SOLVED. Travelogue-thriller, man searches for father in Labrador. [s]

[Nigel]

I read this book as a child in the mid-1980s and have being trying to identify it for years. It was written or set in the mid-20th Century.

A man in the UK picks up a faint radio transmission from his missing and presumed dead father in Canada. The signal should have been short/medium range but bounced across the Atlantic from the ionosphere.

The father was somewhere in the frozen north in Labrador. The man goes to Canada and travels through Labrador by various means, such as with railway construction convoys and mining camps.

He struggles to find places to sleep and food to eat and ways to continue his journey, but muddles through. He eventually finds his father's little camp and is sad his father didn't even have a fire to keep him warm.

[Mai]

Searching "novel" "the radio" "in labrador" "his father" online I came across a book that, while it doesn't match your description 100%, I think is worth mentioning. It's The Land God Gave to Cain by Hammond Innes.
Since you read it such a long time ago maybe some of the details are not like you remember... In this link there's a detailed description of the book:
https://astrofella.wordpress.com/2014...

And here's the book preview from Google Books:
https://books.google.com/books?id=0Qk...

[Nigel]

Mai - thank you so much! That is the one. You're right, I mis-remembered a lot of details. Thank you again!

[Mai]

If you read this book when you were a kid and over 30 years ago I think you remembered plenty!
I'm glad this is the book you were looking for :-)