Bush Pilots of the Canadian North

this is a memorial to canada's bush pilots i'm standing above the back bay in Yellowknife the capital of the Northwest Territories of Canada the Arctic Circle is 450 kilometres to the north and here is where our adventure begins it's about 62 degrees above the equator here and right now it's minus 35 degrees Celsius real brass monkey weather but it was gold masses of it that was discovered over there 55 years ago and that is the reason why Yellowknife became the hub of aviation in the north [Music] we have more the Golden Globes take a walk to freeze your toes and in the ocean in the ice bruises to be seen in the lab another wireless radio there's only one way they can go when the distance to your neighbor is extreme you need some food or gas or nails you're lonely could use some ale your leg is broken it sure could use an S in an honor RV you'll be happy to receive things make it bad with our baby once she's an ambulance says she's everything to you though she makes some scary noises and she's never her warm and dry she's a truck in a canoe she's a postal service too and on top of everything he flies [Music] [Applause] our adventure really starts back in the late 1920s when those early aviators set off to develop the Northwest Frontier they flew on a canvas wing a missionaries prayer and a gasoline engine and they call themselves bush pilots today the Aviators who fly up here are still called bush pilots and the tales they tell are just as tall flying the dc-3 in a 28 or side-by-side about 10 minutes out of resolute Bay and we're all friends flying for the same company you're on your own nobody's out there so I asked JP if he had anybody on board he said no so I said here I got something to show you so I stood up in my seat and I pulled my pants down and stuck my rear end out the window like this I said here how do you like this and he laughed he thought that was great he took a picture of it we landed in resolute eight ten minutes later who walked into the office and the president of Bell Canada and the president of the Bank of Commerce was standing right there in the office and they happened to be on board they thought it was the greatest thing if I've flown stiffs but usually what'll happen is it's a when you go up to a change of altitude and an unpressurized aircraft they'll give off a lot of body got saying and before they've been embalmed so they didn't make all burbling noises like you never know whether it's coming alive or what's going on in there I never ever had any trouble with him I never bothered about them but another father they know they'd had to put a stiff on and they put him right behind the pilot's seat and he was taxiing out and of course the stiff starts to burble behind him and he's letting out gases which morning and this pilot scared to death of of steps so all of a sudden here's this stiff moaning and groaning in the back shuts off both his engine he goes completely hysterical comes right through the top to the escape hatch a-and he he won't get back in he's just standing up on top just screaming and another part of the trip so the term bush pilot originated in Canada and whether you're in the bush or the High Arctic it takes a few flights for you to realize that today's pilots don't fly just by the seat of their pants in spite of their bravado we found bush pilots will do anything to avoid taking risks unless there's a medical emergency a typical charter operation is Raycom Air situated below the bush pilot memorial here their runway is either ice or water depending on the season Eve comrade runs Raycom with help from her husband ray a former bush pilot Raycom fly a fleet of four aircraft and they fly everyone and everything that needs to get anywhere there are no roads north of here so their little air line is the lifeline for a small Indian community 200 kilometers to the northeast it's called snare Lake it's a small community probably about a hundred people they have no communication except an HF radio which some of the people keep in their homes some of them don't have a radio at all we have a base HF radio in this office here that is monitored at least 10 hours a day during the winter time snake snake okay I copy that you've got some children up there that are running a high fever high fever is that a Roger on that Roger Roger you want me to give the nurse a call in for tray and tell her this and perhaps she can go out there today when it's minus 20 degrees Celsius no bush flight anywhere takes place without the pilot first performing this ritual the branches the ski rests on Humphrey worked too hard and it's $10,000 to replace them this icy plane the otter was manufactured by de Havilland of Canada in 1955 for decades the otter has been one of the bush pilots most trusted workhorses today though she is rarely used on medevac flights as twin-engine turbo aircraft need no warmup time go faster and can fly above bad weather this is like an hour and 20 minutes or so the community of snare Lake was formed only 20 years ago by a band of dog rib Indians who wished to return to their traditional livelihood of hunting trapping and fishing the dogged elders realized that white man's liquor was destroying their society so the breakaway group banned alcohol from the new settlement but they didn't ban bush planes this one way that they land on is the frozen lake go to anyone but a bush pilot the land and Lake look pretty much the same the ice on the lake is 7 feet thick Jacque the bush pilot becomes a Jacques the flight attendant then he becomes a porter having to carry the stretcher and the medivac kit but even then his job is not over because it's minus 30 degrees out here the engine has to be kept warm to stop the oil turning into a thick jelly in midwinter even with this engine cover the plane could only sit for 30 minutes if the pilot hopes to started again without lighting a stove under the engine a two-hour procedure the community of snail lake is almost self-sufficient in the winter the Indians eat mainly caribou meat and they make coats and boots which they call mukluks from the skins the communities radio operator Madeleine leads our nurse Wendy along with Jacques to the sick children it sounds like she's got enough fixed on this chest there a little bit you can hear noises in the chest and the temperature going along with it at this point I don't think we should take her back and if you can you know if you think you can continue to manage with the tylenol I'm just sort of watching unless things get worse give us a call back medevacs are an essential part of bush flying and emergencies always seem to arise when the weather is worsening and it's getting dark I was in Yellowknife and it was late November 1962 when we got this call for a medical help and I had a trip to snowdrift with a the superintendent of Indian Affairs concur he was superintendent of all the Northwest Territories I also had with me the district health nurse and Pasque and an Indian lady mrs. Nitta and her nine month old baby Maryanne it was very bad weather and freeze-up was not completed there was still open water on the big lake and of course a lot of fog and the ice wasn't too good in places however we departed for snowdrift it was scary and then she couldn't see where you were and the fog was very very thick and then it started to snow and it start to snow quite heavily Mike decided well he knew we had to come in to land we couldn't fly in that I was flying a courier a Helio courier with hydraulic wheel skis and I put the skis down and landed on the ice after we landed Mike got out with his axe to check the thickness of the ice and Ken got up to there was only about an inch of snow on the ice but I had nine inches of blue ice and still no water so ice was the last thing on my mind we stayed in the plane and they found there were tracks on the ice man and the boys and they turned around and came back so they knew there must be habitation somewhere near so we went back to the airplane and I said well no use walking I know where the camp is now we'll taxi but I fired up the airplane and we started taxing along between the islands we were traveling along at about 25 miles an hour and doing just fine and suddenly Ken hollered black I said that true we went and water came right over the top and the airplane very abruptly stopped and started sinking Mike shouted bail out bail out I was out the door like a shot I was very familiar with the door and Ken was right up behind me out my door the wings were already down almost to the ice so we were caught and in the sinking nose of the plane that the door was on the right on this plane it was the only door on the back seat and it was down it was well under water I tried to kick in the window yeah and I only had moccasins on of course mukluks the axe that I had used to check the ice of course was in this airplane under the backseat I couldn't kick it in and I at that time broke my foot but I didn't realize it as the child got immersed in that icy water it yelled it yells she yelled for quite a while finally I ran to shore and I got a big Pole and I rammed it through the back windows to hold a bear plane from sinking any further in the ice I almost had to spit the water out it well I did spit the water on my mouth it was coming up over my chin I suppose over up to my chin side of my cheek and then I broke through the ice I fell through right up to my armpits and Ken pulled me out and by this time the airplane has settled down so that the wings were touching the ice I knew it was resting on the wings but I also knew it was sinking slowly yeah I could see the stitches on the lining of the fuselage and it was going up stitch by stitch well about this time I happen to look up on the great cliffs to rise right out of the water there and quite a ways up this big sure was it was an Indian so I started screaming at him and dog rip I didn't know if he knew the the situation or not and he knows to Notley walked down onto the ice and he walked up to me and he said what's the problem in perfect English and so that was jour des early so I said Joe we we need we need an axe we got to have an axe and he said all of my partner's coming and with the dogs and he's he's bringing an axe I said how do you know that how do you know he's coming how do you know he has an axe oh he said I know well I didn't believe that so I said how far is the camp and he said about a mile so I took off running and I ran as hard as I could to this camp and just then here came Jill fat down off the island under the ice with the dogs I I'd dive face-first into the sleigh and and I said go as fast as you can and weigh women when the the baby stopped crying I guess I had a kind of a sense of her alone I thought of things I hadn't done people I'd like to communicated with things I hadn't said so we got back to the airplane and Joe definitely grabbed the action and by the time I got myself out of the carry all he he had knocked all the antennas off and he was starting through the roof and I was afraid as they were going to hit me in the head and then I'd have a mess of a scalp wound I said stop stop their heads are right there be very careful so we cut it all along and opened it up like a sardine can and I could see their heads immediately well I pulled the the baby out the baby was first and the baby was rolling baby was forming and at mouth and it was blue I thought was dead so I threw the baby and it went tumbling over against the shore and then I pulled on pass code he pulled me past a fret in the fuselage that required him to put my head the rest of the way under the water and you know one of the things I thought oh there goes the last of my quarter I would look like a drowned rat so he dragged me out and I remember thinking oh this must be the way that a baby being born by cesarean section must feel like later on top of the wing she was unconscious I thought she was dead and then I pulled the Indian lady out and she was also unconscious for a few minutes and then we couldn't get an off the wing her parka had frozen to the wing we had to take that axe and cut her off the wing so we put them into the carry all we threw the baby in on top of them I took my park off it was all frozen I could hardly get it off and I threw that over them and I said go as fast as you can go to the cabinet my next next awareness was when I had this sense of of a thousand devils and needling at my body and extremity so there we were in a little cabin about 12 by 16 and there were a dozen of us accounting the Indian family and they were out of food there were no bed set there was this one bed frame as I remember in the corner we were on the floor Mike Thomas and Ken Kerr salvaged the emergency ration kit but it only had some biscuit mix and milkshake powder in it the fishing net was torn and useless but at least they were warmed by the evening of the third day the blizzard had stopped and hoping that rescue planes would be able to start their search they marked out a safe area to land on the frozen lake and on the fourth day we heard an airplane coming and it sounded like a Cessna and it sound like a B going from flower to flower and I said now when he gets to those hills he's gonna have to turn because the weather is too low is it but I have to come back so light up the fire so he lit up the fire and the smoke was pouring up there to the cloud and so I could hear him turning and he headed back and he's getting closer and closer he looks like I pulled out a pistol and I didn't know was gonna go off or not and as he came over the trees just before he broke over the trees I fired it and this great red flare with and just missed his wing just right past his wing and he wobbled all around and finally sir he said to me later if you ever do that to me again I'll leave you out there we all went running down the ice and sure enough he learned it rescue at last and apart from an past frostbite and Mike Thomas's broken foot the only other damage was to Mike's pride today Mike is still flying and he fits to a tee one definition of a good bush pilot one who's still alive another is bush pilot Martin Hartwell he's been flying in the north for 20 years and he's lived through two crashes this one near Fort Norman on the Mackenzie River he walked out from during the winter of 1987 he wasn't so lucky back in 1972 when he was flying a twin-engine aircraft that some bush pilots called the Widowmaker it's real name is a Beechcraft 18 and on November the 8th 1972 after a long day of flying in lousy weather he headed for Cambridge Bay on the Arctic Ocean there he was asked to fly Judith Hill an English nurse from Spence Bay over to Yellowknife along with her to inherit patients a 15 year old boy thought to have appendicitis and his aunt who was expecting a breech birth Martin was reluctant to take the mercy flight as he had already been flying all day but he gave in to the doctor's appeal well I said if it is so urgent and will try to save somebody else's life and we took off first everything went well and asuna said the mainland I also hit this wall of ice fog and I was in clouds because it was an emergency flight Martin decided he'd press on using his instruments even though he was not licensed for night flying although it was dark the weather cleared up as the Beechcraft passed the Arctic Circle but Martin was unable to tune into a direction finding B on his white bone I didn't have any guidance anymore bye-bye beacons or so I was off course instead of heading south to Yellowknife he was now heading west towards Wrigley and wahla was looking at the map to play net also lost her little of my at the altitude I wanted to stay to the trees he'd hit the only range of hills in the region he was 200 miles off course in bet and dream at a bad dream I went then I realized I was in an airplane what airplane Beechcraft below my knees between my legs lower legs and under the dashboard there was a body it was the nurses body she was making such noises ha ha I thought maybe to throw this cot or something she was dying both Martin's ankles were broken one knee was fractured so I crawled out of my nice it don't work paint I didn't feel any pain while the boy put her arm down and I noticed that the breathing of the nurse had stopped Martin directed the Eskimo boy David Kotok to wrap his arms in a sleeping bag and lay her on the stretcher from the plane and they were talking an Eskimo to each other but then he came back and then they had mount against I said why don't you back sit down bear and she will be in pain honey here and and and and and he needs to know and then after a while he said I guess she's dead now too she died there with both women now dead Martin and David crawled into Arctic sleeping bags and spent a fitful night it was minus 30 degrees Celsius unknown to Martin the beach crafts emergency locator radio transmitter failed to transmit its SOS signal so when the medivac failed to arrive at Yellowknife a search-and-rescue operation was launched that turned into the largest in Canadian aviation history seven military aircraft plus numerous bush planes combed an area 1,000 miles long and 70 miles wide but Martin Hartwell was a hundred and fifty miles outside the search corridor after 16 days in a makeshift tent their meager rations had run out and the traps of the Eskimo boy David had set remained empty they were facing certain death I made a suggestion I made a suggestion who said the only thing we can possibly survive a little longer you know that's the human flesh and he said no I'm not going to eat why he was thinking of his aunt my aunt was always good to me I will not eat anything of my hand so what about the nurse no he said everybody in in in Spence B leg the nurse I liked her too no I'm not doing that then if I would give it to you would you eat it you know I'm not taking anything from your hand but from the north and he said shut up I'm gonna die now that we're his very words David Kotok died of starvation on the 22nd night Martin wrote in his diary I have two days left to live sitting here doing nothing it's like condemning myself to death I'll die well the decision is was was not easy to be made and then then try to help yourself of a piece of human body you know that is something else then I did it myself nine days later 33 days after the crash Martin Hartwell was rescued by to search and rescue paramedics followed by a helicopter and now conduct the crew from the helicopter there was a guy and he sauna he was asked horrified in a straightener Horace taken he saw a body without legs and some bones without flasher the crew from the helicopter leaked the true story to the press Martin had to apply there was no way out but to eat human flesh and this I did it distresses me and probably others to talk more about this but I do want to stress that it was only I who did this and that only after David who talked death the investigation into the accident was critical both Martin and the company he worked for when he'd recovered he was subjected to psychiatric testing and was ostracized no one would hire him until he received a letter from this Indian community for Norman which is on the Mackenzie River Martin recently celebrated his 10th year at Fort Norman where he and his wife novelist Susan Haley operate an aerial taxi service - Norman wells in the summer of 1928 Glenelg haggis turned dickens known to his friends simply as punch Dickens made the first flight into one of the most inhospitable places on earth the uncharted and desolate barren lands of Canada's Northwest Territories not for nothing are they called the Barons there are no trees no mountains nothing twenty-nine-year-old punch Dickens set out in this single-engine fokker Universal on a 4,000 mile reconnaissance flight the most dangerous part of the trip was west of Baker Lake where the map went blank there was a word unexplored and it only had a blank piece of paper there plus a little bit of dotted end lines to the west on the 3rd of September 1928 punch along with his engineer Bill Hayden newspaper editor Richard Pierce and a mining company president Colonel McAlpine took off into the unknown their flight across the Barrens to Stoney Rapids was 500 miles and Pierce filmed the entire journey it would be right on the limit of our fuel we had about five hours fuel in the airplane cruising at 95 miles an hour his only navigational instruments were a magnetic compass an altimeter and an airspeed indicator we had been flying over the piece of the map that was marked unexplored and I jokingly said to the colonel I said now you fellows keep looking out the window and when you see any of those letters found there you tell me then I'll know where we are the Barons were were beautiful in the morning sunlight though and they had a stark beauty of their own after three hours and something every began again in the haze and the visibility diminished and I decided that we'd better take a break although the map didn't mark the lake punch landed on he knew they'd been flying Southwest they pumped reserve fuel into the tanks and headed off again in the same direction hoping to hit Lake Athabasca which stretched for over 200 kilometers in an east-west direction sure enough in an hour and five minutes I had hit the shore of Lake Athabasca and turned east and found Stoney Rapids Stoney Rapids consisted of one building a pet wolf and the RCMP officer plus a band of Indians they rested there for two days and then set off to Fort Smith with 40 miles to go the engine quit my immediate feelings were well this is it punch glided down onto the slave River and they paddled the plain to the shoreline then out of nowhere they heard a noise sort of a chuff chuff chuff sound and around the bend in the river came a steamboat and I don't know who would more surprised the captain of the boat or ourselves but anyway he tooted the whistle then we waved and he came and pushed the nose of this barge up against the bank about 20 yards away he said are you fellas in trouble and I said well not exactly but would you have any airplane gasoline on that barge and he said yes I've got ten barrels for some fellow named Dickens who thinks he's going to fly in the air and next winter they had a cup of tea with the boats captain and headed off to Fort Smith then they turned south to make the long flight back to Winnipeg punch had flown almost four thousand miles through the subarctic of Canada it took them 40 hours over 12 days and Colonel mcalpine was impressed without a plane it would have taken him a year and a half to make the same trip using schooners canoes and dock teams and that would have cost him twice as much so of course he was a convert and we raised our rates the very next day punch and Colonel McAlpine had proved that you could now use airplanes to explore for minerals but punch now turned his efforts towards a new challenge pioneering commercial aviation into the far north in January 1929 he was given a new plane a mechanic and a booking agent and was asked by western canada airways to see if he could start a regular air service to the small communities along the Mackenzie River by the summer of 1929 punch had got as far north as the Eskimo community of Aklavik located on the vast Delta of the Mackenzie River where it reaches the Arctic Ocean the Eskimos had never seen a plane before some of them wanted to go for a ride well I took them up and I was surprised they could not find their way or they didn't know where they were because it's the first time they'd ever seen that vast Delta of the river from the air they shrieked and yelled they were happiest clams they got down there were six more waiting commercial aviation had arrived and it was to bring the north into the 20th century for the first time these far-flung outposts got eggs fresh fruit and mail more than twice a year and newspapers that were two days old not six months I thought I had been doing some pioneering but I also knew at that very moment that my easy trip of two days from stopping at every post was going to make a vast difference in the lives of the people who lived and worked in that great Northland the Great North lands of the Yukon in the Northwest Territories covers some 1 million three hundred thousand square miles they are the size of all of Europe and with the discovery of minerals like copper gold and uranium bush pilots were suddenly seen all over the north they flew in prospectors miners plus their equipment Mounties and missionaries along with trappers and their bundles of fur in order to fly year-round tough yet simple planes were designed specifically for the northern bush and the airplane became an integral part of the history of the north this plane the Norseman was the first made of wood and canvas you froze in the winter and you roasted in the summer after the war came the tough all-metal beaver which could take off from the smallest of lakes it became a symbol of an emerging Northland it was soon followed by the otter and finally in 1960 by the twin otter with two turbo engines that needed no warmup time and with propellers that could go in Reverse a godsend when docking on a fast flowing river [Music] by the time World War 2 started there were mines and communities in the most inaccessible of areas that relied entirely on air transportation for their survival in the north today the silk scarf devil-may-care brigade of the 40s and 50s is a disappearing breed but although the plains have improved in areas like this they still have to fly by the seat of their pants what can still kill however is the weather or a combination of bad weather and a pilot who is not familiar with the area he's flying over there is still no radar at any Airport in the Northwest Territories but the technology of the planes improved as did their communications better Maps very high frequency radios and direction-finding beacons were built the pilots would start to fly by their instruments rather than by visual flight rules taking off into weather that a few years earlier would have grounded the plane today there are very few fatalities due to mechanical failures but although the planes now have electronics that make them easier to fly the job a bush pilot does has not changed flying the plane remains only half the job these aerial truck drivers load and unload everything from equipment for mining camps to dog teams for trappers and tourists what do they get gas to and if you've got 20 dogs in there it gets pretty thick and high plus if you keep and everything y'all if I open it turned green in that front that way because the air circulates right into the cockpit hey and you know you sitting there flying with the window all steadily stop my idea of an entertaining trip at all one has to experience the cold up here to understand why bush pilots seem to spend half their life doing nothing but flying heating oil and gasoline especially the further north one goes as there are no trees for fuel in the very far north even below the tree line camps such as this one 200 kilometers north of Yellowknife rely on the bush planes for everything from the ski-doos they get around with to the drilling shed to the diamond drill itself the round-the-clock shifted demand enormous quantities of food three times a day fresh vegetables sausages 3-inch stakes are always on the menu everything is brought in by the bush plane their supply of water comes from under the frozen lake and we found showers and hot water that's heated by propane every tent had electrical outlets and a generator supplies the path for the computer and a radio in the office tent no further traffic's on iceberg if there's one job all bush pilots hate it's hauling fish it's smelly slippery and the ice packed cartons are heavy to lift inside the cramped cabin sometimes the fish are not packed in boxes which can be messy when you hit severe turbulence the term of flying fish can take on a new meaning but it does have a brighter side fish pilot Dean Carter told us in the back of the plane and in all my years of flying Chris I've never had one fish ever complain these caribou don't complain either flying next Sunday's joint for the Indians and Eskimos often becomes a race look at that I can't take that back to the guy there's nothing left if the pilot can't get to the carcasses quickly the Wolves will beat him to it at least in winter there's no refrigeration needed in the plane the pilot just flies without his heaters on but it's not all drudgery when the Sun shines on scenery like this your spirit soars this is near panga Tung on Baffin Island who are crossing the Arctic Circle below us is the I you attack National Park the glaciers have been here from the last ice age [Music] 3000 kilometers to the west near the Yukon is the Nahanni National Park a UNESCO World Heritage Site accessible to tourists only by canoe or bush plane the Virginia falls are twice the height of Niagara Falls and this is on the way to the ultimate tourist destination the North Pole itself for your $10,000 you get a long long cold flight it's rough it's unforgiving and it's a desolate place it's an uncomfortable trip there's seven drums of fuel in the back it's people are squashed in it's not a very comfortable trip well were there 90 degrees the North Pole at last less than 400 people have ever been here and it's still a real thrill when you step down onto the top of the world a drink for a while a cognac or champagne to take a few pictures everybody gets back in the airplane then you fly for five hours back to your next destination which was Eureka it's not always so simple back in 1982 legendary bush pilots rocky Parsons was flying one of the first groups of tourists to the pole now the North Pole is actually an ice cap on the Arctic Ocean not solid ground rocky landed on what he thought was thick old ice but as the passengers were taking photos and congratulating him he realized that the twin otter was slowly sinking through the new rubbery ice he rushed back to the cockpit and radioed for help luckily the weather stayed clear and warm relatively speaking as it took six hours for the backup plane to rescue them by that time Rocky's plane looked like this today it still sits in perfect condition somewhere under the North Pole rocky didn't want to tell us the story and because he's named after the boxer we backed off I brought you a pair of snowshoes Jonathan you okay yeah prospector John descent could have stepped right out of a Klondike archived film when we met him he hadn't washed or changed his clothes for two months bush pilot Karl outer checks up on him twice a month John Doucet has been a prospector all his life and to this day he works with no field radio or even an insulated tent he sleeps on spruce boughs and traps most of his food his only human visitor is aviator Carl clowder well I get water here still if there's any mineral in the area all pretty well find it tried to explain the whole thing about luck I don't believe in luck I have evolved with the wilderness and it's strange how it seems almost funny how a guy has to keep saying but it's the crust of the earth is it's a it's a study beyond beyond belief if a man knows that and stays with it she'll pay you back she did the rock samples that John Doucet had collected were flown back to Yellowknife by Carl outter and assayed they contained gold and diamond drilling is planned for next year [Music] we'll be landing no the no scent of Hazzard inlet which is about 12 to 15 miles north of Fort Rozz and about 195 miles north of Spence Bay Willie Lazarus is a folk hero in the north based in Cambridge Bay 250 kilometres above the Arctic Circle he was at one time the only link for many of the communities in the central Arctic for 30 years he's flown in conditions few men would ever attempt he's logged over 3,000 medevacs he's had six babies born on his flights and he's been involved in over a hundred search and rescue missions today he's been chartered to look for some whale bones on Somerset Island for the amount of boards available for a carver for an artist out of Joe Haven the head of us is Somerset island were 600 kilometres north of the Arctic Circle near belet's Strait the northernmost point of mainland North America below us is Fort Ross an abandoned Hudson Bay Company post because we're so very close to the magnetic north pole the planes compass is useless Willie spots the whale bones from the air and prepares to land landing on the tundra is always risky and help is never near they're sharp locks it can rip your tire right off the cracks can take your undercarriage up and you may even throw a couple of rocks into your prop and tear one of your plates in half [Music] that's different it's a vertebral fire bowhead whale several others here okay that's a head of a very small bow head I'm gonna make a beautiful sculpture here's another headbutt that weighs about 300 pounds how did these whales get here well if you look in the bay this is known as Hazzard Inlet when the tide is low it's almost a perfect reef a shallow spot and we believe they drove the whales in at high tide and somehow to kill them and they ate what they could and use the rest for building houses or belling's as you know today remains of some valleys a whole bunch of them over there it must be at least about four or five hundred maybe even a thousand are along the coast here five thousand years later the inner which are still hunting whales in this area and Willy has been charted by the locals of Spence Bay to haul out the hundreds of pounds of whale meat called Muktuk back to their community there is a strict annual quota on the number of whales that the Inuit can cull and on this occasion they got their full quota of 28 whales skinned the baleen it's skin of a white whale is a delicacy for the Inuits and I guess they're paying anyways between $3 to $5 a pound the glamor part of Bush flowing with the twin otter crammed full with hundreds of pounds of whale meat and a film crew plus their equipment Willy Lazarus was concerned about the take de Haviland who manufacture the plane say a fully loaded twin otter can takeoff in 800 feet on a proper runway all we have is a rocky beach that is under the minimum length we've no headwind to help us there is just no room for error at all the runway ends in the freezing Arctic Ocean because the beach slopes slightly towards the water Willie decides to take off downhill so he taxis back as far as he can before turning round [Music] [Music] Willie Lazarus made it again it really has changed up here since punch ticket and started flying gravel runways have now been built in even the remotest communities and a scheduled service is available at least twice a week airliners like this first air Hawker Siddeley landing at pangur tongue on Baffin Island carry passengers and tons of cargo and we could be witnessing the end of the bush pilot era here in Pelley Bay 250 kilometers above the Arctic Circle are not accessible by land or sea the scheduled service has meant that instead of an annual airlift they can now get supplies three times a week and for the local Inuit prices are a quarter of what they were when their food was brought in by chartered plane the impact of aviation is everywhere no matter where you look this dc-8 fuselage now stores arctic char aviation with a northern twist I've done summit scheduled stuff down so I've gone to work with the epaulets you know the white shirt and the tie woke old dak shoes in a permit breath suit and a permit press smile on your face you can't be your own person here you've got such a vast territory you're going to a different spot every day every tour some someplace new someplace you haven't been to in a while and it was fun well done this hobby became my vocational profession and then it was hard work it's the thing I like doing best I don't think I have a job I've got something you do that I like to do when I get paid for it they still are the last contact in the chain of Transportation where landing fields can't be built or made and they're doing a wonderful job I've always maintained that there are three things to kill young pilots that's weather weather and weather when does a crash in the north and the pilot dies it's like a death in the family you might never have met the man you might never have even heard his name but the whole North feels that loss because the bush pilot is the lifeline of the north we up north the cold wind blows take a walk you freeze your toes and in the ocean the icebergs to be seen in the land of the wireless radio there's only one way you can go when the distance to your neighbor is extreme you need some food or gas or nails you're lonely could use some mail your leg is broke it sure could use an S in an otter or beaver you'll be happy to receive her things make it bad with other lady worse season and villain says she's everything to you though she makes some scary noises and she's never her warm and dry she's a truck in a canoe she's a postal service too and on top of everything she flies

Channel: Sherway Academy of Music

Views: 45,149

Keywords: music education, piano, guitar, violin, voice, bass, organ, TV, visual arts, transportation, history, bush pilots Artic

Id: e6akiT36NU8

Length: 54min 33sec (3273 seconds)

Published: Wed Nov 15 2017