In the summer he flew groups of fishermen to northern lakes for some excellent fishing. He also owned three small cabins that he provided for fisherman that wished to stay on a remote lake for a week or a long weekend.
It was a small business but it provided him with a good living and enough to hire a few extra men to assist at the dock in Kenora, with loading and unloading passengers and equipment.
Once the ice was gone from the inland lakes, Gus and his assistant would fly to the cabins to clean them up and get them in order for guests. These were on remote lakes with no way in or out other than a plane. Each cabin had a boat and motor and when necessary they could fly in an additional boats and motors for a larger fishing & hunting parties.
On this particular day they had two of the cabins all shipshape so they took off and flew to the last cabin some distance further north. The weather was cool but it was a nice spring day. They cleaned the interior and did minor repairs to the dock and exterior of the cabin. The boat was in the water and the engine mounted and tested.
Winter winds had knocked down some dead trees and they had to clear them away from around the cabin.
The last job was to rake up all the dead leaves and make the place presentable. Gus was doing the raking and his assistant, Stan, was hauling the leaves away and dumping them in the bush.
There were a number of medium sized oak trees around the cabin. During the clean up they found an old rusty three-tined fish spear laying in the grass. It was picked up and leaned against one of the trees, resting on the broken wooden handle. . Half the handle had been broken off so the spear was shortened to about three feet long.
Later, Gus was raking and at the same time back up. The heel of his boot kicked the spear and knocked it sideways a foot or so but it was enough for Gus to lose his balance and start to fall backwards. It was a freak accident but as he fell backwards he sat down upon the tine ends of the upright spear. He immediately screamed in pain and fell sideways to the ground and passed out.
Stan was talking to him at the time and saw the whole thing take place. He rushed over to help and saw that that tines were sticking into Gus’s rear end. Stan tried to remove the spear but his friend had been impaled by the tines and they were sticking deeply into his posterior.
He ran to the plane and tried to radio for help but the radio would not work because of the surrounding rocky hills. They would have to be up in the air before it would have the range to reach Kenora. Stan once had a license to fly but he had not flown a float plane in many, many years.
He went back to Gus and was there when he woke up. He was in severe pain and bleeding badly. There was no way he was going to be able to get into the back seat of the airplane impaled by the spear. Stan made an attempt to remove the spear but as soon as he touched the handled Gus screamed and passed out again.
It was obvious that Gus needed to get to a hospital as fast as possible. The handle of the spear had to be removed in some manner. A careful check of the toolbox on the plane and around the cabin failed to locate anything that would cut the wooden spear handle. After a desperate search Stan found an old rusty hacksaw blade in the bottom of the tool box. It was the only thing that might work so he had to use it.
He started sawing on the wooden handle where it was fastened the head of the spear. As soon as he started Gus reacted to the pain and passed out. Stan kept sawing and it took over two hours to saw the handle off. Gus kept waking up and then passing out again from the pain.
Even with the handle off there was no way Gus was going to be able to sit in the back seat of the airplane.
After thinking things over Stan ripped the fabric of the plane off the side of the tail and made an opening where he could stuff Gus into the plane behind the second seat. It was very difficult to do, considering the plane was on floats and bobbing up and down in the lake beside the dock.
Once Gus was safely on board Stan had to refresh his memory on how to start up the engine and fly the plane. In the end he managed to taxi down to the end of the lake and safely take off. Once he was in the air he radioed for help and made arrangements for the hospital staff to be at the hospital dock in Kenora.
The Kenora General Hospital sat high on a rocky hill near, but above the lake. They had their own dock in order to receive boats and planes with injured people such as this case.
Stan soon landed in the bay at Kenora and taxied up the hospital dock. Gus was quickly and carefully moved out of the tail of the plane and taken to the emergency room.
He was in the operating room for more than six hours while they tried to remove the spear. Two tines of the spear had pierced his colon (lower part of his intestine) and the barbs made it very difficult to remove without cause further damage. Eventually they removed the spear and Gus spent a long time recovering. In addition to all the damage, infection was the biggest concern. The tines were covered not only in rust and dirt, but fish skin and guts.
Happy to say, Gus made a full recovery but only after many months of hospital care. He returned to his love of flying and is again running his business.
Had he been alone at the time the accident occurred he may have bled to death before anyone would have realized he was missing.
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