A fire under my ass...

On most days, I wake up at 5:00 a.m.
On most of those days, I hit the snooze button on my blackberry alarm at least twice.
On May 14th of 2012, I did just that...only something felt different, odd...
I chalked it up to a late dinner the night before and went about my day.  I work in television tasked with recording the passing parade without prejudice or bias.  I like my job but like most people on most days, I put in the required level of effort and attention and produce a product I feel good about.  On rare, beautiful occasions, I am moved to bring all my meagre resources and talent to bear...and craft a 47 minute visual symphony of news, current affairs, lifestyles, health, consumer and the odd rarity or absurdity.
I crave those days. 
And in an industry that is at times both flourishing and wilting, those rare bursts of inspiration seem to come less frequently and at greater intervals.
May 14th sat somewhere in this creative abyss; commonplace, pedestrian, boring.  And so, during a lull in what should be the most exciting part of my day, I spent a few minutes browsing through Transport Canada's civil aircraft registry.
I typed the letters "FFAM" into the search field for aircraft marks and looked up two lonely entries.

1		Smith Miniplane	SMITH MINI-PLANE	EM 8936	Cancel C of R	2000-05-23	Lequin, Michel	1988-05-13
2		Smith Miniplane	SMITH MINI-PLANE	EM 8936	Cancel C of R	1988-03-31	Otondo, Af	- -

I'd read the first name at least a hundred times before.  I'd never met the man.
The second name belonged to a stranger only because a Transport Canada registrar had omitted a letter from my father's name 24 years before.

As the entries stared back at me, a felt a pinprick of that familiar but fleeting passion.  As I watched the clock chronicle the passing of my day, that sting swelled and swelled and swelled...

So, shortly after we went to black that Monday afternoon, my colleagues began to filter out until only one remained.  We stayed at our positions, chatting idly about the weekend, while all I could think about was making a phone call.

I told Andre about my "project." I thought it was a clever name for what I was doing.

"You should give him a call," he said.

"You don't think it's odd?"  I answered.  "After all this time?  Ringing him up out of the blue like this?"

"Why not?"

Why not, indeed.

And so begins the chronicling of a quest to find a beloved little airplane, tell its story and honour my dad.