The Ice Pilots (24 page)

“Basically, Joe likes hard workers and wants hard workers around him,” he told me between mouthfuls of cereal. “And that was one thing I always made sure I did: when he wanted something done, I always got it done right away while some of the other guys spent their time kissing up to his wife and daughter.”

Then Tyler threw something at me I would never in a million years have expected to hear come out of his mouth. He started quoting ancient Greek philosophers.

“I think it was Aristotle who said, ‘We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act but a habit.’ So I wanted to make hard work a habit.”

Hold on now, big boy. It’s not even five o’clock in the morning, I’ve just rolled out of the captain’s bed, undoubtedly with some rare form of communicable disease stuck to my body, and you’re quoting Aristotle? Really?

But Tyler, I soon realized, is not like everyone else up here. He is Buffalo’s golden boy, a strong, hard-working, no-nonsense young man, with a single focus: to dedicate himself to his work. His drive has not gone unnoticed. Once Jules announced he was leaving, Tyler learned he was getting moved to Yellowknife. Though two other rampies had more seniority than he had, Tyler was leaping ahead of them, skipping flight attending and going straight to first officer.

“It’s a pleasant surprise,” he said, “because I guess it doesn’t happen very often.” In some ways, Buffalo Airways is just like any other business: If the boss likes you, you advance more quickly than those around you. And Joe likes Tyler.

A graduate of flight school in Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario, Tyler wasn’t kidding when he talked about hard work. He starts at five o’clock every morning and doesn’t usually call it a day until fourteen hours later, at seven in the evening. The scope of his work largely mirrors that of his compatriots to the north: prepare the DC-3 for the scheduled morning flight to Yellowknife, which includes filling it with all the cargo that is shipped up by truck from Edmonton overnight, and run courier stops all over Hay River, dropping off parcels. Once that is done, Tyler and the rest of the Hay River crew get creative. “After that we have to do whatever needs to get done,” he said as the other members of the residence slowly emerged from their rooms in greasy coveralls, grunting and grumbling their way to the refrigerator before they headed outside.

“We fix pretty much everything, because it’s all old and needs work.” Afternoon is the time to do pick-ups for the courier service, followed by paperwork. “Then you come in and get ready for the sked to land. The plane comes in, you put it to bed, and offload whatever freight there is.” By then it’s seven o’clock in the evening; the start of the next work day is only ten hours away.

But there is a light at the end of the tunnel: “On Saturdays,” Tyler continued, “we get half a day off. Sunday you can work on whatever you need to work on, but you have to be there when the plane comes in at night.”

“So your free time never tasted so good, right?” I asked.

“You spend it recovering and resting, mostly,” he said.

But when the alternative is working as a bouncer at a bar in Barrie, Ontario, fourteen-hour days in the dark and cold of Hay River, Northwest Territories, doesn’t seem that bad after all, especially when you’re chasing your dream.

Rookie co-pilot Andrew Weich joined us in the kitchen. Andrew had flown as Joe’s co-pilot on the sked the night before, and would be doing the same on the return flight this morning. Andrew seemed reasonably well rested, a testimony to the fact that he had graduated from the ramp to the cockpit. For Andrew and the rest of the Buffalo pilots, partying when you’re flying is a serious no-no. “Legally, there has to be eight hours from your last drink and flying,” Andrew said. “But our company operations manual states twelve hours.”

If anything, it’s reassuring to know that the guys behind the controls are sober when they’re flying seventy-five-year-old planes.

After breakfast,
it was dark and cold on the runway of the Hay River airport, and we were trying to stay warm in the aging Buffalo vans while waiting for the freighter to come in. A particularly heavy load was coming up on the truck from Edmonton that morning, and it wouldn’t all fit on the sked, so an extra DC-3 had been dispatched from Yellowknife to carry it all back. While we were waiting, Doug Durrant arrived in his rig.

Doug has been driving for Buffalo for a little more than nine years. Every night at seven he leaves Edmonton with a truckload of goods bound for various destinations around the North, courtesy of Buffalo Airways. He drives through the night, then spends the day sleeping in the staff residence. Doug and two other men are responsible for starting the chain of events that keeps Buffalo’s courier service in business. As Doug said: “One goin’ up, one goin’ down, and one off. So one left here last night at about six-thirty. I passed him halfway down.” Whoever comes up on Friday night gets to spend the weekend in Hay River.

But this was not some twentysomething. Doug is a grown man, and I was struggling to see how he handled life in Alpha Beta Buffalo. “That’s why we’ve got the master bedroom,” he laughed. “It’s actually quite comfortable in there. We’ve got a TV, VCR, PlayStation.”

Despite the surroundings, Doug knows that his part-time roommates come by their frat-boy living conditions honestly. “Most of these are young kids who are living away from home for the first time.”

The DC-3 touched down
with the yelp of rubber and a cloud of snow smoke. The props had barely stopped spinning before the place turned into a whirlwind of activity. Pilot A.J. Decoste and co-pilot Graeme Ferguson, both looking alarmingly awake given the hour, popped open the plane’s cargo doors, and the loading began in earnest. My buddy French Larry was there too, looking decidedly less fresh.

Unlike the unloading that takes place in Yellowknife—where pallets piled high with boxes are unwrapped and individual packages tossed from van to van—the loading in Hay River has a different groove. Entire pallets weighing hundreds of pounds are hoisted from the truck onto a dolly. From there the dolly needs to be heaved, pushed, and cajoled uphill from the loading doors to the front of the aircraft. It’s exhausting and back-breaking work. And if I’d ever wondered how the rampies manage to stay fit while working sixty-hour-plus work weeks, the mystery was solved. Their work
is
their fitness.

The plane loaded, I started walking back to the darkened terminal to wait for Joe’s arrival and take my place in the sked back to Yellowknife. As I was walking away, A.J. called after me: “Hey, Mike! Wanna ride with us?”

My first reaction was to turn him down. After all, Joe would be flying the sked this morning, and who knows, he may be in a chatty mood. But as I was walking toward the terminal, a change of heart washed over me. Why should I wait around for something that may never happen? So I turned on my heels and ran after Graeme as he disappeared into the belly of the beast.

That was a good call. Larry was kind enough to offer me his place in the jump seat, an auxiliary fold-up seat in the cockpit directly behind the pilot and co-pilot. In retrospect, Larry probably could have kept the seat, since I spent so much time
out
of it, standing and looking out at the world before me with newborn awe.

“Where are you gonna sit?” I asked as Larry rifled through a closet in front of me, pulling out various down parkas, engine tents, and engine donuts and placing them in the only patch of open floor space on the overstuffed plane.

“Don’t worry about me,” he said, tossing the items in a heap on the floor, curling up on it, and closing his eyes. When you work as hard as a Buffalo rampie does, you don’t miss an opportunity to catch up on your sleep.

Still, I’m amazed that he could slumber through the cacophony that followed. Take-off in a DC-3 is unlike anything I’ve ever experienced, even though I’m a fairly seasoned traveller. The engines roared to life with a throaty growl, then burst into a mechanized frenzy as A.J. gunned the throttle. The DC-3 rumbled down the tarmac like a runaway train.

The plane was bouncing, shaking, and creaking, and for a minute I thought to myself, this may be this particular DC-3’s last flight. Then, with a grace that belied her age, the “3” lifted gently off the ground. We were airborne.

The flight from Hay River to Yellowknife clocked in at around fifty minutes, but time stood still for me that morning. Until that trip, I had been strictly a sidesaddle rider in aircraft, occasionally looking outside at the landscape
beside
me. Sure, you get to see the world outside, but it’s almost like looking at things in the past tense.

And even then, I don’t think I’m much for looking out plane windows anymore. These days, getting on a jet is a chance to catch up on some reading or to get ahead in my work. Looking out the window to marvel at the sights, particularly the ethereal vastness of the morning sky? A thing of the past.

But to be in the DC-3’s cockpit and look at the world as it unfolds in
front
of you is to be thrown upside down in time and space. This is looking at the world in the future tense, a chance to see and feel the limitless potential humankind holds in its hands. No wonder Joe rarely misses a chance to fly.

And while it’s pure heaven on the other side of the metal tube, the inside of the DC-3 is all business, a dizzying array of knobs, dials, levers, and switches. To my untrained eye, there were very few electronic instruments. Maybe that’s why A.J. and Graeme never took their hands off the yoke or stopped fiddling with things. Their confidence was palpable, their expertise obvious. I was in good hands.

The nose of the plane—so close I felt like I could reach out and touch it—dipped and weaved in the air, like a bobber on a lake. The noise in the cockpit was deafening, so I turned to my iPod to get my message across to my hosts.

This is so f*!king cool!
I typed, holding the screen in front of A.J. He laughed, then motioned to an ancient set of light-green headphones dangling on the wall in front of me. With the headset on and microphone placed strategically in front of my mouth, communication with the boys became easier. Mostly, though, I just listened. Graeme and A.J. chatted about the rest of their days: skidooing, shopping, catching up on some much-needed rest.

I wasn’t much in the mood for talking, anyway. As I stood in the cockpit behind the pilot’s and co-pilot’s seats, my jaw was glued shut as I watched the world wake up. As we grew ever closer to Yellowknife, the darkened sky began to brighten slowly. Below us, the vastness of Great Slave Lake eased into view, shorelines of grey and black forming a gently curving frame around a white canvas. To the right, the sun began to rise, throwing rays of orange light across the sky. For the briefest of instants, I was one with the gods.

And I saw clearly, perhaps for the first time in my life, what it really means to fly.