Richard Gleeson
Northern News Services

NNSL (May 31/99) - If you think living and working in a pristine wilderness far from town with all the modern conveniences is a dream job, you won't get much of an argument from Dan and Lois Grabke.

For three years the couple lived three months in and a weekend out at the Snare Rapids dam, about 150 kilometres northwest of Yellowknife.

For the Grabkes, the decision to take the power corporation was a little more complicated. The offer came just after the birth of their first child, Dwight.

"We thought it would be easier than it was," said Dan. "There were a couple of times when he was sick and we would have liked to be close to a hospital. There's quite a bit of time, especially during the winter, when you can't get a plane, for days. That scares you a bit."

Training program

At the time, it was an offer the couple could not refuse.

After graduating from university, in 1980, Dan and Lois had unknowingly prepared for the move to Snare Rapids.

Dan sold his Ford Mustang and bought an old truck and a dogteam. The two bought a year's supply of food and spent the year living in a two-room cabin on the Cameron River at River Lake.

"It was very small, with an outhouse for the bathroom, no electricity, no running water," recalled Lois. "About halfway through the year we got a propane fridge."

"We were counting on caribou and moose for meat, but the caribou weren't anywhere nearby and we did a fair bit of moose hunting and never got one," recalled Dan.

"So we had rabbit. We had every kind of rabbit you could imagine. I've never had one since, I got so sick of it."

The two can remember a few nights after tipping a few with friends, wrapping up in the sleeping bags and snoozing through the two-hour trip home.

"You'd wake up and the dogs would be fighting and you'd be home," said Dan.

From River Lake to lake and river

Living close to the land and far from neighbours was something the Grabkes were used to when they moved to Snare Rapids on the May long weekend in 1982.

In it's 45th year of operation, in 1993, the Snare Rapids dam was renamed in honour of Ted Humphrys, a longtime employee of the NWT Power Corporation and its predecessor, the Northwest Territories Power Commission. Though ancient in technological terms, it is still going strong, churning out a maximum 7,000 kilowatts.

The energy comes from water pressure, which turns a turbine, created by the increased water level behind the dam. When it was built, the dam raised the water level behind it by about 30 feet, doubling the size of a lake that existed there. Below the dam the river is smaller than it once was.

Apart from providing clean electrical power, the dam created a new world of fishing opportunities, which the Grabkes had plenty of opportunities to explore during camping and boating trips.

Community of four

Though work crews came in occasionally, for most of the time the only people living at the dam were the Grabkes and the cook, Jim Woodman.

"In the busy times, there could be a dozen people in," said Dan. "The first two years there were budget cutbacks, and there wasn't much maintenance going on or work crews going out, so it was quite isolated."

Woodman, who had been working four months in and a week out at the dam for about 30 years by the time the family arrived, was a perfect neighbour.

"He was quite a character. He gave the place a lot of colour. He'd only put in his teeth when he went to town, once every four months, so you could barely understand him."

The three adults would make an occasion of Friday nights, gathering in the staff house. During the joking and story telling, Dan and Lois kept tabs on Dwight through an intercom Dan had hooked up to the child's bedroom.

From Woodman they heard stories of the old days at the dam.

"At one time, in the late '40s and '50s, there was half a dozen families living there," said Dan.

"They would make a lot of their own stuff, very labour-intensive. The plants weren't automated at all, so there were bigger crews. The dam and power plant was built of blocks made of clay and mud in the area and hand-poured on the site.

When the camp was scaled back, quite a few of the houses at the dam were hauled into town. Some, said Dan, are still in use today.

Woodman had been a jack-of-all-trades at the dam at one time, and still occasionally checked the poles and line carrying power to Yellowknife.

He checked it by snowshoeing it's 200 kilometre length, a week's trip to Yellowknife.

"The third year we were there he had a stroke and didn't return," said Dan. "That really changed the character of the camp. His job was replaced but he wasn't."

Woodman died last year.

Tastes of town life

Dan and Lois did what they could to provide their new son with the experiences of youngsters in town.

Christmas wasn't a problem. The three got the time off to spend it with their families in Yellowknife.

Halloween took a little more creativity.

"We'd still dress our son up for Halloween, even though there was no place to go," said Dan. "There were no doors to knock on except for the cook's. So we hid candy and treats in some of the abandoned buildings, and had a bit of a scavenger hunt."

One year, during a visit from Dan's mum and dad and sister, the camp even had its own Terry Fox Run. "We had 100 per cent participation," noted Dan.

For the first year or so, there was no satellite TV at the camp. The Grabkes watched videotapes of TV taped in Yellowknife. They got a 14 hour supply every two weeks off the plane that came in with the mail.

"So you could watch an hour a day of fresh TV or, what we did, watch all the tapes in the first three or four days and watch them over and over for the next 10," said Dan.

"Sometimes we could sit and watch a program, like Dukes of Hazard, with the sound turned down and all of us doing the characters' voices."

The twice a month arrival of a plane was something everyone looked forward to, especially Lois.

"I always felt so silly about being excited about that," she said. "Other than that plane coming every two weeks, you saw the same people every day. "But in winter the planes landed 20 miles from camp. I remember really missing that, just seeing a different person."

Lois said it was also tough not having another woman to talk to, listening to camp conversations that always seemed to centre on trucks and sports.

The adventure of flying

Other than the two-week walk, aircraft were the only way to get back to the city. Sometimes -- Grabke suspected it was because the corporate budget restraints, those aircraft were a little smaller than they should have been.

Etched forever into the minds of Dan and Lois is one harrowing start to a trip to Yellowknife.

"I will never forget it," said Lois. "I thought that I was dead."

The two knew they were in trouble when a Cessna 185 arrived.

"There was an electrician that had been out there for a week doing maintenance, so he was fairly overweight," recalled Dan. "He had a huge tool box. There's my baby and wife and me, with all the baby paraphernalia, and our suitcase. And a 185 shows up.

"We were all going home, and it wasn't a case of taking the next plane, so we all crammed into it.

"There was a bit of a cross-wind, and rather than the pilot taxiing out into the bigger part of the lake, he took off across the bay.

"The old cook was standing up on the dock. We just got up step passed the dock, where there's only about 100 feet of water left. We just kind of hunched up, and the cook was waving 'No!'

"But the pilot popped it up and we went through the trees. We broke a bit of notch through them. You could see where the floats went through the trees.

"There were branches stuck in the struts when we made it to town."

Just as they got through the trees, though, the plane headed for another hazard.

"We knew there were these power lines ahead, and the pilot obviously didn't," said Lois. "When Dan indicated to him there were power lines right in front of him, he banked sharply and the wing tip went into the trees. It was very scary."

No time clock

Dan was his own boss at Snare, and admitted that there were times it was tough to stick to a 9-5 routine, especially on nice days.

"There was no feeling guilty about not working, when there was no work to do," said Dan. "It's not like I could go out and get a part-time job."

As his own boss, Dan sometimes chose to take Dwight along for the day.

"There was nobody there to catch you doing anything," said Dan. "So I used to do things like take Dwight grading with me and stuff like that.

"He'd fall asleep, and I'd look down and see a two-year-old near the brake pedal of the grader."

That probably wasn't exactly the image they had in mind when they set out, but the time it would allow the family to be together was one reason the Grabkes decided to move.

"It was an opportunity to for us to be comfortable working and, when we were not working, raising our child," said Dan.

He added that the fond memories the two have of that time have as much to do with their relationship as the spectacular surroundings.

"(Lois) is a very special woman and we had to have a strong relationship in order to do that."

With Dwight and their second child, Carl, the couple is now living at a house they built at Prelude Lake.