The Ice Pilots

by Michael Vlessides

  Although the terms “bush flying” and “bush pilots” have become inextricably linked with northern Canada and Alaska, the term likely originates from southern Africa, where the word “bush” was used to describe the land there. Since then, its meaning has expanded to include any remote wilderness area; hence its attachment to two of the wildest places left on the planet. Bush flying is still widely practised in Australia as well.

  “Bush flying” refers to flying aircraft in these sometimes-inhospitable regions. Conditions such as extreme and unpredictable weather, distance from civilization, and the roughness of the terrain all combine to make bush flying one of the most demanding—and dangerous—endeavours on the planet. In many instances, bush pilots do not have the luxury of landing their craft on prepared landing strips, let alone runways. That’s why many of today’s bush planes still ply northern skies equipped with floats, skis, or unusually large tires, sometimes called “tundra tires.”

  Bush flying was first used in eastern Canada as a way of exploring and developing otherwise unreachable parts of the country. By the end of World War I, most of southern Canada—that thread of land that lies close to the border with the United States—had been linked by railways. The North, however, remained as remote, wild, and inhospitable as it had ever been.

  In late 1918, a Canadian forester named Ellwood Wilson had the idea of using aircraft to spot forest fires and map forested areas. A year later he managed to get his hands on a couple of Curtiss HS-2L flying boats, biplanes whose fuselages were shaped and sealed like the hull of a boat, allowing them to take off, land, and float on water. Soon thereafter, pilot Stuart Graham and engineer Walter Kahre were selected to fly the planes. On June 4, 1919, Graham and Kahre began a 1,038-kilometre (645-mile) journey to Lac-à-la-Tortue, Quebec, then the longest cross-country flight ever flown in Canada.

  That summer, Graham (whom many consider to be Canada’s first bush pilot) and Kahre performed aerial reconnaissance to spot forest fires in Quebec’s St. Maurice River valley. Meanwhile, the Southern Labrador Pulp and Lumber Company of Boston hired pilots to perform extensive aerial surveys of lands the company leased in Labrador.

  By the mid-1920s, bush flying had conquered the eastern Canadian winter as well, as a pilot named Doc Oaks, who flew supplies for a local mining company, developed methods to heat and maintain engines in Canada’s brutal winter conditions. A pair of brothers from Sioux Lookout, Ontario, developed special skis that would land on snow or ice. Much of the flying during this era—as today—was in support of mining operations.

  Flying for profit was a questionable undertaking back on the eve of the Great Depression. The early 1920s saw a serious decline in the number of licenced pilots, aircraft, and flying companies registered in Canada. By 1924, there were only eight private airlines left in the country. Yet as their numbers fell, their workloads grew: more than 77,000 pounds of cargo were carried in 1924, a huge increase from the 14,600 pounds carried in 1921.

  Things turned around in 1924, when the Canadian Air Force decided to discontinue any flying operation that could instead be performed by a private company; commercial flight was reborn. The Ontario government was so convinced that aircraft would change the landscape of the country that it created the Ontario Provincial Air Service, which ultimately attracted some of the best pilots and engineers from around the country. Though the service’s primary mandate was to fight fires, its pilots themselves performed a variety of jobs, including aerial photography, emergency medical flights, and land surveys.

  The story was developing in much the same way in western Canada, where a young man named Wilfrid “Wop” May (he got his nickname from a young cousin who pronounced Wilfrid as “Woppie”) moved to Edmonton after his discharge from the Royal Naval Air Service. A Montreal businessman thankful for his success in Edmonton’s booming real estate market had given the city a Curtiss JN-4 airplane as a token of his appreciation. May quickly asked if he could rent the plane, a request that was granted. Soon afterwards, May Airplanes—the first commercial bush-flying operation in western Canada—was created. One of May’s first jobs was to fly copies of the Edmonton Journal to the town of Wetaskiwin, some 70 kilometres (45 miles) to the south.

  October 1920 saw what may be Canada’s first commercial bush flight into the untamed wild. A fur buyer walked into the downtown Winnipeg offices of Canadian Aircraft and asked to be flown home to the small town of The Pas, hundreds of kilometres to the north. By 1921, Imperial Oil was using a fleet of aircraft to explore the Northwest Territories, and got within 160 kilometres (100 miles) of the Arctic Circle.

  Canada’s airline industry changed forever when, in 1926, a wealthy Winnipeg grain merchant named James A. Richardson—who would go on to be called the father of Canadian aviation—formed Western Canada Airways. The airline served many purposes in those early years of aviation. One of its most astonishing trips involved a prospector named Gilbert LaBine and a pilot named Wilfred Leigh Brintnell. In 1929, LaBine and Brintnell set out from Winnipeg for Great Bear Lake, where LaBine was dropped off in search of precious metals. Brintnell then continued his journey north to Aklavik, across the Richardson Mountains (named for a different Richardson, Sir John) to Whitehorse, west to the northern B.C. town of Prince George, then back to Edmonton and finally to Winnipeg, a journey of some 15,000 kilometres (9,320 miles). The prospector LaBine would go on to strike it rich when he discovered pitchblende, a uranium-rich form of uraninite.

  In 1932, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police hired bush pilot Wilfrid “Wop” May to hunt the fugitive Albert Johnson, the “Mad Trapper of Rat River,” from the air.

  Among other things, the formation of Richardson’s Western Canada Airways helped bring new aircraft into the Canadian fold. The company soon placed an order for twelve Fokker Universals from the United States. The Universal boasted radial, air-cooled engines designed and built by aviation manufacturer Pratt & Whitney. The Universal’s design soon became the industry standard, a position it held until the early 1930s.

  It wasn’t long before those little Fokkers were making their mark on life in the bush. In one case, a New York businessman needed financial papers to be signed by a prospector living in the gold fields of remote northern Ontario. The telegram was sent from New York to Hudson, Ontario, the base of Western Canada Airways, where Doc Oaks then flew the telegram to Narrow River and snowshoed to the prospector’s cabin. The two men then hiked back to the plane and flew to Sioux Lookout, where the prospector signed the papers at a local bank. A three-week expedition had been reduced to less than a day.

  But the Fokkers were not without their shortcomings, which opened the door for other bush planes to fly through. In 1928, de Havilland Aircraft of Canada began assembling two-seater Gipsy Moths outside of Toronto. The Reid Aircraft Company was established at Montreal that same year; in 1929, the Fairchild Aviation Corporation built a large aircraft manufacturing plant in Montreal.

  The creation of Canadian Airways—a merger between Richardson’s Western Canada Airways with the Aviation Corporation of Canada—in November 1930 continued the development of new planes. In 1931, Canadian Airways introduced the Junkers Ju 52 (“Iron Annie”), at that point the largest single-engine aircraft ever to grace Canadian skies. From the Yukon Territory to Quebec, the Ju 52 made a name for itself by the incredible amounts of freight it could carry.

  Soon thereafter, the Fairchild Super 71 was introduced, the first aircraft ever designed in Canada for bush operations. It was followed by the Fairchild 82. In mid-1935, the first plane ever completely designed and built in Canada—the Noorduyn Norseman—rolled off the assembly line at the Noorduyn plant in Montreal. The Norseman was the quintessential Canadian bush plane. Fast, roomy, comfortable, and economical, it could operate on wheels, skis, or floats, and carried up to ten people. And as I would go on to learn late in the summer of 2011, the Norseman was such a good plane that it still flies today.

&nbs
p; While the Norseman may have been the first bush plane built on Canadian soil, it is certainly not the only one to make its mark on the country’s bush flying history. From the mid-1940s to early 1950s, de Havilland Canada developed and built a pair of planes that would become as important in plying the skies of the remote Canadian wilderness as any other: the DHC-2 Beaver and the DHC-3 Otter. The Beaver was characterized by a host of refinements that allowed it to operate in cold climates, including extremely short takeoff and landing capabilities. The Otter capitalized on the successful design of the Beaver, but made it significantly bigger. Both planes were so popular that they were further modified, into the Turbo Beaver (a turboprop-driven version of the Beaver) and the DHC-6 Twin Otter (an expanded, twin-engine version of the Otter). The Beaver played such a huge role in Canadian aviation history that in 1987 the Canadian Engineering Centennial Board named it one of the most significant Canadian engineering achievements of the twentieth century.

  Bush flying changed the way people thought about travel in Canada and the accessibility of the North. The North once stood as the last great untamed wilderness on Earth, and one that required superhuman effort and will (not to mention years) to conquer, but by the 1930s you could charter a plane and fly almost anywhere, anytime. With the establishment of fuel caches in long-forgotten places and the operation of planes on floats or skis, the northland’s utter isolation had become a thing of the past. Whether you were a geologist or trapper, missionary or entrepreneur, the North was open to you.

  As long as you had a good engineer on hand, that is.

  Bush pilot Wally Carrlon stands on the float of this 1936-built Noorduyn Norseman. cf-bau was the second Norseman ever built. The plane was reported as damaged beyond repair in 1951.

  For as long as planes have been in the skies, pilots have received most, if not all, of the glory associated with flying. The movie Catch Me If You Can portrayed the commercial pilot as nothing short of a rock star, with hordes of giggling flight attendants in tow. Early bush flying was nothing like that, and relied heavily on the behind-the-scenes guys who kept the planes functional: the engineers.

  Back then, flight engineers were mechanics, and their responsibilities were myriad. Imagine a 1920s-era plane floating on a mosquito-infested lake in the Northwest Territories, or worse yet, in the darkness and –40 temperatures of mid-winter. The engine won’t start, your supply of food is limited, and you have no way of communicating with the outside world. You had two choices: start swimming, or make the plane airworthy again. The latter was the engineer’s responsibility. Bush pilots relied heavily on their engineers to keep the planes in the air.

  Not surprisingly, engineers were also charged with keeping their planes in good working order to make sure mishaps didn’t happen in the first place, especially in winter, when the risk of mechanical failure increased substantially. So when a long day of flying drew to a close, the engineer’s day was just beginning. He had to drain the oil from the engine and carry it to the nearest shelter, where it would be kept warm overnight to prevent freezing. The next morning, he would pour the warmed oil back into the engine, which was also being thawed out, usually from a fire pot placed underneath. If the engine refused to start, the oil was re-drained out and the process started anew.

  Hardships such as these helped early aviators to discover that planes built for more hospitable climates were not perfectly suited for the rugged conditions of Canadian wilderness and winters. Ideally, a plane needed several characteristics to be bush-worthy. Most importantly, it needed to be able to take off and land in small spaces. The wings of a typical bush plane were on top of its fuselage, which helped prevent contact with any overgrowth in the landing area.

  Bush planes also embraced what’s called a tail-dragger wheel configuration, where two main wheels sit forward of the plane’s centre of gravity and a smaller wheel supports the tail, leaving the plane sitting in a decidedly “uphill” slant. The tail-dragger configuration is more suited to the rough landing areas of the Canadian bush, because it increases the upward angle of the plane upon takeoff, landing, and taxi, which affords the propeller more clearance from the ground (and rocks, logs, bushes, and other things that might wreak havoc on it).

  Bush flying in Canada has certainly changed since those days. The country’s northern reaches remain remote and inhospitable, though access has greatly increased. There are more gravel airstrips than ever before, so the need to land on water or the tundra is not quite as acute as it once was. As a result, the smaller, more mobile, and more versatile bush planes of the past—although still ubiquitous—are not as vital as they once were. With more developed airstrips, larger planes such as the DC-3 have become more common.

  Given that change, one might assume that the number of bush pilots is dwindling too. And that may be true. I couldn’t help but think that when it came to the classic Yellowknife bush pilot, well, there ain’t that many around. Then I met Carl Clouter.

  Truth be told, I had never heard of Carl Clouter until I went to Yellowknife. He is not one of those famous bush pilots whose names are spoken in hushed, reverential tones, like some of his contemporaries. But if ever there were a human being who embodied the essence of what a bush pilot dreams to be, it’s Carl Clouter.

  I was driving along Yellowknife’s still-hard-packed and deadly slick roads on an unseasonably warm April day when I decided to look Carl up. Though we had never met, he invited me over right away. Carl’s voice sings of bush piloting. There’s an ease to it, a relaxed, hell-I-know-I-can-handle-just-about-anything-thrown-at-me quality that makes you feel comfortable right away.

  “You just drive down to Weaver and Devore,” he said, referencing the hardware, clothing, and trading company that is an Old Town Yellowknife institution, “make a right, drive out onto the ice and look for the yellow plane in front of my place.”

  Sure, no problem. Just make a right at Weaver and Devore, turn right, drive out onto the... onto the... We are so not in Kansas anymore.

  Carl, it seems, counts himself among a vibrant population of Yellowknifers that prefers the waters of Great Slave Lake’s Back Bay to the city streets. In other words, Carl is a houseboater, who lives off the grid in a small floating trailer that affords a waterfront view in every direction. When the lake is ice-free (as it is for a frightening few months a year), Carl’s trailer bobs in the waters a few hundred metres from shore and is only accessible by boat. When the lake is frozen, though, getting to Carl’s place is as simple as driving across the ice—which I do, albeit a little disconcertedly.

  No matter how much experience you have doing it, driving on ice—solid ice, with nothing underneath but water—is an unsettling experience. I drove slowly... really slowly... even though the packed layer of snow sitting on top offered a modicum of traction.

  In addition to thoughts of my vehicle sinking to the bottom of Great Slave Lake, the other thing that rattled my cage ever so slightly was the fact that there were no signs or lanes or lines on the road to guide me to my destination. Let’s face it, driving is a structured undertaking. You drive on the right-hand side of the road, stay in your lane, obey the signs and traffic lights. But once I drove down what seemed to be the boat launch beside Weaver and Devore and out on to the open ice, structure went out the window. It was just me and the wide open spaces.

  In all honesty, the freedom was a little frightening. Carl’s house—frozen firmly in the metre-thick ice of Back Bay—was visible in the distance, the canary-yellow plane an obvious landmark, but I didn’t know which way to go. Do I check right and left for passing dog teams? Will a snowmobiler give me the finger if I don’t offer the right of way? Luckily, my fear was unfounded, if only for the simple fact that nobody else was driving on the road. So I did what came naturally: I drove straight for Carl’s houseboat.

  Engaging and quick to smile, and with a full mop of long, tousled grey hair that nearly covered his bus
hy salt-and-pepper eyebrows, Carl was at the door waiting when I pulled up, my shiny rental car a dead giveaway in a place where most vehicles boast that hardened look that speaks more to function than form—up here, vehicles bear the scrapes and bruises of driving on roads carved out of permafrost, where encounters with salt, rocks, and animals occur more commonly than Yellowknifers would like to think.

  Before long, we were sitting inside Carl’s cozy, wood-heated home. Canada has always had a distinct odour for me: the rich, earthy, and rustic smell of burning wood. I first noticed it while working as a volunteer in northern Ontario, and the smell was present in almost every small Canadian community I’ve lived in, except on Baffin Island, where trees are non-existent. Yet from Batchawana Bay to Fort McPherson, all I needed to do was walk down the street on a spring, fall, or winter day, and invariably I would smell woodsmoke. Say what you want about the environmental effects of burning wood, the scent is glorious.

  Carl lit his pipe and the warm living room air thickened as the sweet smell of pipe smoke mingled with the scent of burning wood. I sat back in the couch and enveloped myself in the scene, as Carl, whose thick moustache quivered delightfully every time he spoke, began to weave tales of a life as a bush pilot, philosopher, miner, prospector, and entrepreneur.

  A Gander, Newfoundland, native, Carl was already experienced in the left seat when he moved to Yellowknife in 1973 on a three-month contract to help out Jimmy McAvoy, who needed a new chief pilot for McAvoy Air Service. “Jimmy made it well worth my while to stay with him rather than go back to water bombing, so I stayed with him for twenty-three years,” Carl said in his heavy Newfoundland accent.