June 9, 2026
A 2016 walk through northern aviation memory with Gord Emberley and Keith Olson
In 2016, inside an off-site storage facility of the Royal Aviation Museum of Western Canada, two of the museum’s founding figures walked slowly between aircraft components, salvaged wreckage, skis, instruments and fragments of aviation history gathered from across the Canadian North.
The visit was not intended as a formal tour. Instead, it became something far rarer: a spoken record of lived bush-flying experience, carried in the memories of Gord Emberley and Keith Olson.
Each object prompted recognition.
Each recognition became a story.
And together, those stories revealed how aviation in northern Canada actually functioned — in practice rather than policy, in experience rather than archive.
Recovery, loss, and the Bellanca CF-ATN
Emberley began with a fragment of metal resting quietly among other components.
“This cowling here is off the Bellanca, CF-ATN.”
“That airplane crashed and burned up near Lynn Lake, and the wreckage sat there for quite a while until a local lodge-owner… he’d run across it and knew where it was, and so we found out from him.” Olson recalled the crash site.
Recovering the remainder required coordinated effort, continued Emberley. “We salvaged the rest of the airplane with the help of the Canadian Rangers… We would have been lost without the assistance of Transport Squadron.”
The aircraft’s final flight reflected the economic and environmental pressures of early northern aviation, as per Olson: “… it’s interesting that the pilot, a kind of a lone operator out of the Flin Flon area, was known to fly in any weather because he wanted to get the business. So, he was flying along in a snowy day in the fall on floats, two canoes on his airplane, and we’re not sure why, but he hit the shore, anyway. Probably the weather was just too bad. And didn’t you say, Gord, the airplane was full of shoes or something?”
“No,” replied Emberley. “He had a geologist on board… that airplane came from Quebec, and it had quite a history in Quebec. It was bought by a fish company… and it was 1938 that the airplane crashed, and both pilot and the young surveyor were killed. I think it’s the only airplane we have ever salvaged where there’d been a fatality.”
In a conversation with Emberley later on in 2022, Emberley added that ATN was the first aircraft in Canada to have radio communications installed and a code for this was painted on the fin of the aircraft. This began the use of Morse code for communication, and training became mandatory if a radio was installed.
Among many recovered aircraft, that distinction endured.
Canadian Rangers are a specialized group within the Canadian Armed Forces Reserves, providing military presence in isolated northern and coastal regions of the country. Their connections not only to the remote communities they serve, alongside their expertise in navigating uncharted terrain made them indispensably helpful when recovering aircraft from often treacherous areas and terrains.
Postwar necessity and the modified BT-13
Nearby, remnants of a Vultee BT-13 Valiant, once owned by Superior Airways, illustrated a different phase of aviation history: the difficult transition from wartime surplus to civilian livelihood.
“There were no airplanes really available for the private operator that they could afford… so Superior Airways… bought this one.” Said Emberley. The aircraft was rapidly adapted for northern commerce.
“You can see it was a dual-cockpit airplane, but he took the front cockpit out and he put a bin in. And it’s got a fixed gear, and he fixed it up with skis, and he hauled fish with it. And it had a Junior engine in it, and he could probably get away with six hundred pounds, seven hundred pounds of fish in it.” Emberley continued. “And it shows the initiative of operators after the war trying to get their businesses going. And of course, the fish market was always our bread and butter, and it shows the ingenuity that the operators went to, to keep in business.”
“When you talk about Canadian innovation, if that isn’t an example…” Olson added. “Wieben [of Superior Airways] down there had a reputation around North America for going around the north at Christmastime with his airplane and doing all kind of stuff, so it was a significant company.”
“He delivered a lot of Christmas cheer.” Emberley agreed.
Orville Wieben, founder of Superior Airways, was indeed not only known for his northern Christmas deliveries, but for also arriving dressed as Santa Clause. Occasionally, he enlisted his daughter’s assistance to dress as an elf. This tradition carried on annually for a number of years, with bush planes arriving all on skis to deliver festive gifts up north since airstrips had not yet been developed in many communities.
The Fairchild Husky: A Legacy of Northern Aviation
Multiple Fairchild F-11 Huskies in storage opened the longest stretch of recollection.
One aircraft, rebuilt by Saunders using remains of the original Husky and newly manufactured structure, never achieved full commercial certification after regulatory requirements proved insurmountable. Emberley explained, “The Department of Transport said no… you have to do a complete certification… shortly after Saunders went under.” (This was due to the excessive cost for the program)
“…you can see that scalloped belly there; that’s one of the reasons it was so successful in its own right. It was designed to fly in the bush. And there’s a hatch in the back there; you can open that up and slide in telephone poles…” Olson indicated on the fuselage.
Emberley had flown three Huskies and remembered their working life vividly:
“I used to haul towers for Forestry and had the main legs strapped on the floats, and then you have the diagonal wires and you put them in out the hatch. And I remember on takeoff, when you started to pull the airplane up to get it on the step, the steel would drag in the water, and about twelve feet behind the airplane there’s be this big rooster tail.” Emberley laughed, describing the spray of water that would burst from the drag behind the plane. “It’s an airplane that I found I could fly for eight hours, and it was the most comfortable, well-laid-out cockpit. It was a joy to fly.”
But despite the Husky’s praised design, the precarious margins of northern flying still always proved daunting, as Emberley recalled another pilot’s experience as he observed another fuselage.
“He took off with four barrels of diesel for a mine site. And the camp was in quite a valley and he ended up in the fog. He thought he was landing in the valley… but he was landing crossways, and he hit the top of the mountain. And it was just a peak; it was probably 300 feet across the top, and he just caught the top of the mountain and stopped against a great big tree.. if he hadn’t stopped in the tree he’d have gone over the side, and there was maybe a two or three-thousand-foot drop. And this construction of the airplane is such that most of your cabling or controls are behind the pilot’s seat, and that’s what saved him, was the fact that the drums came forward and he was okay.”
Rivalry, risk, and “chisel-charting”
As the walk continued, technical discussion shifted toward culture and economics.
“We did what was called ‘chisel-charting’… we flew trappers, we flew medivacs…” Emberley recalled. ‘Chisel-charting’ is a colloquialism that describes when independent operators frequently worked outside formal licensing structures, flying trappers, freight and medical evacuations while competing intensely with established companies.
But chisel-charting didn’t come without its pushback. Territorial protection of northern bases could be immediate and forceful.
“At Lamb Airways, who I flew with when I was in The Pas where I started… one day a Transair Norseman came into Grace Lake – and this would be the summer of ’61 perhaps… the boss, he’s on them: “What’s that airplane doing in here? Get him out of here!” Olson recalled. “You didn’t do that, the competition. They were out of gas or something, I think.”
And there were countless other stories of chisel-charting—of independent pilots skimming freight runs or charter work from licensed operators—acts less of rebellion than of economic necessity in a North where making a living often meant bending the rules just to stay aloft.
Weight, water, and judgement
Questions about overloaded aircraft prompted laughter from the two.
“The rule on floats was, if it would float it would fly.” Olson said.
Formal limits existed, but operational judgement governed real decisions.
“We knew how to load our airplanes… not very many of us actually carried just legal loads.” Emberley agreed. “I hauled 22-foot boats on the Norseman; there is a drag on that.”
“It’s strange how that is.” Said Olson. “You know, you can haul boats, you can haul washing machines or fridges on the side of the airplane and away you go… it didn’t seem to affect how the airplane flew, strangely enough.
“Only once that I can remember, I had a load of fish on and I had to go back and throw off a tub, because I couldn’t get airborne.” Said Emberley.
Conditions, however, dictated compromise: short lakes, warm air, rough water, or urgent need.
Olson described another technique familiar to Norseman pilots: “I remember hauling fish into The Pas from the east… and the fish company made sure you had the eighteen tubs on or else you’d be in trouble. And the Norseman, on a warm evening in the calm, I couldn’t get on the step. So, I did what everybody else did; I’d go around in circles, half-power, until I made some waves, then I’d take off towards my waves I’d made, then it would get on the step and you’d get away.”
Innovation meets improvisation
Rows of aircraft skis traced evolving technology from early solid pedestals to Mason & Campbell and Elliott designs that supported winter operations across the North. Instrumentation told a parallel story of ingenuity during times of scarcity – such as DIY navigational guidance when certified avionics weren’t available.
“You’ll get a kick out of this.” Said Emberley. “They [surveyors, often employed by the federal government] did the northern boundary of Manitoba from Churchill to the Saskatchewan border, and we would go up for a month, stay a month at the camp as surveyors slowly went across… and because the weather is sometimes not the best, we wanted… a directional gyro.”
But Emberley’s superiors wouldn’t install the equipment. “…so, we made a bracket on the passenger seat, and you hung a transistor portable radio on there. And we’d tune into Churchill and we’d fly until the signal dropped out!”
“That was a Canadian Tire ADF.” Olson laughed.
“And more guys got cuts in their heads from that bracket…” Added Emberley.
While facing tight budgets and subsequent improvisation, Emberley recalled an experience of water-landing an aircraft at night without any instruments.
“… I had a medivac one time and had come into Grace Lake about two hours after dark with the Husky, and that was my first night landing. And I found out that when you get within about a foot of the water or two feet of the water, the exhaust gets boxed in between the floats, and you get a slight change in sound of the engine, so you know just about when you’re gonna touch down.”
And in that darkened descent over Grace Lake, with no instruments to guide him, the margin between safe landing and catastrophe narrowed to the faint change in engine note against the water — a stark reminder that northern flying often demanded not just ingenuity, but a willingness to trust one’s life to instinct and sound alone.
Memory as Artefact
Throughout the 2016 walk, Emberley and Olson moved easily between humour, technical detail, rivalry, and loss. Their recollections were neither scripted nor curated – they were working memories of the practical and lived experiences of bush pilots in Canada as they encountered each artefact and part that sparked endless memories of stories. Today, many of these artefacts find a home in the hangar of the Royal Aviation Museum of Western Canada.
These memories provide a rare glimpse into a history not always known by many, often living on in memory, conversations, and quiet knowledge of those who were there. This rich aviation heritage risks disappearing in our ever-changing world where we are often moving too quickly to notice what is being forgotten. You can help to take a moment, and keep these stories and history alive and inspiring many more to come. Please consider making a donation to the Royal Aviation Museum of Western Canada, ensuring that these fragile, irreplaceable voices are not lost to time.
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