![The Bush Pilot](/web/20071122215629im_/http://www.warmuseum.ca/cpm/courrier/images/wm06eng.gif)
The pilot was not a loner, in any sense of the word. Occasionally he would
be accompanied on his travels by a mechanic, but at all times he could rely
on the support, moral and technical, of the engineers and mechanics that
made up his ground crew, or "black gang" as they were called. Flying with
another person made perfect sense, especially during the winter, when
putting the aircraft to bed for the night or starting it in the morning was
a two-person job. The process of draining the oil at night and pouring it
back into the motor the next morning to prevent it from congealing
like glue with the cold was particularly tricky, because it had to be
done in a very short space of time, and the oil had to be taken back and
forth from the hut. Even the simple act of refuelling required two people:
one to activate the pump, and the other to hold the hose towards the funnel
and strainer. Whatever the task, in freezing weather two pairs of hands were
better than one.
Wherever space permitted on board, the pilot would store the emergency
equipment that, in the event of a forced landing, might save his life and
that of his passengers items such as extra socks, mitts, a parka,
mukluks, ski pants, a rifle and ammunition, and rabbit snares, plus an
emergency supply of beans, bacon and flour. Stored inside his head was the
pilot's most valuable resource: his knowledge of and experience with the
terrain. Geographical knowledge gave him the ability to "fly by the seat of
his pants" and see with his own eyes. Traversing the Canadian bush in an era
when the geography of Canada's wide open spaces was not yet fully charted
was a challenge. The pilot navigated by "dead reckoning": he would ascertain
where he was by noting what was beneath him. Some pilots followed railroad
tracks, power lines or even dog-trails. Others preferred to latch onto
waterways. The pilot had to know the pertinent landmarks by heart. Punch
Dickins never entered a new and unmapped territory unless the weather was
clear. He kept his own sketch-maps, as well as published maps and a compass,
as a means of keeping track of his information.
Once the pilot reached his destination, he had to put down. In summer, this
meant landing the craft, which was outfitted with pontoon landing gear, in
the water. The better class of landing bases were equipped with floating
docks anchored to the shore. At Fort Smith (N.W.T.), there was unfortunately
only one dock, and when more than one plane showed up, it was crowded:
"there is no place for passengers to get ashore or for the respective Pilots
to refuel their aircraft" was one lament in 1937. Perhaps there was not
enough room to load or unload the bags of mail. Some pilots, anticipating
less than elaborate landing conditions, travelled with a canoe strapped
under their fuselage or wing.
In winter, pilots were expected to land on the frozen surface of a lake or
river. This was not always possible, since not all bodies of water would
cooperate and freeze over before the start of the winter season. Planes were
known to have crashed through an ice surface that was not thick enough to
support the weight of a fully loaded aircraft. An entire village might have
to be called out to fetch a plane out of the frozen waters. It was just as
likely that the community would be asked to smooth out the landing surface
by trampling on the ice and snow with their snowshoes. And then there was
down time, that peculiarly Canadian version of purgatory that comes once in
the fall and again in spring, when winter has not completely started nor is
it completely over. Air traffic might come to a halt for weeks at a time,
while everyone waited for the lake to freeze over or the ice to melt away.
Down time meant no flights, no flights meant no mail, and no mail meant no
news.
The exigencies of flying mail under these conditions, primitive as they
were, seem, from a late twentieth-century perspective, quite daunting. But
they were part of the normal course of events in the heroic era of airmail.
The spirit of the pilot and crew in this era was anything but fatalistic; it
defied the formidable elements of nature and the predictable imperfections
of early aviation technology. Saint-Exupéry captures this sense of
dedication, courage and tenacity in Wind, Sand and Stars:
To be a man is, precisely, to be responsible. It is to feel shame at the
sight of what seems unmerited misery. It is to take pride in a victory won
by one's comrades. It is to feel, when setting one's stone, that one is
contributing to the building of the world.
1
Such is a fitting epitaph for an era when airmail wrapped itself around the
world and pushed itself into the furthest corners of the globe, here draped
in desert sand, there nuzzled in the cold of the Arctic snows. Looking back
to that time, this publication and this exhibition are dedicated to the
pilots who risked their lives to get the mail through.
1 Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, Wind, Sand
and Stars, appearing in printed version of this article, copyright 1939
by Saint-Exupery and renewed 1967 by Lewis Galantiere, reprinted by
permission of Harcourt Brace & Company, New York, Harbrace Paperbound
Library, Harcourt Brace and World, 1967: p. 43.
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