The Daily Deadwood Pioneer-Times (Deadwood, Black Hills, South Dakota)
Saturday, December 20, 1919
TO GATHER KNOWLEDGE
ON CONDITIONS IN FAR NORTH
OTTAWA, Ont., Dec. 15. - The federal government is preparing to summon from all quarters men who have intimate knowledge of conditions in the far north to discuss the possibility of increasing the country's meat supplies from the increasing herds of musk oxen, buffalo, reindeer and other wild animals fit for food.
It is understood that the question of air patrols will also be considered.
The chief commissioner of the mounted police is said to have great faith in the possibilities of the airship and aeroplane in connection with the "long patrol" in Canada's northern winterland. The recent flight across the Atlantic has been offered to indicate the practicability of the proposal put forward in parliament last season by the member from Yukon that the Yukon and Mackenzie valleys could be navigated in the same manner.
Judging from the performance now being made by the R.133 and other airships, experts have declared the round trip from Edmonton to Dawson City could be made in about 3 hours. It also has been estimated that machines could make the journey from Edmonton to Herschel Island (the most northerly part of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police), which is perhaps the worst of the northern patrols, in 18 hours, the distance being about 1,300 miles. It took the gold seekers who went into the Klondyke during the rush of 1897 just 18 months to do the trip.
