Flying On Instinct (9 page)

McConachie received the McKee Trophy in 1945 for his pioneering efforts in forging air service to the North. He became president of CPA in 1947. His fleet of DC-8s fulfilled his dream of a polar route, and he inaugurated CPA passenger service to Australia, Japan and Hong Kong, adding another 15,535 miles (25,000 kilometres) of flight routes by 1957 and flying worldwide negotiating new deals.

McConachie died of a heart attack in 1965. In 1968, his wife and two sons were present for the opening of Grant McConachie Way, an expressway leading to Vancouver International Airport.

In pioneer bush flying, Edmonton was referred to as the Gateway to the North. Edmonton companies built and repaired the planes and boats used by adventurers to discover and extract northern riches—fish, furs, gold, silver, radium or diamonds—and fly them to southern markets. Maxwell “Max” William Ward was born in Edmonton, where bush planes were a familiar sight in the skies and on the ground at the municipal airport. He was inspired by famous Edmonton bush pilots like Dickins and May, and wrote, “My whole idea of adventure, of living, was tied up in the notion of joining their ranks some day in a magnificent flying machine.” As a child, Ward spent a lot of time
walking around the fabric-covered wooden craft. He carved planes from pieces of wood at home and ran down the street holding then aloft and making “vroom” sounds like a zooming plane.

After a short stint at Canadian National Railways, Ward joined the RCAF, receiving his wings at age 20 in 1941. He was promptly assigned to the British Commonwealth Air Training Plan as an instructor. He wasn't good at following instructions himself, often flying lower than assigned and flying off to meet his sweetheart, Marjorie, in Calgary.

Max Ward pilots his small CF-DJC de Havilland Fox Moth at Snare River, 90 miles (145 kilometres) west of Yellowknife, in 1947.
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Following the war, Ward went to Yellowknife and bought a small de Havilland Tiger Moth biplane to fly passengers and freight as Polaris Charter Company Ltd. But the plane was small and had a limited range, needing to be refuelled every 130 miles (210 kilometres). On one trip to Edmonton, he had to land on a baseball diamond in Athabasca, interrupting the game in progress. Pulling out a 10-gallon (45-litre) drum he carried with him in the cockpit, he proceeded to refuel his plane, taxi and lift off, waving to the surprised players as he flew away. Ward next purchased a de Havilland Fox Moth. It held three passengers and up to 500 pounds (227 kilograms) of cargo and would be a step up for his business. He took the train to Toronto to pick it up. Flying back from Toronto, he landed at Kenora, Ontario, for the night. It wasn't until he hit the pile of gravel on the airstrip that he knew he should have looked more closely. The runway was being graded and the work crew had
left a pile just where he came in. Ward walked away with cuts and bruises, but his smashed-up plane took five weeks to repair.

Ward's next adventure occurred when his engine quit while he was flying into Arsenault Lake. After making a perfect landing, he found the problem: there was no oil. Somehow the oil-pan drain valve had opened, and he had been leaking oil throughout the trip. Now the Fox Moth needed a new engine. Ward hiked to a nearby drilling camp, hitched a ride back to Yellowknife, ordered a new engine from de Havilland on credit, went to Edmonton by train to take delivery, hitched a ride back to the drilling camp with another pilot and then walked four miles to and from
the lake every day while he installed the new engine. Then he flew back to Yellowknife and another nasty encounter. Unable to show Air Transport Board bureaucrats that he had the required commercial flying licence on his own, he acquired a partner who did have such a commodity, and they established Yellowknife Airways Ltd.

Ward left the company in 1949 over operating differences and moved his family from Yellowknife to Lethbridge, where he earned a living as a construction worker with Marjorie's father and flew for Associated Airways just to keep his skills sharp. In 1951, after just six months with the company, he crashed while taking an HBC manager to Bathurst Inlet in the high Arctic. His departure had been delayed, his compass was useless so close to the north magnetic pole, and the sun was setting faster than his plane could fly, so navigating by sight was impossible. Then the fog came in. Ward knew he had to get down and tried to see a suitable spot. What looked like a lake turned out to be a high hill. He slammed the skis into it and ricocheted down the other side. He radioed for rescue, then waited five days for help to arrive. The first rescue plane got lost and had to refuel, but finally an RCMP plane spotted them and radioed in their position.

Ward finally got his own Class 4B Charter licence to operate a commercial air service. He bought the first de Havilland Otter used in Western Canada for $100,000, twice the cost of the average bush plane of the day, but the
Otter was bigger and faster and had a range of 600 miles (965 kilometres), three times that of his little Fox Moth. The plane credited with developing the North, the Otter could handle an impressive payload while gliding onto and off lakes. With the same overall configuration as the Beaver, but longer and heavier, with a wider wingspan and capable of seating up to 11 people, the Otter easily landed entire sheets of plywood and 16-foot (5-metre) lengths of lumber. One builder noted that you could tell which cabins had been built after the Otter was in service because their roofing consisted of whole sheets of plywood instead of sawn lengths that had to be pieced together. More planes, more work and more money followed.

By May 1953, Wardair Ltd. was in business, first operating domestically and then expanding into overseas charters. The airline had some unique assignments in the early years. On one occasion, a Texas rancher wanted a musk ox to crossbreed with his cattle, so two Wardair planes located a herd on the tundra and separated a young specimen from the rest. After one plane landed, its flying cowboys roped the wild creature, tied its legs and stowed it in the cargo area. They neglected to sedate it. For Ward, who still pitched in to clean and maintain his planes, this was the ultimate messy job.

Ward took his company public in 1961 but retained controlling interest. By the mid-1970s, Wardair was Canada's third-largest commercial airline and largest international air charter carrier, but the company faced tough competition
from Air Canada and CP Air as well as difficulties with government regulators. In 1989, Ward surprised Bay Street by selling his airline. It was yet another step in the familiar process of growing an airline by buying out the competition. In 1987, Pacific Western Airlines Corporation had purchased CP Air, which had already acquired Nordair and Eastern Provincial Airways. These four airlines were combined into Canadian Airlines International, which was further expanded with the purchase of Wardair but eventually taken over by Air Canada in 2000.

Having received many aviation and business awards, Ward was inducted into Canada's Aviation Hall of Fame in 1974. At the time, it was noted that “his lengthy and continuing efforts to responsibly service this nation's most northern frontier by air, despite adversity, together with his development of a viable international charter service, have been of outstanding benefit to Canadian aviation.” The following year he was made an Officer of the Order of Canada.

As Max Ward discovered, flying in the North was a dangerous proposition, and it remains so today. In wild, unforgiving country, bush pilots are at the mercy of unforeseen circumstances. They live or die by their endurance and skill. But thanks to his skill and determination, Ward's one-man shoestring operation in the North grew into a multi-million-dollar charter operation that circled the globe.

CHAPTER

8

WHILE THE ENGINEER DID MOST
of the drudge work to keep bush planes flying, it was usually the pilot who scooped up most of the glory. When their names and exploits appeared in newspapers, the recognition got them more flying contracts. Francis Russell “Russ” Baker used the press with great success, growing a single-plane operation into Central BC Airways. Stories about his derring-do and pioneering flights into unexplored territory appeared regularly in BC papers. Baker flew through difficult mountainous terrain with prospectors and also conducted mercy flights, arriving just in time to rescue lost trekkers. Forestry wardens were flown on patrols over hundreds of miles to otherwise inaccessible areas by “veteran bush pilot Russ Baker.”

B
aker's reputation also brought him work from the Americans during the Second World War. Shortly after the US entered the war, following the December 7, 1941, Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, came the military initiative to build a highway from western Canada to Alaska so Allied troops could be rapidly deployed north if the Japanese invaded North America. Baker was one of several bush pilots contracted to fly surveyors along the proposed route. He did that and a lot more. On January 5, 1942, 14 new Martin B-26 Marauder bombers left Gowen Field at Boise, Idaho, headed for the Aleutian Islands in Alaska. They were being flown by new members of the 77th Bombardment Squadron, 42nd Bombardment Group, Air Force Combat Command, many of whom had minimal training. On January 16, facing the probability of foul weather, they took off along a 1,000-mile (1,610-kilometre) route to Whitehorse, Yukon. They were equipped with pencil sketches rather than maps and had no electronic navigation aids.

By 6:00 pm, three of the B-26s were lost, running out of fuel and flying at low altitude because of snow squalls. The crews decided to crash-land at a suitable location, should they be lucky enough to find one. When a fairly wide valley with a flat floor was sighted amid the mountains, they decided to go for it. Two planes landed without incident by keeping their wheels up, which allowed the aircraft's fuselage to skim over the snow like a boat's hull. The third plane dropped its landing gear as a braking manoeuvre to lose
speed and nosed over into four to five feet (1.2 to 1.5 metres) of snow. Fortunately, the pilot and co-pilot received only minor injuries, and the rest of the crew was unhurt.

The aircraft were all equipped with survival equipment, so the crews set up camp in the valley. At first light on January 17, a search was begun for the missing planes but was not successful. On January 18, they were spotted by some Curtiss P-40E fighter planes also en route to Alaska. Then “veteran bush pilot Russ Baker” was dispatched to rescue them. He arrived the next morning in a small Fokker equipped with skis and began airlifting the men to Watson Lake, Yukon. It took almost a week for Baker to ferry all 24 crewmen to safety. A few months later, salvage crews were sent to the wreck site to strip the planes of all useable parts, which were then airlifted out. The remaining skeletal frames were abandoned. The valley began to be called Million Dollar Valley, an exaggeration of the cost of the three B-26 bombers.

For his role in rescuing the air crews, Russ Baker was awarded the United States Air Medal for “exceptional daring and pilotage ability” in January 1942 by President Harry Truman. By the 1960s, only a few of the 5,266 B-26 Marauders manufactured had survived the war or the scrapyard, and aircraft enthusiasts began searching around the world for restorable aircraft. In 1971, the Million Dollar Valley wrecks were rediscovered, and everything that remained was retrieved. By 2006, one of them had been restored to flying condition and another was undergoing restoration.

B
aker worked for his old friend Grant McConachie of CPA as a pilot delivering mail to the North. He was made senior captain and later divisional superintendent for CPA at Whitehorse. It was during his time at CPA that Baker realized there was great business potential for charter aircraft companies. In 1946, he left to co-found Central BC Airways, based in Fort St. James, with fellow pioneer pilot Walter Gilbert. Its mission was to provide reliable air service to those working in mining, forestry, trapping and hunting in western and northern mountain communities where access was constrained by weather, topography and marginal profitability. It was an iffy business proposition, but Baker made it work and bought out Gilbert's share in the business.

Baker started with two Beechcraft seaplanes, two employees and a contract with the BC Forest Service. To meet the expanding needs of the Forest Service, he acquired four more aircraft in 1947, and in 1948 became the proud owner of the first Beaver aircraft manufactured by de Havilland.

In 1947, Russ Baker became the first pilot to set down in the ancient land of the Naha, a wild and rugged area with no roads in and no roads out. Just a bit north of the 60th parallel in Canada's Northwest Territories, the Nahanni area includes one of the deepest canyon systems in the world and the turbulent Nahanni River, which cuts through the remote Mackenzie Mountains. Today Nahanni National Park Reserve is one of Canada's greatest treasures and a UNESCO World Heritage Site. But it once had a more mysterious and
sinister reputation. In autumn 1946, the Canadian media began running stories about lost miners and hidden riches in a far northwest “tropical valley” in the Nahanni. These fanciful tales were a welcome break from post-war recovery news. A young cub reporter for the
Vancouver Sun
, Pierre Berton, who wrote many of the Nahanni stories, decided to race against his journalistic competition to be first on scene in the legendary Headless Valley of the South Nahanni.