Confessions

March 19th, 2012 - about 5 miles north-east of Gatineau.
I'm sitting in the back of a newish Super Decathlon, slowing down through 90 knots.
Then, a deep breath.
Stick full back, a swift push of my left foot against the rudder pedal and the horizon vanishes under the nose.
A shudder, the left wing drops sharply - a little aileron now to help the roll but we're rotating quickly as it is.
The horizon now dissecting my limited view forward, now revolving madly, now over my head...
Stick forward now, full opposite rudder and some measure of normalcy returns with straight and level flight.
A snap roll in the Super Decathlon takes roughly two seconds.  It is the fastest roll the airplane will do.
My student, riding up front, is impressed.
"Awesome!" he shrieks.  He's a grown man - married with two kids.  I love his enthusiasm.  "Do another?"
I oblige.
"Again!"  Les gets younger with every manoeuvre.
I shrug.  We whip around a third time.
"Okay, I'm done," says Les from the front seat.  I turn over control of the aircraft and I hear him talking to the terminal controller as we start a sweeping right turn for home.
I'm gazing forlornly at the Gatineau Airport crawling by under our wings.
I wish I could tell my dad about the snap rolls.  He'd want to hear about it.

My father and I enjoyed a good relationship although it was one that grew difficult as we aged.
We certainly shared the passion of flying and a voracious appetite for literature - but little else. 
In fact, in the last few years, we only ever spoke of flying, reading, hockey and work.  More often than not, we clashed - and that thanks to radically different personalities.  One of his favourite things to say to me was "you sound/talk/act/think/behave like your mother."  It was and still is true.

Sitting in a Cessna 172 at Carp, I think.  This would be 1988 or 1989.  (Family Collection)

My sister inherited many more traits from my father than I did and he apparently always believed she would become the pilot and not I.  Ironically and in a cruel twist, those very same traits assured she would never take to the skies as he did. In fact, my sister had very little interest in aviation. I spent most of my childhood sitting in airplanes. Vanessa spent the bulk of hers standing next to them striking a pretty pose. 

My dad was a gentle and beautiful soul that suffered from bad timing and unfortunate luck.  A series of personal catastrophes changed him over time.  He withdrew into his work - it kept him anywhere but at home - and became more of an obsession than an occupation.

Dad and I at the St. Catharines Airport in the summer of 2003 with PA-28-151 C-GQXP.  This is right after the alternator regulator failed on take-off - my first in-flight "emergency." (Family Collection)

I had the happy fortune of spending many summers with my dad working on construction sites from North Bay to Niagara Falls.  We would work Monday to Saturday and, after I received my pilot's license, find an airport to fly out of on Sundays.  Aviation was, without a doubt, our strongest bond...and the one we spoke about the most.
 
FAM, however, was a ghost - talked about rarely yet fondly and existing in the pristine and endless skies of my father's memory.  After he sold the plane, he had no interest in knowing where it was or what it was doing or who had the fortune of flying it.  He cared only for where it had been, what it had been like to fly it and how it made him feel.

As he deteriorated, the old flying stories remained sharp albeit repetitive.  At the time, hearing him prattle on about Murray Sinton and Alan Coulson, Biff Hamilton and Ken Richardson, the RF-5 and how the Chipmunk spun could be mildly irritating - only in that I'd heard the stories a million times before.

Now, I'd give anything to hear one again.

And perhaps that is why I'm so bent on seeing this project through...so haunted by the spectre of a red biplane and its one-time pilot.

Obviously, I can no longer consult my chief source on the matter.  Finding and speaking to those who knew the aircraft intimately is a quest in history and archaeology.  Snapshots and snippets of the story rise from the pages of logbook entries set down decades ago or from hastily scribbled notes on scraps of yellowing paper.  Internet searches reveal little more than phone numbers that, if still connected, sometime lead to new information, new voices and old memories relived.  One avenue uncovered inevitably leads to several more which branch out like the strands of a spider's web...and one can find themselves easily entangled in it.  Chronology, as you can well imagine, becomes entirely useless and hopelessly ineffective.  And so, the story takes on an organic feel...one that changes and evolves with each new scrap of information that comes to light.

There's a squeak, a shimmy and then I feel the weight transfer from my backside to my thighs.  I'm prodded back to reality by the trundling of rubber on runway.

Les has the aircraft rolling on the main wheels down Runway 09 at Rockcliffe.  The wind is not severe enough to make the wheel landing necessary but Les likes to practice...and I'm happiest when I can see where we're going.  As we taxi off the runway at the end, we make two left turns and proceed down the taxiway towards the fuel pumps.  We roll slowly, tail down, past an empty tie down; the familiar plot of land where the Mini-plane resided 25 years ago. 

I gaze at the grass swaying ever so delicately in the early evening breeze. 

I swear I hear the biplane's engine humming in the wind's breath.