Free Flying On Instinct by L. D. Cross Page B

talk with team leader Barney Phillips, instead of a reprimand, McConachie got a job offer. Phillips was starting his own bush operation, United Air Transport (UAT), to serve his miners in the West and take on other jobs as available. Would McConachie fly for him? The answer was yes. Based out of Calgary, UAT hauled over one million pounds (453,600 kilograms) of fish from 1934 to 1935.
    In 1935, oil executive Bob Wilkinson wanted to be flown from Calgary to Vancouver, and McConachie agreed to take him on the first commercial flight across the Canadian Rockies. The press followed their progress, and they were met by the mayor of Vancouver, who thought this was the start of a regular commercial air route. When he found out it was not, he refused to cover McConachie’s bill at theHotel Vancouver. Since there was no agreement in writing about who would pay for accommodation, McConachie had to barnstorm the entire summer to pay it off, joining the prairie circuit of Ringling Brothers Circus and offering passenger rides for a-penny-a-pound of body weight. He stopped only long enough to marry Margaret MacLean, a nurse he had met while recuperating in 1932.
    As the national economy improved and interest in fast mail delivery revived, UAT landed airmail contracts between Fort St. John and Fort Nelson, Edmonton, Whitehorse, Vancouver and Prince George, but with 12 planes on floats or skis, they still could not turn a profit. They needed larger, wheeled aircraft and prepared runways. The company bought three Fleet Freighter aircraft, and in 1939, it became Yukon Southern Air Transport.
    At the beginning of the Second World War, business was slow and pilots were scarce. The federal government had decided in 1937 that it needed a nationwide air carrier. Fearful that the two US airlines would expand into Canada, it formed Trans-Canada Airlines (TCA). There were private interests that wanted their own national airline, too. Canadian Pacific Railway (CPR) began buying up small bush-flying companies, including Yukon Southern in 1941, and started Canadian Pacific Airlines (CPA) with McConachie as one of their executives. When the war in the Pacific and the threat of a Japanese attack on North America raised concerns about moving men and machineryon the West Coast, McConachie did aerial surveillance for the CANOL project and the 1,600-mile (2,575-kilometre) Alaska Highway from Dawson Creek, Yukon, to Fairbanks, Alaska. The highway was completed in 1943.
    McConachie received the McKee Trophy in 1945 for his pioneering efforts in forging air service to the North. He became president of CPA in 1947. His fleet of DC-8s fulfilled his dream of a polar route, and he inaugurated CPA passenger service to Australia, Japan and Hong Kong, adding another 15,535 miles (25,000 kilometres) of flight routes by 1957 and flying worldwide negotiating new deals.
    McConachie died of a heart attack in 1965. In 1968, his wife and two sons were present for the opening of Grant McConachie Way, an expressway leading to Vancouver International Airport.
    In pioneer bush flying, Edmonton was referred to as the Gateway to the North. Edmonton companies built and repaired the planes and boats used by adventurers to discover and extract northern riches—fish, furs, gold, silver, radium or diamonds—and fly them to southern markets. Maxwell “Max” William Ward was born in Edmonton, where bush planes were a familiar sight in the skies and on the ground at the municipal airport. He was inspired by famous Edmonton bush pilots like Dickins and May, and wrote, “My whole idea of adventure, of living, was tied up in the notion of joining their ranks some day in a magnificent flying machine.” As a child, Ward spent a lot of timewalking around the fabric-covered wooden craft. He carved planes from pieces of wood at home and ran down the street holding then aloft and making “vroom” sounds like a zooming plane.
    After a short stint at Canadian