Coral Harbour

Some notes from my files about Coral Harbour:

I believe the late Brock Goalen was with Met branch at Coral Harbour.

In an email back in 2006 he commented that "YZS was very much like a Resolute.  The physical airport and weather station were a good 10 miles from the village and was once a strategic military site for injured military personnel during WW2.  Situated in the middle of Hudson's Bay and nearly at the centre of the arctic 500mb winter low, it was a snowy, windy site.  Almost every flight you had to dig yourself in and out of buildings.  The barracks hallway would have its share of small snow streamers.  Summers were short but warm with lots of birds, flowers and flowing streams.I spent a year in Coral so know it well. Timing around Summer 77".

Coral Harbour (Source Ernie Hollands):            CZ4V

1945-46: Alex Rosenthal (OIC RO); Les McPherson (RO), Victor Beneditti (RO), Ernie Hollands (RO); the radiosonde men Albert Miceli and Al Harrington; the cook Honore Bazinet; the maintenance men Karl Andersen and Bert Svenson; and Ross, the caretaker. Mountie: Al Taylor.

Mention in Moody (1955) of radio station at Coral Harbour. “…one small building out of a mass of prefabricated barracks, hangars, warehouses and other structures” left by the Americans at the end of WW II.

Freddie Knight, daughter of the famous RO Fred Woodrow, recalls a Slim Harrington at Coral Harbour. Freddie has a picture of the Coral Harbour crew from a long time back.

I have a picture (somewhere...) of the airport at Coral from the collection of Monte Poindexter. I think he routed through Coral Harbour on one of his many trips into the High Arctic Stations.

Dick Etherington, who was with me at Eureka in 1956-57, was at Coral before going to EU. He told me they still made hydrogen when he was there (to fill the wx balloons) and recalled how delicate it was to put the caustic soda in at just the right moment.

John Gilbert

7 February 2010

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