Page 4 - March2020

Bush pilots made major surveys of the proposed route of By Jan 1929, WCA had established a regular air
the Hudson Bay in 1926, and in 1927, 7 aircraft were service down the Mackenzie R from Ft McMurray.
ferried to Southampton I in the Arctic to gather One of the most dramatic events of the late 1920s
information on the navigation of Hudson Str. was the flight of 2 aircraft, led by Lt-Col C.D.H.
MacAlpine, N from Churchill, Man. The planes got
The use of bush flying in the development of mining
stranded on Queen Maude Gulf. With the help of
continued even through the Great Depression. By the
local Inuit, the men made their way safely overland
mid-1930s more freight was being moved by air in
to Cambridge Bay.
Canada than in all the rest of the world combined. The
scale of bush flying was greatly expanded during the
In 1930 an expedition piloted by Walter Gilbert flew
development of iron ore reserves in Québec and up the Boothia Pen and found a cairn containing
Labrador. Hollinger Ungava Transport (HUT) hauled fuel,
artifacts of the FRANKLIN EXPEDITION.
food, disassembled bulldozers and even cement for dams
in the late 1940s. With up to 96 aircraft arrivals per day,
HUT carried 170 000 passengers in 10 000 flights before In the postwar period, air strips have been built in
the larger northern settlements, HELICOPTERS have
the project ended.
been introduced, and good radio and navigation
In the mid-1950s, Maritime Central Airlines made some facilities have been established along with up-to-
28 000 flights in 29 months during construction of the date weather information services. All this has
DEW line across northern Canada. More recently, the greatly changed northern Canada and bush flying,
James Bay Project depended entirely on bush planes in its but aircraft equipped with floats or skis continue to
early stages, while massive Hercules transports delivered serve all those who live and work in remote areas.
huge loads of food, fuel and equipment.

Bush flying transformed the North. It became possible by
the 1930s to charter an aircraft and fly almost anywhere.
Aircraft services became available to trappers and
missionaries as well as to geologists and surveyors.
Moreover, victims of accidents or illness could be brought
out quickly for medical attention.
The first such incident occurred on 28 Aug 1920, when
J.W. Thompson was flown out for a mastoid operation
from Moose Factory on James Bay to Cochrane, Ont, by
W.R. Maxwell in a Curtiss HS-2L. By the late 1920s and
through the 1930s such flights were common; the longest
such flight occurred from 27 Nov to 20 Dec 1939, when
W.E. Catton flew a Junkers W-34 from Winnipeg to
Repulse Bay, NWT, and returned to bring out a man with
frozen, gangrenous hands.