Winged Explorer

Jacques Louis Francine '37, who first made newspaper headlines when he went into the wilds of northern Canada with two Indian trappers the fall after graduation to search for the monster square-tails of Canadian brook-trout legend, flew into them recently via a hazardous coast-to-coast flight as a Canadian Air Force pilot. Francine, who joined the RCAF last July after having flown for both the U. S. Navy and American Airways, made the trip in sub-zero weather which forced him to make six forced landings on his west-east route.

Before becoming a U. S. pilot, Francine spent a winter as a roustabout in the Texas oil fields and most of the following year doing expeditionary work in Labrador for the Academy of Natural Sciences in Philadelphia. With Paul Millard, a French trapper, he flew 500 miles north of Quebec in early March into a region that only two white men had ever reached before. After surviving 40-below zero blizzards in Indian camps until spring came malingering north, the two adventurers made their way back down the unmapped Kowashamiska River to civ- ilization.

Accepted to membership in the Explorers Club of New York, Fieldand Stream used his story >of how he caught the 27-inch, 7-pound trout he went to find with only his dog, Caribou, as witness. Other published accounts of his adventures are: "Labrador Exile," in Frontiers; "Here 'Till June," in the World Digest-, "Catch Fish or Starve," in OutdoorLife; and "The Forgotten Land," in the Canadian Geographical Journal.