Walter Edwin Gilbert
Birthdate: March 8, 1899
Birth Place: Cardinal, Ontario
Year Inducted: 1973
Death Date: October 18, 1986
"His challenging flights into the high Arctic under the most primitive conditions, to explore and record unmapped areas, despite adversity, have been of outstanding benefit to Canadian aviation."
Walter Gilbert enlisted in the Royal Flying Corps at Toronto, Ontario in 1917 and later posted to the RFC's central flying school in England. At the height of the German offensive in 1918 he went to France as a front line fighter pilot with the RFC Squadrons 56 and 32. During the next seven years Gilbert kept busy flying forestry patrols, updating his skills and completing aerial mapping assignments in northern Saskatchewan. In 1930, Gilbert piloted a government sponsored aerial expedition to the high Arctic to record magnetic properties near King William's Land (known as the Burwash Expedition). He also searched for the ill-fated Franklin expedition that had vanished 80 years earlier and, in doing so, mapped a large part of the Arctic coastline.
Canada's Aviation Hall of Fame
Glossary