The Great Manitoba Carrier Recovery

[David Dunlop]

Once we had confirmed the legend of the buried carriers to be true, the last task of this recce trip was to carefully rebury what we had uncovered and put the sod back in place.

We thanked the property manager for the time and assistance given to us and then the negotiations started regarding when and how best to attempt recovery of these great machines. That story is now well known and a number of 'new' Mk I* carriers are happily running around various parts of Canada today.

The number we uncovered was a little lower than our information over the years had led us to believe, however. As it turned out, the gentleman we had hired with a front end loader to recover the carriers turned out to be the son of the gentleman who had been hired in the 1950's to dig the stabilizing trench and bury the carriers. As a small boy he had come out to watch it all happening and he told us one carrier had been kept as a runabout at the lodge and the remaining ones had been used as fill under the access road to the lodge. Sadly, that road today is a Provincial Highway and those last few carriers will be going nowhere anytime soon.

Hope you found this moment of discovery interesting!

Cheers for now,


David