They are fleeting seconds built one on top of the other, interlocking bricks in a wall held together by the mortar of experience, feeling, relationship, success, failure, birth and death. The result can be measured in terms of days, months and years. They begin at a precise moment and end at a particular point in time. And yet, all this is a massive and mind-numbing contradiction. Life has finite book ends while the experience that lies between is both infinite and immense.
To pick just one moment is a challenge that chills one soul. This story has one such moment.
June 11th, 1981. 3:00 pm.
The pilot only feels the air's whisper against his brow for it has been drowned, overwhelmed by the whine of the 85 horsepower Continental labouring only inches behind the spartan instrumentation.
His right hand resting on the throttle, the left hand moves forward and the tail obeys, lifting the tailwheel off the grass at Collingwood, Ontario.
Now, through the cabanes and down the button nose, the pilot sees the end of the field first inch, then gallop towards him. His feet, at first nervously twitching, have grown calm and confident - buoyed by speed and stability. Muscle memory dictates that the right hand must now move aft and then, once the rush of speed has subsided, the pilot should lower the tail and be ready on the rudder pedals.
This moment, however, was born differently than his brethren before. Hidden in the wind's whisper is a shout, a scream that cuts through the mechanical moan of the engine and the concentration of the airman.
"Let's go."
The wheels leave the ground. The sanctuary of the cockpit is wrapped in secrecy. The next forty minutes are for plane and pilot alone. Solitude isn't for everyone but it does have certain benefits.
My dad's first ever flight in C-FFAM was something of an accident. He began the day by practising taxiing the biplane up and down Collingwood's grass strip - first at low speed with the tail down then at higher speed running on the main wheels alone. On one such run, he decided to leave the ground in his new mount.
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| Notes from June 11th and 12th, 1980 - my dad's first 4 flights in FAM. He scrawled them on the back of a message notice before entering them into his personal logbook and the aircraft's journey log. I found this tucked into the moleskin jacket of his logbook 32 years later. (Family Collection) |
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| The page from my dad's logbook detailing his first flights in the Miniplane and the four flights he did in Aeronca Champ 7AC CF-MTG. He erroneously called it a Scout and then used the registration CF-WEA - which was actually applied to a 172 on floats that he was flying at Orillia during this time. (Family Collection) |
The next day, emboldened by his first solo in FAM, he spent the whole day, three-and-a-half hours, doing circuits in the biplane. It is easy to see his enthusiasm even in the logbook entries. Flying was an escape and, as a bachelor with few obligations outside his work, he had ample time and will to dive in.
Three decades after these flights, Lee Heitman, his aerobatic flight instructor at Collingwood, remembered my dad as a natural pilot who loved flying as much as he loved life.
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| Dad with C-FFAM at Rockcliffe in the fall of 1982. (Family Collection) |
In 1981, the company that employed my Dad won the contract to build the Westin Hotel in downtown Ottawa. Given the success of the Harbour Square project, the general contractor asked that my father be sent to Ottawa as project manager for the build. On weekends, he would return to Collingwood to fly the Miniplane...and then make the 5 hour drive back to the capital, a bucket of KFC on the seat next to him.
Such was his love of aviation and kinship with his airplane.
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