Flying on Instinct: Canada's Bush Pilot Pioneers

L.D. Cross

Sep 2012 · Heritage House Publishing Co

About this ebook

They were nicknamed Snow Eagle, Flying Knight, Bush Angel, Punch, Doc and Wop. They worked in open cockpits and flew through cold, snow and fog without the benefit of radios, maps or weather reports. They flew over the Barrens, frozen lakes, boreal forests and mountain ranges by dead reckoning and line of sight. They landed on makeshift runways, glaciers, muskeg, tundra and glassy lakes. Comrades of the wilderness, they were Canada’s early bush pilots.

L.D. Cross brings us the incredible stories of the brave and enterprising pilots who rolled back the boundaries of western and northern Canada, delivering mail, medicine, miners and all the supplies needed by frontier settlements. Flying such planes as Curtiss, Bellanca, de Havilland, Fairchild, Junkers, Norseman, Stinson and Vickers, they were the off-roaders of aviation, venturing where no others dared to go. Climb into the cockpit with these pioneering pilots for an exciting trip into Canadian aviation history.

About the author

L.D. (Dyan) Cross is an Ottawa writer of many non-fiction books, including Spies in Our Midst, Code Name Habbakuk and Treasure Under the Tundra. Her lifestyle articles have appeared in The Financial Post Magazine, American Style and the Globe and Mail. Dyan won the Ontario Historical Society 2010 Huguenot Society award for her book The Underground Railroad, and she's received industry recognition and other awards for her magazine articles.