UNIVERZITA PALACKÉHO V OLOMOUCI FILOZOFICKÁ FAKULTA Katedra anglistiky a amerikanistiky Bc. Veronika Černíková The Bush Pilots in Canada Diplomová práce Vedoucí práce: Mgr. Jiří Flajšar, Ph.D. Olomouc 2017 Prohlašuji, že jsem tuto diplomovou práci na téma “The Bush Pilots in Canada” vypracovala samostatně pod odborným dohledem vedoucího práce a uvedla jsem všechny použité podklady a literaturu. V Olomouci dne …………………… Podpis: …………………... Acknowledgment Firstly, I would like to express my gratitude to my supervisor, Mgr. Jiří Flajšar, Ph.D., for his supportive guidance. Secondly, I would like to thank prof. PhDr. Michal Peprník, Dr. for his advice. Also, many thanks go to my family for their endless support during my studies. TABLE OF CONTENTS INTRODUCTION ........................................................................................................................ 6 1 CANADA’S NATIONAL IDENTITY ............................................................................... 10 2 THE IDEA OF NORTH IN CANADA .............................................................................. 15 3 BUSH FLYING IN CANADA ........................................................................................... 23 3.1 TRANSPORTATION AND EARLY AVIATION IN CANADA ............................. 23 3.2 THE BUSH FLYING PHENOMENON ..................................................................... 26 3.3 DUTIES AND QUALITIES OF A BUSH PILOT ..................................................... 43 3.4 BUSH PLANES .......................................................................................................... 52 4 BUSH FLYING IN LITERATURE .................................................................................... 63 4.1 BUSH PILOTS’ ADVENTURE NARRATIVES ....................................................... 63 4.2 INTO THE ABYSS ....................................................................................................... 73 4.3 “WALK WELL, MY BROTHER” ............................................................................. 84 5 BUSH FLYING IN CINEMATIC PRODUCTION ........................................................... 93 5.1 THE SNOW WALKER ................................................................................................. 93 5.2 BUSH PILOT .............................................................................................................. 97 CONCLUSION ......................................................................................................................... 101 RESUMÉ .................................................................................................................................. 104 BIBLIOGRAPHY ..................................................................................................................... 110 ANNOTATION ........................................................................................................................ 116 ANOTACE................................................................................................................................ 117 APPENDICES .......................................................................................................................... 118 INTRODUCTION Canada, the second largest country in the world, covers an extensive area of approximately 10 million square kilometres. It comprises 10 semi-autonomous provinces, namely British Columbia, Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba, Ontario, Quebec, New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, Prince Edward Island, and Newfoundland and Labrador, and 3 territories – Yukon, Northwest Territories and Nunavut, each of them being very unique and diverse. In Canada, there is a significant difference in the density of population. Despite its immense size, less than 40 million people inhabit the country most of whom occupy the borderline area with the United States, making Canada’s regions further north sparsely inhabited. The cause of this imbalance seems to be the tundra which occupies a considerable part of the northern areas and whose climatic conditions are hostile and fierce for most of the population. Canada thus represents a northern country whose individual component parts are very distant and distinct from one another. As a result, it is a beautiful and diverse country full of contrasts, not only in terms of its geography and climate. Since the beginning of the formation of Canadian nation, Canada has been torn between two major contrastive cultures, nationalities and histories – the British and the French. Their conflicting relationship plays a major role in the formation of Canada’s national identity, a concept that resists a clear and unified definition. Another aspect essential to the formation of the nation is the north, more specifically the Far North, with which Canada is inherently connected in many respects. First, the country stretches over North America; second, certain parts are situated further north than others. The Canadian north has a very unique and specific geological character which is accompanied by severe winters and living conditions associating the region and its occupants with strength, endurance, and self-reliance. First and foremost, however, Northern Canada is associated with its enormous internal distances. The northern regions stretch to the North Pole and their terrain consists of barrens, tundra, and mountain massifs; in addition, there are boreal forests and countless rivers and lakes. In the past, their remote immensity and inaccessibility made the exploration of their natural resources impossible. For many decades the north was Canada’s forgotten and neglected region. As a result, for a long time, it remained as uncharted as the 16th century America, today’s the USA. Maps of the northern wilderness either did not exist, or if they did, they were misleading and of no help. Then came the bush plane, 6 a buzzing dot against the high sky over the forgotten and inaccessible land and changed everything. Uncertainly at first, but with increasing vehemence aircraft started to dominate the transportation and business in the north. Emerged in the 1920s, bush flying involves flying into remote and undeveloped wilderness areas beyond the treeline, the Barren Lands and even the Arctic; regions that are not served by any other forms of transport, and thus providing no fixed landing strips. In these secluded locations, flying has become the only practical form of year-round access. Unlike conventional aviation, however, bush flying exploits the natural resources such as lakes and rivers and turns them into runways. Although very primitive in its early days, bush flying laid the foundations for modern northern aviation, technology development, and the establishment of supporting infrastructure. Thus, just as the railroad quickly developed a few decades earlier to sustain fast growing cities, the airplanes were penetrating the north. Late 1920s and early 1930s marked a period of Canadian interest in pushing back the northern frontiers and aircraft proved a vital part of this process. It was the interaction and cooperation between the aircraft and the rugged northern environment that gave rise to this unique form of aviation that is still an essential component of Canadian northern transportation. In addition, this new style of aviation brought with itself new technologies designed to suit its specific demands. This thesis is focused on the examination of an era that has almost disappeared and people whose careers revolved around bush flying. Nicknamed Punch, Doc, Wop and Snow Eagle, most of them flew in open cockpits over the Barrens, boreal forests and mountain ranges with no supportive devices facing the fierce elements of the north. Flying planes named Bellanca, La Vigilance, Norseman or Beaver, those intrepid and enterprising fliers landed on glaciers, muskeg, lakes, and tundra delivering mail, medicine and other supplies required in the remote camps. They were a new breed of airborne pioneers who took to the skies to open the previously unexplored and neglected territories suddenly accessible by bush planes. There are millions of people who have visited Canada and know a lot about this country, however, only a handful of them has ever heard about the bush flying phenomenon. Although being an integral part of Canadian history and culture and to certain extent having influenced the development of aviation industry, this phenomenon so indigenous to both Canada and Alaska remains widely unknown for non-Canadians. Furthermore, this topic is very often neglected or only briefly mentioned in publications 7 on Canadian culture and history despite its importance and contribution. Hence this paper is devoted to the bush flying phenomenon. It investigates the genesis of aircraft’s functional role in Canada during the formative years following the First World War. Its principal aim is to provide a detailed and comprehensive overview of this academically neglected phenomenon; more specifically, it introduces and examines the phenomenon, its function, development and significance for Canadian economics and geography. Furthermore, the research also explores the impact of bush flying on the development of aviation technology, the bush flying-specific technologies and practices in particular; its influence on the formation of the myth of the North, and it also explores what qualities bush pilots, as men heading towards the severe north where only the fittest survive, had to dispose of and what duties bush operations involved.