Early Morning Reflections

by Teresa Zieba

Title

Early Morning Reflections

Artist

Teresa Zieba

Medium

Photograph - Photography

Description

Patricia Lake is a lake in Jasper National Park, Alberta, Canada, near the town of Jasper. It was named for Princess Patricia of Connaught, a granddaughter of Queen Victoria.
Patricia Lake is notable for its involvement during World War II with Project Habbakuk, a plan to build an unsinkable aircraft carrier from an ice-based composite material termed "Pykrete". Patricia Lake was chosen for this work on account of having rail connections at Jasper and being a suitably cold, remote area that already had military training involvement in the area as camouflage. There were also Mennonite and Doukhobor communities nearby, religious conscientous objectors, who could provide the labour needed.
Pykrete construction material for the full-sized ship was to be a composite of ice and sawdust, maintained by refrigeration. The first experiments had used natural lake ice, in a Canadian winter. The model ship was to use plain ice, but partly natural and partly refrigerated. Construction proceeded through March 1943 by building a wooden cabin on the frozen lake, installing refrigeration equipment and a nest of 6 inch cold air ducts, and then increasing the height of the ice wall around the cabin. As weight increased, the bottom of the "hull" was sawn free from the lake ice and the model floated free. In June the refrigeration was switched off, but the model lasted the whole summer before melting and sinking.
As of June 26, 2011 only the west wall of the structure remained intact; the rest has fallen to pieces and is strewn from 40 feet to 90 feet in depth. An underwater plaque at the site notes its part in World War II history.

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March 10th, 2015

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