Bent Props and Blow Pots: A Pioneer Remembers Northern Bush Flying

Gordon C. Shaw is professor emeritus in the Faculty of Administrative
Studies at York University.

Bent Props and Blow Pots describes the challenges and problems that the
author experienced in the 1930s while working as a flight engineer on
the primitive aircraft that served the small, isolated communities of
the Canadian Northwest Territories.

In the early 1930s, Canadian Airways provided reasonably regular
year-round air transportation to the Canadian north. Lacking wireless
telegraphy and with only minimal navigational aids, the bush pilot flew
the planes using his instincts and experience and depended greatly on
his flight engineer to keep the planes going and to make necessary
repairs using available materials. The engineer might be called on, for
example, to use primitive gasoline heaters (“blow pots”) to warm the
engine(s) on winter mornings, to straighten a bent propeller or rebuild
damaged landing gear, or even to help extricate the plane from an icy
bath following its landing on an inadequate thickness of river ice.
Other challenges included dealing with difficult passengers, both two-
and four-legged.

Bent Props and Blow Pots is an easy read and contains a useful map, an
index, and a list of the bush pilots and engineers who were employed by
Canadian Airways. Those who are interested in the operational and the
business aspects of early commercial aviation in the Canadian Far North
will find it especially enjoyable.