that big door pulled in a blast of cold air that was enough to knock you down, if not take away your breath. It was truly hard to breathe for a few seconds.

As it turned out, that project was a particularly tough one. We were removing a temporary coating from some big rolls. Unfortunately, they had heated the rolls with steam before we got there. It baked the coating onto the surface of the metal. It was burnt to a crisp. I think we worked for 30 hours straight on that project.

I had never worked through an interpreter before. That far up into Quebec, we only found one guy who could speak English. He did a great job translating, too. Unfortunately, he only had one leg so he climb the ladder to go inside the paper machine. It was on this project that I learned how to point in French. Since then, I've learned to point in five other languages as well.

At some point during the first day, a guy came up with a menu from a local cafe. They were going to bring meals in for us so we didn't have to shut down work to eat. I was hungry for a hamburger. I pointed at something and asked if it was a hamburger. The French-speaking construction worker agreed. Little did I know, he'd have agreed had I asked if it was a Volkswagen. I was hungry so I motioned that I wanted two. That's pretty universal... two fingers held up.

A little while later, our meals showed up. And, sure enough, I had two of them. What did I get? Half a baked chicken... in each box! As I recall, it was really good, though.

Hey, that was better than braving the cold and walking across to the dining hall!