Iron Ore Company of Canada

The Iron Ore Company of Canada is associated with a vast railway-building project in northern Quebec and Labrador, undertaken to exploit one of the world’s richest iron-ore deposits. In the novel, the project’s reach is made concrete through the work it draws northward: railway construction depends on a demanding air link, and that work becomes an escape for Alcide Bolduc before his aircraft disappears.

Railway Project and Northern Setting

The company was building a railway across the North of Quebec and Labrador to serve the iron-ore deposit. The route was to connect Sept-Îles and Schefferville by way of Labrador City, across a remote region whose rivers, steep-sided valleys, and severe climate made the undertaking formidable. The account presents the railway not merely as infrastructure but as a large-scale industrial enterprise that reorganizes movement and work in an isolated landscape.

Alcide Bolduc and the Work the Project Required

In the autumn of 1951, Johnny Parent, an experienced railway-industry worker, hired Alcide at Mont-Joli. Alcide had gone to offer his services as a mechanic to the Iron Ore Company of Canada. Because he also had experience as a pilot, he was soon put to work on the air bridge operating between Sept-Îles and Schefferville, a service that ran day and night during the railway-building years. The episode links the company’s construction project to a wider logistics operation without suggesting that the company itself operated the flights.

For Alcide, the northern work also became a means of seeking distance from personal loss. Unable to recover from his wife’s death and the dispersal of his children, he immersed himself in long working hours and flights over the northern wilderness. The railway project’s scale and harsh setting offered him an occupational refuge, though not a resolution of his grief.

The Missing Flight and Its Aftermath

In February 1953, Alcide piloted a DC-3 from Sept-Îles toward Schefferville with a copilot. The aircraft carried cement, mechanical parts, and food supplies for the northern operation. With adverse weather expected near Schefferville, the plan was to fly the outbound leg by day and return at night, making a journey of about five hours. Radio contact was lost, apparently after the plane strayed into a storm, and it never returned to Sept-Îles.

After several weeks of searching, the company announced that the aircraft had disappeared in the frozen expanses of the North, perhaps crashing into a remote lake or the ocean. It provided a generous pension for Alcide’s children. The support helped pay for Loïc’s studies, making the project’s consequences personal as well as economic: the northern enterprise that employed Alcide also became, after his disappearance, a source of support for the family he left behind.