The “Great White North” holds a romantic appeal for many people, and Anne was no exception. So when she saw a posting at the Campus Employment Center advertising a summer job at a remote fishing lodge in northern Manitoba, she immediately filed an application and was delighted when she was hired. She dreamed of a summer spent catching 10-pound trout, reading Robert W. Service poems by moonlight, and listening to the haunting howl of distant wolves.

Reality proved to be somewhat different. She spent her days cleaning one-pound trout, reading outboard motor repair manuals by flashlight, and listening to the maddening whine of nearby mosquitoes. Even when immersed in one of the many mindless repetitive tasks that filled her days, she was unable to think about anything more interesting than how tired she was and how much her insect bites itched…until one day when Joe Moosemess, the lodge owner, called her aside.

“We've got a problem with the fuel storage tanks, Anne,” he began. “You know that lightning strike that the generator shack took last night? I think it fried a lot of the electrical gear. Anyway, all the fuel gauges on the storage tanks have packed it in. We've no way of telling how much fuel we have left in any of them. And that's a real problem for us, because we need to know how much to have the pilots bring in when they fly up from the south.”