Flying the Frontiers: A Half-million Hours of Aviation Adventure

Geoff Cragg is a tenured instructor in the Faculty of General Studies at
the University of Calgary.

Part of this book’s charm is that in many respects it acts as a
corrective for the stereotypes about bush flying and that romantic
figure the bush pilot. It is not solely concerned with the “golden
age” of flying before World War II, but covers from 1930 to the
present. Not all its heroes are pilots, and not all the pilots are men.
While most of those interviewed tell their stories in a spare,
matter-of-fact manner, the stories are anything but humdrum, ranging
from tragic to whimsical—like, for example, Jimmy Anderson’s account
of hitchhiking down the Alaska Highway with an unsedated caribou after a
forced landing.

Flying the Frontiers encourages browsing; its themes and issues (e.g.,
home-brewed technical adaptations to northern flying, the struggle of
skilled women pilots to enter the profession, the presence of danger)
are presented subtly, and await discovery. Matheson’s skilful handling
of narrative creates the impression, in most places, of direct
involvement in the story, but her presence is never intrusive.

The author writes that when she first moved to the north, she “met
people I had been waiting for all my life ... men and women who, through
hard work and positive attitudes, tackled jobs that more practical
persons would never dare. ... I promised myself that someday I would
write their stories.” In Flying the Frontiers she has more than made
good on that promise.