Skippers of the Sky: The Early Years of Bush Flying

Patricia A. Myers is a historian at the Historic Sites and Archives
Service, Alberta Community Development, and the author of Sky Riders: An
Illustrated History of Aviation in Alberta, 1906–1945.

This excellent collection brings together 12 articles first published in
the Journal of the Canadian Aviation Historical Society. The articles,
all written by people intimately connected with bush flying, are notable
for their variety. The reader is taken on aerial photography flights,
and on journeys with, among others, a fish inspector on the West Coast
and a water bomber pilot. We learn about the day-to-day conditions,
about what ordinary people did to keep their planes in the air and get
jobs done. In their own words, pilots describe their relationship with
their planes, their respect for their colleagues, the warmth of the
communities they came to know, and their pure love of flying. “The
foregoing is now history,” writes Art Wahlroth, who flew in the 1950s.
“I wish it weren’t. I’d love to do it all over again.”

Skippers of the Sky demonstrates that bush flying is much more than a
series of heroic flights under trying conditions. Editor William Wheeler
is to be congratulated for assembling this excellent collection, which
is generously illustrated (many of the photos are from family
collections) and includes a glossary to help readers with unfamiliar
terms.