Bush Pilots of the Canadian North

After the 1918 Armistice with Germany, Ellwood Wilson, a Canadian forester employed by the Laurentide Company in Quebec, realized that airplanes could be used to spot forest fires and to map forested areas.[5] Early next year, when Wilson discovered that the U.S. Navy was giving Canada several war-surplus Curtiss HS-2L flying boats, he asked to borrow two.[5] He then hired Captain Stuart Graham to fly the planes.[5] Graham and his engineer, Walter Kahre, then started to fly the first HS-2L to Lac-à-la-Tortue on 4 June 1919, arriving on 8 June 1919.[6] The flight had covered 645 miles, the longest cross-country flight executed in Canada at the time.[6] He then delivered the other HS-2L to Lac-à-la-Tortue.[6]

Equipped with the aircraft, the first bush flights occurred when fire patrol and aerial photography began in the summer of 1919 in the St. Maurice River valley.[6] Graham and Kahre continued this service for two more seasons,[6] but it became so expensive that the Laurentide Company underwrote the operation.[6] In response, it was split into a separate company called Laurentide Air Services Ltd. with Wilson as president and former Royal Naval Air Service instructor and barnstormer William Roy Maxwell as vice president.[6] These were the first bush flights in Eastern Canada.
In Western Canada, after Wilfred May was discharged from the Royal Naval Air Service and moved to Edmonton, a Montreal businessman offered the city of Edmonton a Curtiss JN-4 after he found success in the city’s real estate.[7] Mayor Joe Clarke and city council accepted the gift, prompting May to ask to rent the plane.[7] City council and May agreed to a price of CA$25.[7] May and his brother Court May completed the necessary paperwork and raised the required capital to form May Airplanes Ltd. George Gorman, a pilot, and Peter Derbyshire, a mechanic, joined the first commercial bush operations in Canada.[7]

May then asked the publisher of the Edmonton Journal to fly copies of the paper to Wetaskiwin,[8] 70 kilometres (43 mi) south of Edmonton. He accepted and the next day, Gorman and Derbyshire flew the newspapers along with 2 sacks of advertising circulars, following the rail line to the city, announcing the service to communities along the way.[8]

Bush flying in Canada is commemorated by the Canadian Bushplane Heritage Centre in Sault Ste Marie, Ontario as well as two National Film Board of Canada documentary films, Bush Pilot: Reflections on a Canadian Myth (1980)[9] and Bush Pilot – Into the Wild Blue Yonder (2000).[10] An eclectic video library of music, arts, education, TV, history, transportation, documentaries and special rare videos for enjoyment and perusal. http://www.sherwayacdemy.ca