Bush flying in the 1920s and 1930s

During World War I, Canadians acquired skills as aircraft mechanics, designers, builders, and pilots. Over 2,000 returnees were trained combat pilots. The desire of some of these people to carry on in aviation provided a springboard for the development first of bush flying and later of Canadian commercial airline services in the years between the wars.

In 1919, most of Canada's north was unexplored country. Flyers in aircraft like the ones on this island put the wilderness on the map. They were essential to the discovery and development of our natural resources. They made this country into a vast community linked by highways in the sky. The hair-raising experiences of Canada's bush flyers in some of the most inhospitable wilderness territory on earth have become legendary.

These were years of record-breaking flights -- Alcock and Brown flew non-stop across the Atlantic and Lindbergh made his famous solo crossing aboard the Spirit of Saint Louis. In Canada, we met the challenge of distance inside our borders. Flying boats like the HS-2L in front of you, gave us access to thousands of ready-made airports -- our lakes and rivers.

One of the museum's proudest acquisitions is La Vigilance, a Curtiss HS-2L flying boat. HS-2Ls flew coastal patrols from France, the United States, and Canada during World War I. After the war, the Canadian forest industry began to consider the uses of aircraft in forestry patrol work. La Vigilance was one of two surplus HS-2Ls acquired by the St. Maurice Forest Protective Association for spotting bush fires, mapping, and transporting fire fighters and their equipment. In June 1919, La Vigilance performed the world's first commercial bush flight in the St. Maurice Valley north of Trois-Rivières, Québec.

In 1969, the museum managed to salvage La Vigilance from the bottom of an unnamed lake near Kapuskasing, Ontario, where it had crashed on takeoff in 1922. Painstakingly restored using parts from two other HS-2Ls, in addition to those from La Vigilance, it is on display in the museum - the only surviving HS-2L in the world.

During the 1920s and 1930s, many small bush flying companies operated right across the country. They carried people, equipment and supplies primarily for the natural resources industries, delivered mail and performed aerial surveying and mapping. In 1934, Canada set the world record for freight carried -- mail and machines, eggs and dynamite, cows and canoes, medicine and furniture. You name it, they flew it.

Other aerial workhorses: the Canadian Noorduyn Norseman, considered the finest bush airplane of its time and, the Fairchild FC-2W-2. Their enclosed cockpits made winter flying a lot more comfortable -- no more hands frozen to the stick!