Free Flying On Instinct by L. D. Cross

and hung out at the Edmonton airfield. Sometimes real-life heroes like bush pilots Punch Dickins and Wop May would give in to his pleas and take him up for a ride. He couldn’t wait to take flying lessons and saved money for them by looking after aircraft on the field.
    McConachie studied engineering at the University of Alberta and took flying lessons at the Edmonton and Northern Alberta Aero Club. A quick study, he soloed in ade Havilland Moth, a light plane designed for recreational use and civilian training, after only seven hours of cockpit instruction. The club grounded him twice for carrying passengers without a commercial licence. In one instance, he took off with the club president’s plane for four days—without permission. It was rumoured that he had flown a miner to the US, but there were no records, nothing could be proved and McConachie had charm and the ability to say all the right things at the right time. He could sell a ketchup popsicle to a man wearing a white suit.
    McConachie had big dreams, envisioning an over-the-pole route to Europe instead of the longer route across the Atlantic then in use. In 1931, with his commercial pilot’s licence finally in his pocket, the 22-year-old McConachie looked for a flying job. As other pilots were finding out, during the Great Depression the Canadian government was not interested in airmail or air freight, and people could not afford to fly as paying passengers. So McConachie turned west, so far west that he planned to cross the Pacific Ocean to fly for Chinese National Airways. They were offering $300 a month, with the proviso their pilots had to serve in the military during times of war. After taking the train to Vancouver on the first leg of his journey to his new employer, McConachie dropped in to visit his father’s brother. It was a serendipitous event that would change his life. Not wanting to risk his nephew’s life in a country then at war with Japan, Uncle Harry proposed a business deal.Harry would buy a plane and Grant would fly it. He bought a much-used old Fokker aircraft and told him to start his own airline. McConachie did just that. He chose Edmonton, the bush pilots’ gateway to the North, as his base of operations. His first commission was flying fresh fish in Alberta from Cold Lake to Bonnyville. He took jobs other pilots wouldn’t touch. He loaded in fresh fruit and vegetables and sold them from the plane, anything to make money. In a few months, he had repaid Uncle Harry and become a real bush pilot, flying trappers, surveyors, prospectors, huskies, oil barrels, meat and fish all over the North and barnstorming at fairs in the summer. Within a year, his company, Independent Airways, had three planes underwritten by Uncle Harry.
    In November 1932, a trapper came to authorities in Edmonton with an urgent message. Two men had serious burns from a gas-pipe explosion at the telegraph station in Pelican Rapids and would not survive the trip out by dogsled. Getting them out by air would be a chancy proposition. The area was heavily forested, and the ice would still be too thin to support a plane. McConachie was the only pilot who thought it was a manageable risk. The military refused to send a doctor along but did throw in some medical supplies. McConachie sent a message back to have the men moved 10 miles (16 kilometres) to Oboe Lake, which had a beach where he could land, and to set a small bonfire there so he could judge wind speed and distance.
    When McConachie and his mechanic Chris Green reached the pickup site, they saw a huge fire with smoke that obscured the view of the lake. Skimming in just above stall speed, McConachie looked for an area of beach wide enough to set down on; he then cut the engine. The plane dropped onto the sand, spewing up fine gravel and twigs. Then came a horrible tearing noise. The plane stopped when a tree root slashed right down its fabric fuselage. McConachie jumped out with the medical