My brother Dave and I had flown in a charter plane to a fishing camp on Great Bear Lake, a thousand miles north of Edmonton. We were catching large lake trout and small grayling, but when we were offered a chance to fly still farther north of the Arctic Circle to fish for arctic char in one of the streams flowing into the Arctic Ocean, we went.

The day was dead calm; the little Cessna plane turned out to be overloaded with three passengers and a pilot bigger than Hoss Cartwright. It took three runs before we were able to lift off the home lake. We learned later that a seaplane needs at least a ripple to break the surface tension of the water. We caught a few Char. Before we boarded the plane on the return trip, the pilot (who, we learned later, had just received his license - and lost it soon after our flight), pumped quite a lot of water out of the pontoons with a hand pump (it looked to me that he stopped too soon).

As we landed on the still mirror-like home lake on our return, the pontoons struck the wake of another plane that had crossed in front of us, nosed under and our plane flipped upside down. The cabin started to fill with water, and I thought, "This is it! We're headed to the bottom of this thirteen hundred-foot lake! My family will miss me!"

Then I looked out, and saw the surface of the water. Actually, the pontoons floated and the plane was hanging below them. My seat mate and I, in the rear seats and next to the only door, were able to open the door against the water pressure, climb out, and stand on the upside down wind with our noses out of the water. Dave, hanging upside down in the copilot seat in his seatbelt, took a long time getting out and getting his head out of water, while I held the door open. (I had almost summoned the nerve to go back in and try to rescue him). The big pilot escaped by kicking out the plastic windshield.

Boats from the camp roared out to bring us ashore before we froze to death. (Icebergs were floating nearby). Wet, shivering, and glad to be alive, we gratefully accepted glasses of brandy. Dave said (not exactly true) "I'm not a drinking man, but this time I'll break the rule." We learned later from some of the other fisherman that the proprietress of the lodge, a former lion tamer, exclaimed when she saw the accident, "Oh, my poor seaplane!" Apparently a few dead fishermen wouldn't have bothered her. After all, we'd paid our bill.

I had some broken ribs, but - next day being the last of our stay, our favorite guide took us about thirty miles up the lake in rough water. We broke through some ice floes into a shallow bay with white sand bottom, and found a school of big lake trout. We could easily see the fish in the clear water, and cast out small Mepps spinners to whichever one we wanted. Dave caught the largest, a twenty-eight pounder. The record for the lake was sixty pounds.

In talking to Dave later, we found that our memories of the moments when we were looking death in the face showed that we both had false illusions (at least, one of us must have). Dave was certain that he had been swimming deep in the lake, and surfaced just in time to keep from drowning. I know that he came out of the door that I was holding open and joined us on the wing. I'm sure that he nearly drowned inside the plane upside down with his head under water. My illusion (or was it fact?) was that I never turned upside down when the plane flipped over; that my belt wasn't fastened and I remained upright; so I didn't realize until the next day, when I saw the plane floating with pontoons up and fish swimming through the cabin, that it really had turned turtle!

My seat mate? He was a dentist from Cleveland. He said he'd never set foot in a plane again! A thousand miles through the wilderness is a long walk!