Not a Typical Day

It was one of those hot, lazy afternoons of summer. One of those days when you wished you were on a beach, cooling in the still water.

The last thing you wanted to do was sit in an office with peeling paint and no air conditioning. A river was across the street and you'd rather jump in it than be soaked in sweat.

And yet, that was exactly what I was doing on that August afternoon in Wakefield, Québec.

My shift started at noon, from Tuesday to Friday. On Saturdays, I would be in the office by 8 and I would leave at 4, after setting the layout for the latest edition of The Low Down to Hull and Back News.

I wasn't the only one in the office. The paper's owner, Art Mantell, would sometimes pop in to see how we were doing, but it was usually one other reporter, who worked the Monday to Friday, nine-to-five shift, and our office-admin gal (whose name has escaped me), who would take most incoming calls, handle commercial advertisements and classified ads, and handle payroll.

On this particular afternoon, only our office administrator and I were in the office. Our other reporter, Rob, was out covering a story.

I was attending to my weekly duty of compiling police reports. Once a week, I would phone the Low division of the Sûreté du Québec—the provincial police—and speak with the desk sergeant. My French wasn't great, though I understood more than I could convey, and the desk sergeant was the same: he could understand English but didn't speak it very well.

So, he spoke to me in French, and I would take notes. I would then read my notes, in English, and he would confirm or correct my translation. It was a great system for both of us.

I was putting the final touches on the latest report when the call came in. A helicopter was on its way to Wakefield, to transport a patient from the hospital to Ottawa.

Normally, a helicopter transporting a patient from one hospital to another would not be newsworthy. But the Wakefield Memorial Hospital was on a hill, surrounded by trees, and had no helipad. What made the story newsworthy was how it was going to land and take off.

I grabbed my camera—my trusty Minolta X-700—and ran to the hospital. My office was in a building that was next door to the Black Sheep Inn, at the back of the building that used to house a pizza restaurant but is now Café Le Hibou and a bakery. I ran down the road, crossing the bridge over La Pêche River, where the hospital was located.

It was pandemonium. Police and hospital staff were clearing cars out of the hospital's parking lot. They were also keeping back members of the public but when I told them that I was a reporter for the local paper, they let me get close.

"Just don't get in the way," said a police officer.

We could hear the chopper as it approached but didn't see it until it was on top of us, clearing the surrounding trees. With the parking lot cleared enough for the copter to come down, it landed in a cloud of dust.

Meanwhile, doctors and hospital staff were on standby. Before the helicopter had arrived, the patient, an elderly woman, was already on a gurney, ready to roll.

I got my shots of the helicopter landing and then rushed toward the gurney, following it to the chopper, taking photos all the way. Nobody even tried to stop me.

With the patient on her way to the awaiting hospital, I walked back to the office and started work on the story that would make the front page of the next edition.

An otherwise lazy summer's day became the talk of the town for the rest of the summer. And it certainly cured my boredom for the day.

Happy Thursday!