Arctic adventures

 Arthur and I had a visit to the Vancouver Maritime Museum this afternoon.  The key exhibit at the VMM is the RCMP St Roch, which served communities in the Canadian arctic from 1928 to 1954, including traversing the Northwest Passage multiple times, and was the first ship to circumnavigate North America.  

In addition to the St Roch, the VMM has some great displays about Arctic exploration among its other great displays.  Thus it's a great intro to today's post.  After Arthur and I returned from the EAAE, we hosted a game based on the hunt for the mad trapper of Rat River.  While we picked a bunch of proxy figures from our current collection, few of them were actually fitted to the real event.  This inaccuracy could not be allowed to stand, so i placed an order with North Star Military Figures for some Copplestone Castings polar explorers and Inuit hunters.  Now we will be ready for a replay of the Rat River action!

The four Inuit hunters can be hunters, and can also support the RCMP as special constables.

They are wearing animal skin (sealskin, most likely) for their parkas, mukluks and trousers. The parkas should be whiter shade seen on the two figures on the left but I suppose the other pair could be wearing caribou skin.  I don't know the reason for the tails on the belts of the two on the left, so I just painted them grey.

The four white guys are can be explorers, Mounties, hunters or any other folks depending on the scenario requirements.  Based on my research, they should all be in khaki or beige but that would be far too boring so I added colour where I could.

Finally, a group photo!

And finally, Arthur and I watched 'Death Hunt' last night.  This was a 1981 movie starring Charles Bronson and Lee Marvin, loosely based on the mad trapper hunt.  We had great fun picking out where the movie made mistakes, but also the details it got right.  It was clear from some of the details that the writers had done their research, but then decided to change aspects of the real story.  Arthur generally thought that the real story was plenty dramatic, and the deviations introduced by the filmmakers did not improve the story.

It's a fun movie but not to be taken seriously.

EAAE - Prince Rupert. the Inside Passage and then home

 Arthur and I woke up from our last night in a tent at the Water's Edge Campground at Dease Lake, packed our tent and then headed south to Terrace.  It was an easy drive, then we connected with Aileen, unloaded the truck and returned it to the rental company.  Back at Aileen's, we did our laundry, and prepared for our next step.  We packed an overnight bag for our trip to Prince Rupert, and loaded everything else into bins for shipping home to Burnaby.  Aileen's friend Rolf arranged for our gear to be shipped home, and Aileen took us to Prince Rupert.

Prince Rupert is close to Terrace, just over an hour along Highway 16.  We had a little explore of the city, where there are loads and loads of totem poles!

We had fish and chips at Bob's on the Rock, and then early to bed.

Next morning we were up early as we needed to be at the ferry terminal at 6 am to board the BC Ferry to Port Hardy, at the north end of Vancouver Island.  It's a full day, traversing the sheltered inside passage.

Boarding the ferry.

Arthur was a bit bored, but I absolutely loved sitting back and relaxing, and letting someone else do the driving!  The scenery is very beautiful.  And I had time to read a bit, including Jack London's Call of the Wild, White Fang and To Build A Fire.  Scenery included the usual rocks and trees (and water!), as well as lighthouses, abandoned communities, and even whales and ships.

I loved seeing whales, but of course it was not easy to take decent photos!

View from the ferry.

Lighthouse.

Sailboat.

We arrived very late into Port Hardy, not reaching our hotel until 1 am.  We had a lovely breakfast, then a nice bus ride into Nanaimo, another ferry to Horseshoe Bay, and finally Skytrain home to Burnaby.  And so ended our Epic Arctic Adventure of Epicness!

Gold Rush Town - MDF Madness!

 For my Old West skirmish gaming, I've had a general preference to set the games in a more of a Northern climate, rather than the dusty, spaghetti-western inspired setting where the games more often end up.  Inspired by our Epic Arctic Adventure Epicness, I have decided to make sure that I can set up a northern table for gaming. One of the key elements will be to be able to set up a gold rush town.  A feature of gold rush towns is that they are built very quickly, so there will tend to be many tents, and many improvised or quickly built shelters.  So I placed an order with Sarissa Precision for their 'Tent Town', a set of 5 buildings.  I combined these with the saloon that was already in our collection, and a Sarissa Precision cabin that we picked up at Imperial Hobbies' recent customer appreciation sale. Here is the start to the gold rush town, new buildings up front and some older items of the collection (Renedra tents and cabins from 4Ground and Pegasus Hobbies) in the rear.

An image of front street.

Compare to a historic photo!  Check out more photos at this website:  https://westernmininghistory.com/gallery/538460/historical/towns/

Two MDF cabins, which are not completely dissimilar from the Robert Service and Jack London cabins we saw in Dawson.

Jack London cabin.

Robert Service cabin.  I'll have to source some 28mm moose antlers!

The roof of the cabin is currently corrugated iron, but I've seen older photos showing a verdant, green sod roof.  I chose to do neither!

All of the buildings have removable roofs to allow figures to be placed inside.

Here are the two smaller tent buildings - they are not actually small, compared to the rest of the buildings!  These have optional signposts to put in front of the tents but I left them off thinking that they could be homes, but I've reconsidered and I'll recast them as businesses.  The only difference between the two is the extra window space for the tent on the left.

This one is similar to the two above but with a leanto at the rear.  Signage is from a free PDF provided by Sarissa.

Rear view of the general store lean-to.

I added signage from the Sarissa old west signs PDF.

These are slightly larger tents, with an internal wall to break up the internal space.

Another find from the Imperial Hobbies sale was this set of walls from Xolk.  Xolk has sadly and suddenly stopped trading, which is a pity as I rather like their product!  

These walls fit in quite well with other walls in my collection, like the walls from 4Ground MDF and Italeri/Warlord Games.

15th Light Horse

 How's this for an obscure subject?  My original idea for picking up a couple of sets of the Scarlet Patrol had been to build up a unit of Canadian cavalry (Canadian Mounted Rifles for example) to add a bit of variety to my early WWI CEF.  However I was tired of painting khaki and wanted an excuse to paint more redcoats.  The obvious choice would be more Mounties, however I've already got more Mounties than I'm likely to use in a single game!  So instead I went looking for an alternative.

I settled on the 15th (Alberta) Light Horse, a volunteer cavalry unit of the Canadian Non-Permanent Active Militia, the precursor to the modern Canadian Army.  This uniform was only in use for a few years, roughly from when the regiment was raised in 1905 to when everything changed with the outbreak of WWI.  The 15th Light Horse was raised in my home town of Calgary, with famous Calgarian Col James Walker as their colonel.

The 15th's uniform was almost identical to that of the RNWMP, with the main distinction that they had yellow epaulets and collars, and a double yellow stripe on their trousers.  I referred to the Osprey on the CEF in WWI and this image from the MilArt blog, showing several of the pre-WWI Western Canadian cavalry regiments.  The trooper in the rear holding the horse is from the 15th Light Horse.

In the early part of the 20th Century, from the South African War through WWI and into the '20's, the flat-brimmed Stetson with the Montana peak, was associated with Canadian cavalry in the way that the bush hat pinned up on one side is associated with the Australian army.  However, more than a century on, this is largely forgotten except by history nerds like me!

After a series of name changes and amalgamations, the 15th Light Horse was incorporated into the South Alberta Light Horse in 1954.

Here are a few closeups of the 15th.  Troopers on parade.

A firing line.

And advancing.

And I still added a few Mounties to my collection anyway 8^)

These two also got a bit of paint slopped on them.  The mad scientist is from Pulp Figures and the chap in the blue suit is Jewish-Canadian adventurer Two Gun Cohen from Copplestone Castings.