Richard Gleeson
Northern News Services

NNSL (Sep 08/99) - A float dragged up from the muddy bottom of Yellowknife Bay has a story behind it that is yet to be told.

The float was salvaged this summer and ended up in the possession of pilot and aircraft history buff Ted Yaceyko.

"During the Second World War, McDonald Bros. made floats for Edo Air and this is one of them," said Yaceyko.

Carefully applying a wire brush, Yaceyko has determined that the float is serial number 207 model 3300.

Yaceyko said the float likely supported something bigger than a Cessna 185 -- maybe a Howard or a Beech 18.

That is about as much of the story that has been told so far. Nobody knows how it came to be on the bottom of the bay or what kind of plane it came from.

"It's a mystery float," said Mike Piro, who knows as much about the adventures and misadventures of small aircraft in Yellowknife as anyone still here.

Robert Jensen, another long-time Yellowknife aviator, said he has heard of one possible explanation.

"There was an aircraft back in the 1940s and '50s -- before I came to Yellowknife -- that crashed into Pilot's Monument or Jolliffe Island," said Jensen.

The story of how Yaceyko came to possess the float is almost as interesting as the one behind the float.

Houseboat owner Matthew Grogono said it goes back a number of years, to a big storm that lashed the houseboats moored next to Jolliffe Island.

One of the big anchors, a Danforth, holding one his neighbour Gary Vaillancourt's houseboat in place dragged under the force of the wind on the houseboat.

"It hooked onto something," recalled Grogono. "He pulled it in after the storm and there was this float hanging off it."

The float was so full of mud it weighed too much for Vaillancourt to get it all the way out of the water. It ended up hanging in the water beside his houseboat for a number of years, until finally becoming unhooked and falling to the bottom once again.

Grogono, who had kept the float in mind, pulled it up this summer as part of a three-way trade he worked out with Vaillancourt and Yacekyo that also allowed him to do an underwater inspection of his houseboat anchors.

"Gary gave me the airplane float in return for inspecting his anchor and Ted loaned me his scuba gear in return for the float," explained Grogono.

The float is too far gone to rebuild, but it's the only evidence that remains of a Yellowknife flying story that has faded into the past, possibly forever.