Flying the Yukon's Bush

Flying the Yukon's Bush
Author: Kit Cain
Publisher: Christopher Cain
Total Pages: 74
Release: 2006-05-15
Genre:
ISBN: 0978000641

In 1962 I had just been released from active duty as a US Marine helicopter pilot and had no idea what I wanted to do with the rest of my life, but had planned from the very beginning to make the most of my mandatory armed services draft obligation so that I would at least have the qualifications and experience of being a commercial pilot as one means to earn a living. The most interesting job offer which would utilize my training as a pilot came from Klondike Helicopters of Whitehorse in the Yukon Territory. Despite my very excellent and thorough training in the Navy and Marines, bush flying turned out to be dramatically different and more challenging. The high costs of commercial helicopter operations demanded that the pilot make daily judgments crucial to the safety of not only the machine but also its occupants. And then there was the total unpredicability and rapid changeability of weather conditions in mountains and above the Arctic Circle. I was fortunate enough to be one of two pilots and two helicopters on a project whose purpose was to map the stratigraphy of the entire northern half of the Yukon Territory. This took me over nearly every square mile of the northern Yukon at a time when it was still a relatively untouched frontier. It was most certainly an opportunity of a lifetime, covered here with color photos and stories from legendary bush pilot, Pat Callison, owner of Klondike Helicopters.

Warplanes to Alaska

Warplanes to Alaska
Author: Blake W. Smith
Publisher: Surrey, B.C. : Hancock House
Total Pages: 264
Release: 1998
Genre: History
ISBN:

This book describes the delivery of 8000 aircraft to Russia over a little known airway that extended from the U.S. through Northwestern Canada to Nome, Alaska. Warplanes to Alaska is a tribute to the hundreds of men and women who toiled in the harshest of climates to help decide the outcome of World War II. The author interviewed scores of Canadian, Russians and American veterans and acquired hundreds of photos in an effort to fully recount this amazing part of history. Details of the Russian portion of the airway and their military operations, long hidden by an impenetrable veil of official secrecy, are revealed here for the first time. Warplanes to Alaska will engage anyone interested in WWII, aviation or northern history. Could a subarctic wilderness airway traversing northwestern North America and the breadth of Russia be used to deliver thousands of warplanes? The needs of the beleaguered WW II ally demanded the attempt, despite the brutal climate, primitive facilities and wild terrain. This book describes the delivery of 8,000 aircraft to Russia over a little-known airway that extended from the U.S. through northwestern Canada to Nome, Alaska. The airway was cruel on man and machine as the twisted wrecks of fallen warplanes littering forest and muskeg bear testament. Warplanes to Alaska is a tribute to the hundreds of men and women who toiled in the harshest of climates to help decide the outcome of World War II. The author interviewed scores of Canadian, Russians and American veterans and acquired hundreds of photos in an effort to fully recount this amazing part of history. Details of the Russian portion of the airway and their military operations, long hidden by an impenetrable veil of official secrecy, are revealed here for the first time. Warplanes to Alaska will engage anyone interested in WWII, aviation or northern history.

Flying Canucks II

Flying Canucks II
Author: Peter Pigott
Publisher: Dundurn
Total Pages: 143
Release: 2016-02-22
Genre: Transportation
ISBN: 1459717759

Among the many technological advances of this century that have shrunk our country, few have had as great an impact as aviation. Technologies evolve and national priorities change, but the qualities necessary to design aircraft, fly them in war and peace, and manage airlines remain constant. In this, his second book about pioneers of Canadian aviation, Peter Pigott brings a richness and understanding of the individuals themselves to the reader. Flying Canucks II takes us into Air Canada’s boardroom with Claude I. Taylor, to the Avro Arrow design office with Jim Floyd, inside the incredible career of Aviation Hall of Fame pilot Herb Seagram, on C.D. Howe’s historic dawn-to-dusk flight, and with Len Birchall in a Stranraer seaplane before he became, in Churchill’s phrase, “The Saviour of Ceylon.” It includes the story of how Scottish immigrant J.A. Wilson engineered a chain of airports across the country, how bush pilot Bob Randall explored the polar regions, and the ordeal of Erroll Boyd, the first Canadian to fly the Atlantic. The lives of “Buck” McNair and “Bus” Davey, half a century after the Second World War, are placed in the perspective of the entire national experience in those years. Whenever possible, Mr. Pigott has interviewed the players themselves, and drawing on his experience and contacts within the aviation community, has created a multi-faceted study of the business, politics, and technology that influenced the ten lives explored in depth in this book. C.D. Howe, wartime Canada’s absolute government czar used to say that running the country’s airline was all he really wanted to do. With a rich aviation heritage such as this, Flying Canucks II depicts the elements and the enemy at their worst and the pioneers of Canadian aviation at their best.

Rough Road to the North

Rough Road to the North
Author: Jim Christy
Publisher: Feral House
Total Pages: 184
Release: 2019-09-24
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 162731086X

What is it about the desolate far North American wilderness that calls the intrepid traveler to uncover its sanctifying and deadly secrets? From Jack London (Call of the Wild) to Christopher McCandless (chronicled in Jon Krakauer’s Into the Wild) souls have found solace in the silent, frozen northern kingdom at the top of the world, the Ultima Thule. The forested flatlands give way to the frozen Rocky Mountains over millions of acres nominally in the dominion of both the United States and Canada and accessible by its 1532 mile shared umbilical cord—The Alcan Highway. Legendary vagabond, Jim Christy, a Canadian now but born an American travels this road throughout his life. First as a young man in the early 1960s hungry for rugged adventure then revisiting the journey every few years both observing and reflecting on the growth of Northwest in the Rough Road to the North. Christy vividly describes the history of the indigenous people and the hearty (and often foolhardy) pioneers who built the Alcan highway and opened the northern road. Christy’s lyrical text weaves fulsome magic about the siren call of the last unconquered land of North America. The forested flatlands give way to the frozen Rocky Mountains over millions of acres nominally in the dominion of both the United States and Canada and accessible by its 1532 mile shared umbilical cord—The Alcan Highway. Legendary vagabond, Jim Christy, a Canadian now but born an American travels this road throughout his life. First as a young man in the early 1960s hungry for rugged adventure then revisiting the journey every few years both observing and reflecting on the growth of Northwest in the Rough Road to the North.

That Red Headed Yukon Guide and Trapper

That Red Headed Yukon Guide and Trapper
Author: Terry Wilkinson
Publisher: FriesenPress
Total Pages: 198
Release: 2021-12-15
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 1039115470

A Reader’s Digest of hunting and trapping Welcome to your vicarious wilderness adventure! With that red-headed Yukon guide and trapper as your leader, experience the joys and challenges of hunting and trapping ... all without leaving your living room chair. Through a series of short stories, Terry Wilkinson guides readers through his life in Saskatchewan and British Columbia before he began his guiding career in the Yukon. The stories center around raising a family in the mountains and on the trapline, and their many hunting trips, vacations, and travel. Wilkinson’s stories ring true: he spends half the year in the wilderness and has done so for the past fifty years. Get ready to follow that red-headed Yukon guide and trapper on your biggest adventure yet . . .

Polar Winds

Polar Winds
Author: Danielle Metcalfe-Chenail
Publisher: Dundurn
Total Pages: 225
Release: 2014-09-10
Genre: Transportation
ISBN: 1459723821

With historical research and rare interviews, explore the highs and lows of aviation north of the 60th parallel. This journey takes readers from hot air balloons above the Klondike gold fields, to international bids for the North Pole, to high-profile crashes and search-and-rescue operations.

Yukon

Yukon
Author: Melody Webb
Publisher: U of Nebraska Press
Total Pages: 442
Release: 1993-01-01
Genre: History
ISBN: 9780803297456

Covering vast distances in time and space, Yukon: The Last Frontier begins with the early Russian fur trade on the Aleutian Islands and closes with what Melody Webb calls "the technological frontier." Colorful and impeccably researched, her history of the Yukon Basin of Canada and Alaska shows how much and how little has changed there in the last two centuries. Successive waves of traders, trappers, miners, explorers, soldiers, missionaries, settlers, steamboat pilots, road builders, and aviators have come to the Yukon, bringing economic and social changes, but the immense land "remains virtually untouched by permanent intrusions." ø

Backpacker

Backpacker
Author:
Publisher:
Total Pages: 124
Release: 1996-08
Genre:
ISBN:

Backpacker brings the outdoors straight to the reader's doorstep, inspiring and enabling them to go more places and enjoy nature more often. The authority on active adventure, Backpacker is the world's first GPS-enabled magazine, and the only magazine whose editors personally test the hiking trails, camping gear, and survival tips they publish. Backpacker's Editors' Choice Awards, an industry honor recognizing design, feature and product innovation, has become the gold standard against which all other outdoor-industry awards are measured.