September 11, 2025
We woke up and set out to find the location of the former Cartwright Air Force Station. We drove the VW up a sketchy dirt road to the site, but of course, very little remains today but for some concrete foundations, and a frame that once supported one of the radar antennae.
Despite the wind, I decided to chance putting up my drone to take advantage of the angle it would give me over all of the bush that had overgrown the site. Like most radar stations, Cartwright AFS was built on the top of a high hill with a stunning view. The hills and water must have made this a wonderful place to work.
After a look around the newer antenna farm that had been built up there, we drove back down the hill and returned to town for gas. While driving out toward the highway, we detoured down a lengthy side road leading to the North Warning radar site that replaced Cartwright AFS. We weren't able to get all the way to it as the road was chained off.
When I had regained cell service, I reserved a room for us in Goose Bay and we spent the remainder of the day completing that drive. With off and on rain, and nothing to see but trees and the odd scampering bunny, we were happy to arrive at Hotel North which was our home base for the next several nights.
Dinner of butter chicken, rice and garlic naan bread at a Nepalese restaurant called Athmandu, and we were soon ready to call it a night.
September 12, 2025
We decided to check out the restaurant next door to the hotel. As it turned out, this would be our breakfast of choice for the rest of our time in Goose Bay. Fishcakes and bologna. A local favorite, and when in Rome, do as the Romans do.
Today would be about nostalgia. We began by looking for the two places we had lived while my dad was stationed here between 1973 and '75. As so much had changed since then, it was a challenge to find them, but we did. As soon as I saw it, memories came flooding back from my 5-year-old life. The night we arrived. The strangely colored walls. The black tile floor. Exhausted from a long day of travel from Nova Scotia, but excited to see which would be my new room. Dressing up with my toy guns and stopping people in the alley behind our house to check their drivers license. Learning that leaving stuff in playground gets it stolen (harsh one with the loss of my favorite toy guns). None of those original buildings remained today, but I could still see them clearly in my head.
We left here, and wandered up the hill to the site of the former RCAF Melville radar station where my dad worked. This was the very reason we lived our two years here. There was almost nothing left of the original station except one old radar tower, and a relatively new one built after the station closed. Aside from that, only a few Bell Aliant towers stood here now. We spent some time looking around, admiring the view, and I'm sure my dad was flush with memory as well. A nearby plaque showed the history of the site, and included a photo of the original base.
When we eventually left, we decided to drive around the outskirts of the airbase and found ourselves at the end of the runway. For giggles, I parked and decided to check FlightRadar24 to see if any planes were coming. To my jaw-dropping surprise, there was indeed. A massive, and somewhat rare, Antonov AN-124 was on approach. Not believing my luck, I jumped out of the car and positioned myself to record the landing on video (below). I was not disappointed! Soon, we drove to another part of the airbase and saw it parked and opening its massive nose to load / unload cargo.
Next on the nostalgia tour was attempting to locate where my elementary school was located. Like the other buildings from our past, I was reasonably sure it was no longer standing. We drove to the area it should have been and searched, street by street, with no luck. Places we thought it might have been, but perhaps built over, were disproven by the presence of some original housing from the earliest days of this base. Finally, we decided on an overgrown field as the most likely place, but not with the degree of certainty I had hoped for. What could I expect 50 years later?
Giving up on this, we drove to the docks to look around. When we lived here, we sometimes went to watch ships being loaded with logs. During the winter when the water was frozen, we instead watched planes come in. In those day, many international flights stopped here to refuel before or after crossing the Atlantic. We were treated to exostic tail designs on the planes, and dreams of far-away places.
