Pilots to Presidents: British Columbia Aviation Pioneers and Leaders, 1930-1960

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

Peter Corley-Smith has done it again. He’s written another lively
informative book about flying in Canada, this time focusing on a major
period of change in British Columbia aviation.

By 1930, flying was accepted, even into remote areas, thanks to bush
pilots and larger, more reliable planes. Regularly scheduled flights
carried goods and passengers on a few routes, and a new generation of
aviation leaders was beginning to emerge. This new generation would take
B.C. aviation from bush flying and aviation beginnings to jet travel and
corporate growth. Corley-Smith, the author of many books on B.C.
aviation history, starts the story here, and it’s a lively,
informative read.

He begins with C.D. Howe and the story of Trans-Canada Air Lines, then
tells the story of Grant McConachie and Canadian Pacific Airlines. The
book’s final chapters deal with Russ Baker, the bush pilot who started
Central BC Airways (later known as Pacific Western Airlines); Jim
Spilsbury, who founded the Queen Charlotte Airlines; and Herman Peterson
of Coast Range Airways. He devotes one chapter to the first women to fly
commercially on a regular basis in Canada—the stewardesses.

Corley-Smith is a fine historian and a good storyteller. Russ Baker’s
rescue of trapped American flyers, for example, is subjected to careful
analysis. Some of the hype is stripped away, revealing Baker’s
remarkable accomplishment in its true light. As Corley-Smith notes in
his preface, one of his aims in writing the book was to really look at
the issue of leaders and leadership, and not have those concepts clouded
by unfounded notions of heroism and derring-do.

In addition to its revealing anecdotes, the book includes sidebars,
maps, illustrations, quotations from other books (such as Shirley
Render’s Double Cross), excerpts from primary documents, and comments
from those who flew or worked with the leaders; it also makes use of
such items as newspaper clippings and company advertisements. Pilots to
Presidents is another fine piece of Canadian aviation history from one
of its best practitioners.