BC Air Lines

Jack Kirk: As far as I’m concerned, a lot of people have done a lot in aviation and nobody’s recognized anybody. Especially like Bob Langdon and all the people that helped him. Not to mention the BC Air Lines pilots that started here first.

Stan Kaardal: Bill Sylvester in Victoria was the founder of BC Air Lines and he was one of the first people to bring in the de Havilland Beaver. It was a real hit because up until that time most of the operators, including Pacific Western, were operating the Norseman.

Stan Budd: Bill Sylvester used to have a harem over on Saltspring Island and quite often his engine would quit when he took off from Ganges—somebody was sticking sugar in his gas tank because they didn’t appreciate what he was doing. That was when he was married too.

 Jackie Langdon: Their main office was in Vancouver, but they had bases at Ganges, Vancouver, Campbell River and Alert Bay. Bill Sylvester was his boss and Bob was stationed at Alert Bay. The fellow who was in Campbell River was on holiday taking some time off, so Bob flew down to relieve him.

 Bob Langdon (1975): I came to Campbell River and decided that was the kind of town I would like to live in. It is a nice town. It’s a good little town. And I had an opportunity to come up permanently, which I took; so basically I was pretty early in the game.

 Jackie Langdon: I came back in the summer of 49. A friend of mine phoned me to see if I would like to go for an airplane ride. I had flown before but not in a small plane. It rather intrigued me, so we flew up to camp. I sat in the back seat of the SeaBee; and, on the way back to Campbell River, I took the front seat. And that’s when I met Bob. We didn’t date for about another six months or so, but eventually I married him. I have been in Campbell River ever since.

Tom Langdon: The people said, “We want Bob back.” And he was more than happy to leave Alert Bay. The guy my dad replaced probably didn’t want to be here at all.

Jackie Langdon: When he was relieved by the fellow that had the job at Campbell River, he moved back to Alert Bay and his customers here in the area complained to Vancouver—they wanted Bob back. I understand that the letters had the desired effect. Bob came back to Campbell River.

Bob Langdon (1975): When I first came up . . . in 1948, I came up in a Republic SeaBee. And we used Seabees in 1948. I think in 1949 we added a two passenger Luscombe on floats to our fleet. And then we had a variety including Pipers and small Cessnas. In 1953 was the first Cessna 180 and it pretty well took over as being more practical than the Republic Seabee. And we went to the Cessna 180s, Cessna 170s and then later the Cessna 172. Then of course the de Havilland Beaver came along; which is a wonderful workhorse of the air. And the de Havilland Beaver more or less took over from the earlier Norseman that flew up and down the coast.

Jackie Langdon: When Bob was first flying here out of the front of the Willows Hotel with his SeaBee, he didn’t have a hanger. He didn’t have an engineer. He hired Ed Bellevance, a mechanic. He would come over to work on the aircraft on the beach. And if it was blowing and raining, he’d throw a big tarp up and he’d be working under the tarp with a big torch doing his repair work.

Frank Roberts: Bob was running the BC Air Line base here in Campbell River. I was based in the Port Alice/Port Hardy area and we had a lot of contact with Campbell River of course. So, yes, I knew him when he was with BC Air Lines. He was a good, smart businessman. He was a good guy, very well known.

Jackie Langdon: And he lived at the old Willows Hotel and the office was just off the foyer of the hotel. It was in part of the lobby.

Stan Kaardal: It was probably one of the most popular bases that BC Air Lines had. It was kind of neat for a junior person like myself to be able to remain here for a period of time.

Jackie Langdon: (Bob) was an excellent pilot and I think he made his passengers feel very comfortable. If there’s anyone that can come close to him it’s his son.

Frank Roberts: He actually started flying the SeaBee from the front of the Willows Hotel. He would taxi it across the road and into the water. It got pretty rough to operate down there sometimes.

Bob Langdon (1975): We had people look at this funny airplane, SeaBee, and we would go into a dock anywhere on the coast and all the mothers and fathers and kids and dogs would come down and the dogs would bark at the airplane and the kids would poke fingers at it.

Stan Budd: I worked in the industry for about 40 years, but with BC Air Lines, only about 4 years. Actually, BC Air Lines paid better than most people. In 1952, when I first started in Campbell River, the pay wasn’t that great—about $150 a month and $3 dollar per hour extra. But when I went to Vancouver, I got $250 a month and $2 an hour for flying. In 1952, I made about $6000, which was more than Joy’s dad made as a manager. But you worked long hours—dawn until dusk and sometimes past that.

Bob Langdon (1975): We used to, if there was a sports day, take the airplane over there and hop passengers—barnstorming they called it in the prairies. We’d do anything to get a flight; partly because we were enthused about the company surviving and partly because we were paid on a passenger and dollar basis.

Stan Budd: Bob was a snappy little guy. Some of the guys didn’t like working with him, but I didn’t mind him. I only worked directly with him for about five months, but I was up there all the time after that.

Bob Langdon (1975): I also used to follow the union steamship around. He used to go from Campbell River to Rock Bay and then to another little Post Office settlement ten miles away. And I used to follow him around hoping a logger would get off and have to go to a logging camp two or three miles away, and he’d need to charter the airplane. The skipper of the boat used to laugh at this funny airplane following him around, but he’s not working anymore.

Jackie Langdon: I dispatched from the Willows for the first two summers. I enjoyed it.

Bob Langdon (1975): In 1948 there were three or four water taxis operating out of Campbell River. These people, again in the changing of times, have gone out of business; either joined with the airline forces or done something different.

Stan Budd: When I was sent to Campbell River to work with Bob, I was only there a week and Bob decides to take off for 2 weeks. I didn’t know where any of the logging camps were. And, as I say, there was at least 50 different camps at the time that you had to remember where they were. I sure gave him a hard time when he got back!

Frank Roberts: I still spent a fair amount of time in Port Alice, so that they wouldn’t think that they were deserted. In those days, you must remember there were no roads up there and if you wanted to go from Port Hardy to Port Alice, you either took the water taxi from Coal Harbour or you flew. And then eventually, we got a Beaver or two up there. The Beaver’s were also on amphib gear.

Stan Budd: For people who lived out on Quadra or Cortes or Read Island and needed to come in to Campbell River, the cost of a flight was no more than $10. The rate of leasing a SeaBee was $44 per hour, for a Luscombe I think it was $22 per hour and a Super Cruiser was about $30 per hour. It wasn’t that much considering the prices now. I think to lease a Beaver nowadays would cost about $700 per hour. When I had my own, it was $77 per hour. That’s a big difference.

Jackie Langdon: There were a lot of one or two or three or four-man little gypo logging shows all up and down the coast. For getting parts in and for transportation back and forth to Campbell River, the aircraft was very convenient.

Bob Langdon (1975): Often (you will fly) in and the little kids will say, “Car, car car.” They’ve seen airplanes everyday of their lives and this doesn’t mean anything to them. They grow up in logging camps, sometimes float camps, and they know boats and they know airplanes. They don’t know cars the little wee ones. It’s rather amusing they are not used to cars, they are used to airplanes.

Tom Langdon: The machinery wasn’t very reliable. All these guys were learning it from scratch. There wasn’t another outfit next door to learn from; they were doing it all on their own. So, there were more accidents because of those learning curves. There wasn’t a raft of float plane pilots to draw from so they were basically training everybody from scratch. They were all new because if they had any experience, they wouldn’t be in jerk-water Campbell River flying a SeaBee. There were a lot of green pilots, old crappy machinery, new geography and terrible weather—there had to be some accidents.

Stan Kaardal: Bob had flown for BC Air Lines for quite some time with the SeaBees. They used to dock them in front of the Willows and they used to run em up on the beach there. They moved to the Spit because it was protected. They sold off all their SeaBees at that time which was the big airplane for them.

Jackie Langdon: They had moved to the Spit. He convinced the Chamber of Commerce in Campbell River and the fathers of the Council that it would be in everyone’s best interest. It was a village status at that time, and they fought it. Haig-Brown was in on making sure nothing would harm the Tyee spit area. But the aircraft were in behind, and at that time, Elk River had their big booms in the estuary. It was dead. The estuary was dead you might say because it was covered in these big log booms. They let the aircrafts in which was a good thing because Willows beach in a southeaster is no place to land an aircraft. They were tied up with weather frequently. But the Spit was protected and was an excellent place for float planes.

Frank Roberts: Eventually, he was able to make an arrangement with Elk River Timber Company and was given space down at the Spit. He flew from there and that’s where BC Air Lines basically developed.

Jackie Langdon: The business had grown. BC Air Lines had a big hanger, several aircraft, a big office building and several employees. I am not sure how many at that time. I think the SeaBees were out at that time. They were noted for blowing their pots. They had their problems. They were into Beavers and Cessnas by that time.

Stan Kaardal: I went from BC Packers into BC Air Lines and that was in 1957.

Stan Budd: We’ve got a good one about Langdon’s wedding. The whole crew of BC Air Line Pilots showed up at the wedding and, of course, it became a great party. The owner of the Willows Hotel ended up accusing me and another fella of peeing out the window onto people coming out of the beer parlor. Then he was going around with baseball bats, threatening people who made too much noise. The next morning, Bill Sylvester and myself were the only two who could get up and fly. Everybody else was out for the day…Gone!

Stan Kaardal: BC Air Lines would have gotten the first Beavers in probably the early 50’s. I know that they were operating them full tilt when I came in 1956. I moved from Campbell River and I went to the base in Port Hardy. They had leased an old airforce hangar there in those days  beautiful old building, and lots of facilities there. We operated amphib 180’s and amphib Beavers out of there. I flew out of these in 1958/59.

Gord Beadle: BC Air Lines was a big airline. They were mainly floats, and mainly on the coast, but they did have some wheel stuff out of Vancouver to some of the interior spots like Kamloops and Kelowna.

Jackie Langdon: But Bob was anxious to do things his way. He wanted to be his own boss. He often felt the base at Vancouver had all the perks, but the base at Campbell River made most of the money and was the busiest. He lacked pilots sometimes. He lacked aircraft sometimes. He lacked maintenance people sometimes. He’d come home just frustrated. Also, I think he just figured he could do better.

Len Crawford: It was strange you know? We started out with BC Air Lines and 25 years later it became Air BC. It sort of reversed itself.

Island Airlines

Jackie Langdon: Well, Island Air came into being when John Diefenbaker became Prime Minister of Canada in 1959. He changed the licensing rules for small operators to run their own businesses. Up until that time there had been restrictions on people starting up small charter airlines.

Frank Roberts: That is when Bob Langdon applied for and succeeded in getting a license from the Air Transport Board. In those days, any time you wanted a license, you had to apply to Ottawa and there were lots of procedures that needed to be done.

Jackie Langdon: Bob was in the right place at the right time. He was lucky in that respect. That happens in a lot of businesses.

Gordie Wilkinson: Bob was the manager, (of BC Air Lines) but he had applied for an airline license and didn’t tell BC Air Lines anything about it. They found out and fired him so he was free to go and do his thing.

Don Braithwaite: Langdon got together with some of the doctors in town with money and they consequently backed him on this charter idea. In those days you needed lots of support to get a license. He took BC Air Lines’ planes and went to all the different camps, gathered support and got a charter license out of Campbell River. So you can see how BC Air Lines really has no use for the guy.

Anne Wilkinson: I was the one who helped him with his application . . . and it had to be letter perfect. There could be no omissions or anything else . . . It was neat to do that because I had never been involved in anything like that. There was quite a bit of paperwork to do.

Bob Langdon (1975): And then I started on my own in 1959 with two aircraft and a staff of three people.

Jackie Landgon: He did do better when he finally got his own company. He had a strong support from all his customers up and down the coast because he was very personable and people liked him. He made them comfortable in the airplane and he did lots of services for them. Bob hired good people too. And as business got better with Island Air, he was able to hire more experienced pilots. We trained lots of young pilots for Pacific Western and Air Canada and CP Air.

Len Crawford: We bought our plane in June of 1959. That’s when Bob started his airline. He was down in front of the Willows Hotel at that time, and after that, they moved up to the river.

Gordie Wilkinson: The SeaBees weren’t around anymore. I had delivered all the SeaBees to Vancouver when I was with BC Air Lines. They were long gone. We had a 140 and a 180. The 180 we had bought from Bourne & Weir Tire and the 140 we went to Seattle to pick up. They hired another pilot with an Aeronca Sedan and this kid, his name was Eddie Paul, was working out of this store in Kyuquot. I guess the guy who owned the store and the airplane didn’t have much use for it, so he offered to lease it to Bob and Eddie came with it. That’s how we got the third airplane.

Frank Roberts: In 1962, I came to Campbell River and flew for Island Airlines.

Tom Langdon: He wanted to make flying a success and he developed so many great personal relationships with people out there and the people that they flew.

Stan Kaardal: Bob Langdon left BC Air Lines at that time and had just started in competition with B.C. Air Lines with a little (Cessna) 140.

Tom Langdon: One day dad was putting his pilots uniform on and heading out the door. I was about four or five and I asked him what he did for this company. He said, “I own it.” I remember being very surprised by that. “You own the whole company! You don’t just fly for them?” “No son, I own it.”

Jackie Langdon: Bob insisted that his employees had to wear shirts and ties. None of those greasy covered overalls. And as soon as he had his own company, he had a uniform designed for them—which was sort of an air force blue with little wings, and a shirt and tie and a hat to go with it. They looked smart and professional.

Gordie Wilkinson: If you were the afternoon shift, when you got finished at night, you washed and waxed the floor and cleaned the place up ready for business in the morning. It was 7 days a week at that time to try and get your hours in. I took 7 or 8 months to finish my hours. I had been making over $500 dollars a month in 1956, and then when I wanted my license, I took a wage cut to $150 month. But, it eventually paid off.

Tom Langdon: I think what he was trying to do was say, “We’re not just a bunch yahoos and flying cowboys. We’re actually a professional outfit.”

Gordie Wilkinson: I got mad at Langdon and left the company. He was hiring different people . . . and they wanted to do things that I wouldn’t—like steal passengers from other airlines and that sort of thing. I just said ‘Forget it!’ I figured I wasn’t going to get along with that old bastard, so I left. That was in 1959.

Dave Nilson: I heard about Campbell River and that’s when I came out here. That was July 1962. I worked at Island Airlines, Langdon’s operation. I was there for 14 years. The seventies were crazy . . . just crazy!

Len Crawford: Dave Nilson, who worked at Island Airlines, was a good Super Cub mechanic. I had all my maintenance done there.

Phil Bergman: You would get on the plane in Whaletown where I lived, and then make four or five stops before landing in Campbell River. What is usually about a 12 minute direct flight from Whale town to Campbell River would take about an hour to an hour and a half, but you would eventually get there.

Frank Roberts: Yeah, it was busy. Our airplanes averaged about 1000 hours a year each. We had probably about 25 airplanes going.

Gord Beadle: That’s actually when Island Airlines got into Tahsis. PWA didn’t want the Tahsis to Campbell River license, they wanted the license from Tahsis to Vancouver. So, this is when Island Airlines bought the Tahsis base.

Frank Roberts: In 1970, Pacific Western decided to concentrate more on the heavier airplanes on the mainline runs and wanted to get out of the small craft. That’s when Island Airlines bought out airbases at Tahsis and Zeballos because they were getting out of the business over there.

Harvey Hahn: Island Air put another floor on their office and built that big hangar that they have there, which is now Sealand Aviation. That was Island Air’s “empire” with Gulf Air next door.

Gord Beadle: We had a base in Campbell River and a base in Tahsis. Campbell River had at least 10 airplanes and probably six in Tahsis. Gulf Air was the equivalent in Campbell River and I am not sure how many they had up in the base in Port Hardy. And then there was Alert Bay Air Services in Alert Bay. They had a lot of airplanes.

Bob Langdon (1975): Campbell River is reputed to be the busiest seaplane base in the world, and I would think so. We don’t keep a record of our take offs and landings from Campbell River in total with the two operators here, but they are just busy as bees around here all the time.

Jackie Langdon: Bob worked long hours. I guess from May until the end of September he sometimes didn’t have a day off. Weeks would go by and he’d be flying from first light until dark. He was gone before the children got up and he didn’t get home until after they went to bed. That in itself is hard on a family. If we’d get the odd weekend off in the summer then we would take our boat and go camping.

Gord Beadle: We had quite a few different mail runs but our main run was Cortes Island, which we called the Cortes Sked. We did the mail run every Monday, Wednesday and Friday. As well, we used to do a mail runs to Blind Channel and into Thurlow.

Frank Roberts: We had mail runs three days per week up until the late 70’s. We went to places that now have ferry service, like Cortes Island and we also went to places like Refuge Cove, Surge Narrows, Stuart Island and Read Island. We were really the lifeblood for those communities, especially before the ferries came into existence.

Phil Bergman: The planes would bring supplies, mail and people back and forth. Island Airlines had a scheduled flight that basically serviced only Cortes Island and the surrounding areas like Teakerne Arm. It was so busy that this one little spot had its own dedicated flight.

Norene Reedel: I remember as a real young kid living on Cortes and always hearing these planes. My mom and my brother always talked about Island Airlines and Bob Langdon. My sister and I would yell, “Hi Bob,” every time a plane came over. Well, it turned out Bob was my first boss. When I went to work at Island Air, I told Bob this story and he laughed. I do believe that some things are meant to be.

Jackie Langdon: But Bob is pretty stubborn too. And I think to get along in that type of business, you had to have a thick skin about a lot of things, and you had to be the boss. And that’s all he knew.

Lee Frankham: Bob was a regular son-of-a-bitch at any time, but I enjoyed working with him.

Dave Nilson: I really liked Bob. He was a pretty rough and ready guy.

Jackie Langdon: Bob had the courage of his convictions. He felt that he could handle any competition because he felt he was better than anyone else. You have to have a certain amount of that feeling. Other wise I don’t think you could handle it. You have to have that determination and that self-confidence. Bob had a lot of that.

Norene Reedel: I had the time of my life. I can honestly say those were the best years.

Bob Langdon: (1975) Probably on staff we have twenty-two people. Our basic business is in aircraft scheduled and charter flights, although we are in the outside maintenance field.

Dave Nilson: I used to go to Wichita and buy brand new Cessnas and fly them up here to Island Airlines and put them on floats and put them to work.

Gord Beadle: Island Airlines was excellent at keeping their airplanes well maintained. They also had one big advantage in those days: they were a Cessna dealer. There were only two Cessna dealers in BC: West Coast Air in Vancouver and Island Airlines. We would get brand new 172s, 180s, and 185s off the line and, depending on the engine, fly them for about a year.

Bob Langdon (1975): We have a large hanger up here and we service aircraft in the community. We our Cessna dealers and have been for years now.

Tom Langdon: I started working there when I was about thirteen pumping floats and packing freight. Dad walked me into Harry Taylor’s office and he said, “Harry, you know Tom. Tom thinks he’d like to work here. “Good” said Harry, “we need some weekend help.” “Well, I’ll leave Tom with you and you can tell him how it’s done. Try him out. If he works out fine, give him a job, and if he doesn’t cut it, fire his ass.” And with that, Dad went to his office and left me standing there.

Mark Murphy: When Island and Gulf were going, there were probably 25 airplanes and there’d be days when people couldn’t book a flight between either airline. You couldn’t book a 20 minute trip. It was unbelievable.

Brian McConnan: We had about 25 airplanes and kept busy maintaining them. The day after I got here, they crashed a 180 (Cessna).We collected that. The place was really busy. That’s the way it went. It was all we could do to keep the airplanes going. I used to fly myself. If a plane broke down somewhere, they used to send me out with my toolbox, drop me off and say “fix it and bring it home if you can."

Tom Langdon: Of course I got my rear end kicked a few times, but not so much by Harry. I worked there on and off on weekends and holidays. I worked there full time when I finished high school.

Dave Nilson: Guys like Langdon, if you’re busy building an airplane and they need a pilot they’re like, “Here, you gotta go do this.” And then you still have the job you were doing to finish and they complain because it isn’t done!

Bob Langdon (1975): We run about one third scheduled passengers and two thirds charter. We move about 30,000 people a year on these flights. We have a government mail contract and we fly literally thousands of tons of freight every year.

Dave Nilson: The pilot would have flown three-quarters of an hour, but would have landed 18 times. Just crazy! It’s hard to believe how busy that place was. We had twenty airplanes and BC Air Lines had a whole mess of airplanes. There was more maintenance because of all the landings and take-offs.

Brian McConnan: We used to make a lot of money from logging. You bring all the guys out when they went on strike, and two days later they’ve run out of money—they’re drunk! Then you’re taking them all back in and the strike is over.

Jackie Langdon: It was a busy, busy place. But it’s a business with a high overhead and it is not difficult to go under. Lots and lots of little float plane businesses started up and haven’t been able to make it.

Lee Frankham: And then all of sudden, everybody got laid off, which was tough for them. The logging was down, it was tough. The only thing we had left for a little while was taking little old ladies shopping from Cortes Island.

Jackie Langdon: The business had changed by that time too. The roads were in. The small logging companies had dissolved or been incorporated into the larger companies. It wasn’t the same by that time. I think it came probably at the right time. I think he was ready for it.

Harvey Hahn: I stayed with Island Air after Bob sold it. The new owner had it for about a year and a half, then sold out to Air BC and Jim Pattison. The owner before Jim Pattison did really well with it. He actually got the airline to be more progressive. He was always open to new ideas. I liked him. He actually bought the Twin Otter that Island Air had.

Dave Nilson: When Island Airlines changed ownership, I left at that time. The pilots were talking about going on strike and Langdon’s trying to sell this to some other guy and then Jim Pattison came along and everybody was just angry at that point. So I thought, “I’m outta here!”

Jackie Langdon: Bob used to say, by the time he owed a million dollars, he’d have it made.

Ted Turner: I grabbed a newspaper and started looking through the weather forecasts, thinking that there had to be somewhere warmer in Canada than frigid Ontario. In BC, the weather outlook was for rain and this was in January, so I thought to myself that BC must be a pretty nice place. I noticed a job on the Island that sounded good, so I thought ‘Well, I’ll go see about this one first and try the other one later.’ I walked into Island Airlines in December and there was only three people left because they had laid everybody off. I met the dispatchers: Ev Crumb and Rita, and they introduced me to Harry Taylor who was the Chief Pilot. He was surprised I’d come in December because of all the layoffs, but I told him I had 15,000 hours flying time and also a maintenance license and he hired me right away. They put me in the hangar and gave me a pair of overalls. Eventually, Island Air sold out and I moved on to contract flying with Crown Zellerbach.

Bob Langdon: We get a great deal of all day charters. People, salesmen, government personnel fly out to the areas and do in one day that would perhaps take them two or three weeks to do.

Jackie Langdon: At one time Bob had a base in Tahsis, one at Gold River, and the flying school up at the Campbell River airport. I dare say he had close to fifty employees at one time.

Bob Langdon: Apart from logging camps of course, there are fishing camps, resorts, post offices, stores, and individual places we know. We also have little maps in our office of bays that are frequented by tourists. We know the names of all the people in the bay and where they live. When someone calls for an airplane they don’t say, “Go to Redonda Island”, they say, “Go to Redonda Bay and go to Mr. Jones’ house.”

Frank Roberts: Keith Stephenson, he bought Island Airlines. My contract was that I would stay on for a year under the new owner, give him a hand, and get him started, which I did. After a year, I left. Stephenson didn’t stay in the business too long—he eventually sold out. This was a time of lots of changes down at the Spit.

Gord Beadle: Island Air originally hired me as a mechanic’s helper. The deal in those days was you could hang around the flight line in the evenings or on your days off, and if there was an empty seat in the airplane you could jump in and go.

Gordie Wilkinson: The system we worked under, which had the approval of the Department of Transport, was that you worked the dock and collected your hours until you got enough time to write your commercial exam and then you got hired on. I was the last one to get through on this system before the MOT cancelled it. But Bob continued to do it at Island Airlines without telling anybody.

Gord Beadle: When I was getting started, the pilot designated to do the mail run would let you come along and fly the plane. After you got to know the country a little bit better, they checked you out again. Now if a mail run came up—strictly a mail run—the pilot who was designated to do it, could say, “Let Gord do it”. He could then sit back, drink coffee in the office and get paid while I did his mail run.

Norene Reedel: I was fortunate enough to work in the “hey day” when things were really busy. It was just amazing. When I started at Island Air in 74 things were really going good.

Bob Langdon (1975): We also have a flying training license and a rental license. We can rent airplanes, we can teach flying training. These licenses are issued by the Air Transport Board in Ottawa.

Gord Beadle: We used to keep a running tab of how many miles everybody had. One fellow was very conservative and ended up every month at the lower end of the mileage totem pole. Another fellow was just the opposite. We used to joke that he had inside knowledge of the schedule. He’d head out on a trip and purposely come back slow so he wouldn’t be at the top of the list. He knew the next trip wasn’t so good mileage wise and if he timed it right he would get the better trips up to River’s Inlet and places like that.

Gord Beadle: Some of the smaller airplanes in the old days just didn’t have room for radio equipment. A radio was as big as an apple box, so physically you just didn’t have the room.

Dr. John Ross: Bob Langdon was a pioneer and a good pilot. He was a guy that really loved to fly.

Mark Murphy: I’d say that the seventies were definitely the heyday. At that time, Island Air had the Cessna dealership, and it’d be nothing to put a couple of brand new Cessnas online every year, sometimes three or four and we’d use them for three or four years and then sell them.

Norene Reedel: I enjoyed working with Frank (Roberts). He is a very knowledgeable man and very good at public relations. He had a good way of talking to people. He used to say, “It’s CAVU out there: Clouds all the vay up.” That was his famous saying. I always think of that.

Gord Beadle: In those days there was no radio control or communications or anything like that. We had radio communications, but they were HF (high frequency) and HF was very spotty. There was no talking to the other airplanes. Basically, with HF radio, the further away you were the better it worked. HF radio is quite a long wave; so, in effect, (if you were too close) the wave would just go right over top.

Bob Langdon (1975): Class 4 is charter between points in Canada. The C is one type of aircraft and the B is another and this goes up to the size of the DC3. We can fly from Campbell River to any point in Canada as a charter flight. We also have an I4, which is international. You can charter from here down to the United States. We use this license on great many occasions. We have a Class 3 that is a scheduled flight. We are only allowed to go to specific points. And we take you on a seat rate, rather than make the customer charter the whole aircraft.

Harvey Hahn: Bob was good you know. He was overly conservative. He didn’t like new adventures. He liked to stay with what he had. He didn’t like to branch out. We had to almost put him down on the floor and beat him up to buy that Tahsis base from BC Air Lines. It was a good money maker; but you know, we really had to talk him into doing it. He didn’t like to move too fast on things.

Jack Kirk: I thought Bob was a wonderful person. I thought he was a great guy. He was a fair man and he gave me all the breaks in the world.

Bob Langdon (1975): A great deal of our time and effort on the job and our personnel time is associated with licensing. We are always striving of course to improve ourselves and get better licenses. Our license at Island Airlines reads Class 4: B and C.

Gord Beadle: The 172 engine gets overhauled after 1500 hours. We flew them for about1400 hours and then sold them to private buyers. One hundred hours would last most private guys for several years and allowed them to buy the airplane at substantial savings. I think a 180 was 1200 hours and the 185 was a 1000 hours. We’d put on roughly 1200 hours a year; which averages to about 100 hours per month per aircraft. On the coast not many 172s were bought locally. It was mainly loggers that bought their own aircraft and it was usually the 180 or 185 Cessna. They were faster and more powerful.

Gordie Wilkinson: I worked at BC Air Lines from 1956 to the fall of 1957. Then I got laid off and when Langdon started up in 1959, I was the first one hired with him.

Mark Murphy: With Island, it was unbelievably busy. Nobody realized what was really going on.

Norene Reedel: At Island Air we had this old HF, and it crackled and you could hear the Bugaboo Lodge up in the Cariboo, which is really funny. You could hear them talking . . . oh my God! It was quite something. You really had to listen; but, after a short while your ears become so tuned into it and even now—I guess actually 23 years—your ears are just so tuned in.

Brian McConnan: They would bring a Grumman Goose into Tahsis, then we would take the passengers from Tahsis to the little mickey-mouse places. It was a little different. One of us (the engineers) had to spend time in Tahsis because according to their license, the airplanes had to be signed out every day. We traveled back and forth and kept them going.

Steve Todd: The parent company became Haida Airlines and Island Airlines was the money-making operation. Tahsis was Island Airlines, Gold River was Island Airlines, Powell River was Island Airlines.

Len Crawford: Bob used to let me tie my plane at Island Air for free. We used his business for chartering and he worked on our plane. One day Bob had no airplanes at dock. He phoned me and said, “Can I use your airplane?” The only airplane at the dock was ours. We had a good relationship with Bob.

Anne Wilkinson: Langdon and Gordie never really became the friends they had been. It was a difference in philosophy more than anything. And the working relationship wouldn’t have succeeded had they stayed together, that’s for sure.

Rolly Bartlett: I started working on the docks at Island Air in August of ’74. Don Matheson was the chief pilot at that time and he took me out and got me my float endorsement. Then you would ride around with the fellows—fly back on an empty leg with one of the other pilots—and that’s how you built up your time until they felt you were ready to go out on your own as a pilot. It doesn’t happen anymore because of the way the insurance is. It was kind of a neat thing at the time—a good way to learn and know the area, but it doesn’t exist on the coast here anymore.

Frank Roberts: There’s a fair turnover of pilots. Some stayed with you forever and forever, and then you had a lot of these younger fellas coming just for experience and then were going on to the big airlines. As a matter of fact, there was a time when we had to limit our hiring to older fellows. We found that we were hiring these young fellows with a junior license—they’d work as a dock boy for a while, then on to junior pilot and eventually they became great pilots and just about the time they had reached the point where you could really rely on them and trust them, off they’d go to Canadian Pacific or PWA.

Steve Todd: We walked into it basically at the heyday—the absolute peak of the airline industry out here— when it was the busiest seaplane base in the world. I consider myself fortunate to have worked in it at that time.

Anne Wilkinson: Bob was tremendous—taking people who were totally unknown on. Gord wouldn’t have been flying if it wasn’t for Bob. We couldn’t afford the training.

Steve Todd: I got involved in 1978 when my uncle was the Base Manager for Haida Airlines out of Vancouver Harbour. It was near the end of summer and my uncle said to me, “Well, I can lay you off, or there’s a job opening up in Campbell River for a dock hand.” I hadn’t been to Campbell River. I had no idea of where it was except on a map. He said, “There’s no pressure to make the decision but the flight leaves in the morning.” Vancouver wasn’t offering me anything at that time so I said, “Sure.” That morning I was on a flight to Campbell River.

Val Todd: Right next to Island Airlines there was this little restaurant called the Beachcomber. Two ladies ran it. That was a place to go.

Steve Todd: I’ve got a real good appreciation of the qualifications of the people flying on the coast here. The minimum standards at Island Air at the time were, I think, 2000 hours minimum. As the industry declined there was a glut of pilots around.

Val Todd: I was there for two years in Gold River and had the opportunity to come to Campbell River and I did in 1979. So I’ve been on the spit since 1979.

Anne Wilkinson: Everybody appreciated Bob because that’s how almost all of the pilots on the coast got started.

Val Todd: At that time at Island Airlines we were running a scheduled flight between Vancouver Harbour and Campbell River three times a day. I think it was $35 each way. This is around 79. On the Single Otter we were carrying about 10 people. The poor Otter would be into the hanger every week for inspection because it was just running constantly. That’s when they decided they would get the Twin Otter. Our run was very, very popular.

Gord Beadle: In my last few years in Campbell River I was mainly flying the Twin Otter over to Vancouver, and then over to Tahsis and Zeballos. That was one nice thing about going to Vancouver: you got away from the base pay/mileage. You were strictly salary. There wasn’t the pressure to fly because it wasn’t going to affect your paycheque.

Harvey Hahn: Gulf Air bought the first Twin Otter from Imperial Oil. Island Air kind of went, “Well they got one, so we’ll get one.” Those fellows that bought it from Bob had ambitions, but when Air BC came along and knocked on the door with their check book, they said, “It’s a good deal for us.” So they sold it.

Val Todd: Going back into that Island Air building after twenty years or something it was kind of weird. It was kind of eerie almost. You realize it wasn’t an airline anymore.

Harvey Hahn: I think it was a good deal for Bob because he was pretty flush. He was pretty happy. But he was not a well man. He was really sick after that. Again we didn’t know at the time he had cancer.

Trans Mountain/Gulf Air

Bob Early: I was at Trans Mountain before Bill Macadam. I started my training when Forrest Cochrane started the company—when it was the flying school.

Harvey Hahn: Bill Macadam was pretty colourful. His family is like titled England. They sent him out to the colonies to get an education. His dad was Lord Iverson Macadam. You’ve heard of Macadamized roads? I think his grandfather invented asphalt, and he patented it in Europe. Not new money. He had all this old money. Lord Macadam was the Queen’s capital advisor. He could advise the Queen on her capital investments. He was a nice man. I met him a couple of times. Nice family. Bill decided he wanted to get into the airline business.

Don Braithwaite: Bill, I guess, was one of the black sheep. He got kicked out here to BC more or less. He had a hundred thousand dollars and his sister had a hundred thousand dollars, and Bill blew his money and her money on the airline and was going broke.

Gord Wilkinson : Trans Mountain had the flying school at the airport and when Macadam got into it, he had some money so he bought these two lake aircraft and two Cessna 172’s and flew them out at the Spit. The building is gone, but the ramp and everything is where Vancouver Island Air is now.

Don Braithwaite: Basically, I started getting out of the log hauling business. This is about 1967. Anyway, I had no place to tie my airplane. BC Air Lines, they didn’t have a place to let me on the dock, and Island Airlines was all plugged up, so Trans Mountain, I hit them up, and wound up tying my plane at their dock.

Harvey Hahn: Bill bought out a fellow at the airport that had a flying school and got into the airline business. I left Island Air and Bill Macadam asked me to come and work for him at Trans Mountain. We didn’t have a very good situation there. We made many friends, but we didn’t make much money. Bill was good to work with.

Don Braithwaite: I got in at Trans Mountain one day and Bill Macadam came to me and said he was in financial difficulties and could I help him out? I said, “Well, we’ll have a look see.” This was about September or October. I said, “When I get through logging this fall I’ll have time to look at things and see what we can do.”

Gordie Wilkinson: I left BC Air Lines because Eddie Paul, who was the chief superintendent at Island Airlines, decided to go to Trans Mountain. We were good friends, so I decided to go too. Harvey Hahn was there as well. A guy by the name of Walt Champness was the engineer.

Don Braithwaite: I was working away in the woods up at Knight and all of a sudden Harvey Hahn was there. He was Macadams’ right hand man at the time and he said, “Bill sent me up to get you. You have to come down right away.” So I jumped in his plane with him and rode down.

Norene Reedel: I love my old boss Don Braithwaite to pieces. He always wore those heavy Mack Jackets with those green work pants and the shoes that came up the back. He was our boss and the airline owner, but at heart he was a logger.

Don Braithwaite: Macadam had two 172s on floats and two pilots. I said to Bill, “What’s the damages?” He said, “I need this amount of money, and I need to pay these pilot’s wages and this and that etc.” I wrote him out a cheque and I was now in the airlines business.

Jack Chicalo: We used Trans Mountain mostly. If you couldn’t get there by boat, which mostly you could, and you were in kind of a hurry, or the client would pay for a float plane, then we’d go with the plane. Put all your stuff on the plane. If they could use the 185, they would. Or the Beaver.

Don Braithwaite: That was the fall of 67. I took over the airline right away. There was no sense in horsing around. If you want to get in there, you might as well get in there. I told Macadam right there, “I want fifty-one percent of the shares.” So, that was done. Macadam had another partner in the airline that used to work for BC Hydro. He had some shares. I got a hold of him and bought his shares. I don’t think it was two or three months later when he was dead, so that was a really good move. That gave me quite bit more control.

Harvey Hahn: We had those old VHF radios, they were side band radios. Sometimes they were just great. On certain days you could talk to Campbell River on them and be way up by the North end. And it would be just like a telephone. Other days it was just like bacon frying and you couldn’t hear anything. One time I was talking to some guy and he came in crystal clear. I said “Where are you?” Turns out he was just a couple of miles out of Brisbane Australia

Don Braithwaite: Macadam of course had his flying school up there (CR airport) too. I told Macadam, just keep things going the way they are. He got in my hair again so I said, “Why don’t you go out and the run the planes.” Off he goes. The next thing is he comes in on his off day and says, “I’ve been up to Gold River and they’re really interested in getting a flying school up there. They’ve got a piece of property picked out to build a strip. And I told him you would be able to run one of your Cats over this winter.” I told him that was it. He packed his bags and left for Ottawa.

Bob Early: I was with Trans Mountain through the change to Gulf Air and Don Braithwaite. When Don took over, it was boom times. He had pretty good timing that way. We were crazy busy. There were a lot of young guys like myself and we were all gung-ho. I worked 6 or 7 days a week. I didn’t have to, but I did.

Don Braithwaite: Macadam still had interests in Trans Mountain. The next thing, I hear from his brother saying that they wanna get settled up with this thing. They come up with a price of three hundred thousand dollars.

Don Braithwaite: We started in on negotiating. I was offering 50 thousand and they dropped down to 60 thousand and she said, “Let’s split the difference and get rid of it.” So that’s what we did. In the meantime, when I took it over, things would come out of the woodwork. I guess he bought a sailboat and donated it to some kids over on Quadra Island. Basically hidden costs like that, so we wound up with about sixty thousand dollars that I had to pay out to clean off the old debts. Then the hanger didn’t have any doors on it. I had to spend a lot of money on fixing that up because when you are running an airline things have to be done right.

Don Braithwaite: I formerly took over Trans Mountain Airlines on the first of January 1968.

 Irvin Olsen: Don did a great job for the logging. He had scheds going up and down the coast, started airstrips. Coming from a logger’s perspective, he knew what the loggers needed and he produced it.

Don Braithwaite: We went to Ottawa to see what we could do about getting a bigger license. This was summer of 1968. Tony Sarich( Trans Mountain lawyer) knew the (MOT) lawyer that was there. When we were ready to go he said, “Don’t tell anybody that I told you, but BC Air Lines is going to sell off their bases.” I went and saw them at BC Air Lines (in Vancouver) and the guy was quite perturbed that we found out about this. So he said, “I’ll be over (to Campbell River) in a couple of weeks, I’ll phone ya.” Over he came and I had a meeting with him. MOT told him he had to offer it to us and to Island Airlines. I gave him a cheque for ten thousand dollars for good faith. If he gave it to Island Airlines I wanted my money back.

Harvey Hahn: There were actually three airlines for a while: BC Air Lines, Island Airlines and then Trans Mountain. BC Air Lines was losing their appetite for competition. They sold the base to Don Braithwaite and he moved down to that building. He built that big metal hangar that’s there, and another floor on that office.

Don Braithwaite: He told me he had to meet with Langdon and he would meet me after lunch. I got a phone call about one-thirty and he said, “The deal is all yours.” I thanked him very much and he said, “We’ll get the paper work drawn up for you.” About three o’clock Mr. Langdon phoned and says, “I’ve got a deal for you Don. Come on over to the office and we’ll figure this one out.” He said scheduled airlines are really terrible because there’s so much god damn paper work—you have to keep track of this and track of that. With charter you just write a ticket and it’s done. I said, “I’m sorry Bob. It’s all or nothing with me.”

Harvey Hahn: When Gulf bought BC Air Lines, they of course bought BC Air Lines licences as well. They had all the scheduled licenses from Toba Inlet and north and Island Air had Bute Inlet and South of Campbell River.

Don Braithwaite: We were the first company to buy a base off BC Air Lines, which they really didn’t want to sell because Campbell River was a money-maker. We took that over on the first of August 1968.

Gordie Wilkinson: BC Air Lines sold out to Trans Mountain because they had got a new license in Vancouver to operate a twin service from Vancouver through to Calgary. Trans Mountain bought the old BC Air Lines base. Macadam was long gone. He went back East and wound up working for the CBC. Whatever happened to him after that, I don’t know. We had a wake at Forbes Landing when the lodge was still there, and that was the end of BC Air Lines in Campbell River.

Don Braithwaite: This was 1968, the ticket girl, the dispatcher and myself walked across from the old Trans Mountain office to the BC Air Lines office. We didn’t know what we were going to run into over there because these people might be pretty hostile that we are buying out the base. I went over there and they were really receptive. So we moved our 172s off our dock and moved down to BC Air Lines. That way we had everything in the one building. It took off from there.

Harvey Hahn: After Trans Mountain, I went back to work for Island Air. I didn’t really feel like I wanted to go to work for Don, as we didn’t see eye to eye. We’re kind of good friends now. Back then we just didn’t see eye to eye.

Don Braithwaite: It was quite a struggle competing with Island Airlines and the whole deal. It went along and I had my problems. When I was in the woods the logging would run good and the airline would go to heck. So I’d run back out here and the airlines would run good and the logging would go to heck. Finally, after a process, I got rid of the logging end of it and just stayed with the airlines. And basically, we got bigger and bigger all the time.

Norene Reedel: When I started at Gulf Air I told him my name and he said, “Hmmm, Reedel. I used to work for your uncle Joe. Called him August.” From that day on, we were buds. I just love him and his wife. When I run into them, they are just happy to see you.

Gord Wilkinson: Don Braithwaite was trying to run his logging business and airline simultaneously. Eventually, he gave up on the logging and just stuck with the airline.

Don Braithwaite: The airline was a real good money-making situation in the days we were in. You had a license and no-one could really infringe on that license; but, consequently, people did. There were no two ways about that. Minstrel Air started up and of course they were up on the top-end. The top end was bad for our business. The guy at Minstrel Air, Ed Carder, saw the situation, he was American, so he bootlegged on us.

Norene Reedel: You are getting calls from up and down the coast: from the lady who needs her prescription from the pharmacy, to someone needing an overnight babysitter for their dog. These are just things you did. You didn’t think about it. You just said, “No problem we’ll do that for you.” You were their lifeline at the end of the phone.

Don Braithwaite: We had people that would charge and get into us for the neighbourhood of 15 to 20 thousand bucks. And then they couldn’t pay because business would slow down and the whole issue. Then they would then get busy again and go to Island Airlines and start charging there. Anyway, I would talk to Jim at Island Air, the financial guy for Bob, and I’d say, “This is bullshit! They charge up with me then they come over here and fly with you? If they go broke both of us lost out.” We made a deal then that if someone was cut-off from flying, we would phone and let the other know.

Gord Wilkinson: At one time, we had twenty airplanes and so did Island Airlines. There were a lot of little gypos in those days. Those days are long gone. Water taxis and crew boats are doing a lot of stuff now.

Don Braithwaite: We applied for a license for the Campbell River-Powell River-Qualicum route. I could pick up the traffic at Powell River, which is a big pulp mill town, and take it all right through to Vancouver. Frank Roberts was the manager for Island Airlines at the time. He was a good guy but Langdon and I didn’t see eye to eye. Frank Roberts didn’t like that at all so he applied for the Campbell River-Powell River-Victoria route and he got that. So basically, I was having trouble with the south run and the whole issue, so finally I sold it off to a fellow in Qualicum and then they sold it to another fellow.

Gordie Wilkinson: Don and I were still friends even after he let me go. When I started bringing him business, I was the golden-haired boy.

Norene Reedel: Back in the day at Gulf Air we had to do the Crown Zellerbach crew move. First thing in the morning we had to shuffle eighty to one hundred guys. After that, you had to start your scheduled flights. It was nuts. There were people going all over the place.

Gord Wilkinson: One day I was at the (BC Forest Products) office and I said, “Isn’t it time we did some work with Gulf Air” And one of the bosses said, “Well, we don’t know if the pilots are any good or not.” I said, “Well, if I’m good enough, then so are they.” We eventually we gave them all the work and Langdon got none of it. And that didn’t please Langdon too much.

Don Braithwaite: The name change to Gulf Air came when Macadam wasn’t getting out. I went back to (our Vancouver lawyer) and she said we should change the name and move the licenses and the assets out. So Trans Mountain was nothing but a bare company. I thought Macadam would have kept an eye on that, but they basically wanted out anyway.

Bob Early: It was kind of funny when Gordie left. I guess I was his senior even though he was much older than I was. I was chief pilot when I was in my very early twenties, 22 maybe. There were 10 or 12 airplanes there. I was way too young for it, but I don’t know, I just kind of waltzed right into it and I was full of ‘piss and vinegar’ and just went with it.

Don Braithwaite: Things were going along pretty good but I was having a bit of a tough time trying to gobble all the payments on that big Twin Otter and some of the other planes because I had expanded quite rapidly. We did business with the Royal Bank and like all banks, you get a good manager and things are fine and dandy. Well, we got another manger. My accountant, Glen, suggested moving to the Toronto Dominion Bank. They were just new in town. We signed up with them.

Don Braithwaite: The manager said “We’ve got some sad news for ya. We’re calling our loan. I said, “WHAT?!” He said their chief in Vancouver decided I was a poor risk. Well, if that doesn’t set you on your back side. Anyway, that was on Tuesday. Wednesday, I was still kind of stung about it. He came back Thursday morning and said they didn’t have all the addresses of our customers. They wanted the cheques coming to us to be sent directly to the TD Bank. I wouldn’t tell you what I called him, but being a logger you can fairly surmise. He went down those stairs with his tail between his legs in a big hurry.

Don Braithwaite: So I got off my butt and phoned everybody. I phoned BCFP and said, “Hold your cheques in Vancouver.” I phoned Crown Zellerbach and said, “Hold your cheques please.” Doreen (Bowers) and I Flew down to Vancouver and hired taxis. She went one way with the addresses and I went the other way. We got most of it gathered up and stayed overnight. The next morning we went downtown to Crown Zellerbach and by 11 o’clock we were finished gathering up the money we needed.

Don Braithwaite: We had a loan on these receivables for $250,000 bucks and we owed $215,000. We phoned up and asked them to send a plane down to the Bay Shore. We had a bite to eat and a drink on it and flew back up and tallied it up. Then we went up to the bank before it closed up and I said, “Here you are you little son-of-a-bitch. Here’s your goddamn money. You’d better start counting it.”

Stan Kaardal: I became manager for Gulf Air in 1977.

Don Braithwaite: In the end, Langdon had sold out during the strike and the whole issue. Basically, we were the leading contender by the time it was finished.

Don Thompson: Don Braithwaite purchased the floatplane end of the (ABAS) business and changed the name to Gulf Air after he bought it.

Don Braithwaite: In 1978 I bought out ABAS. I took over from Don Thompson at Port Hardy and that gave us scheduled service.

Patty Kaardal: I started at Gulf in 1979 and worked there for just over a year until Stan (Kaardal) and I got married in 1980. I came in for an interview and Don (Braithwaite) hired me. I thought it was a very interesting job—lots of excitement, lots of activity going on.

Norene Reedel: After a while I would go for rides. I’d pick my days for certain trips so I could see parts of the coast. I thought when you work for an airline you should know what the trip is like. If you’re sending these guys out in this crap you should know what the hell you are talking about. Plus, you would get a cute pilot saying, “Hey, you girls want to go for ride?”

Patty Kaardal: You could hire a Beaver for approximately $45 an hour, and when I left the industry in 1996, it would cost you about $600 an hour. The thing is, not too much of that increase was wage related or inflation. Wages stagnated for a long time.

Richard Von Fintel: The real turning point came when Gulf Air booked too many pilots off one long weekend. At this point I wasn’t allowed to fly passengers; I wasn’t insured for that, but they were unexpectedly busy. So, they juggled things around and they created a couple of freight trips for me to do and I did that without crashing the 172. Then I remember Rheta the dispatcher calling me up to the top of the ramp saying she had a trip for me. This was going to be my third or fourth trip of the day. I ran up the ramp all excited and she said, “I want you to take this passenger to such and such a place.” I was crestfallen. I said, “Rheta, I’m not allowed to take passengers.” And she said, “Oh, let me check with Gil Gardner”—who was the Operations Manager at the time. He was one of those old bush pilot types and he said, “Well, you’ve just been flying all this freight haven’t you? You haven’t killed any of the freight have you?” And I said, “No.” And he says, “Well, you’re not going to kill the passengers are ya?” And I said, “No”. “Well, go out and do it.”

Patty Kaardal: There were also scheduled flights to Vancouver, so there was people coming and going both ways on that. The prices weren’t all that bad compared to now. In 1979, it was probably about $40 one way, $70 return. Now it’s about $200.

Norene Reedel: You have to be able to work well under pressure. Not many people can do it. You have to be a certain kind of person to do it. You can’t get rattled. Usually the people that made the most noise were the people that were the most afraid to fly. That’s what I found. The big tough guys that started knockin’ back beer were doing that because they were afraid to fly. Of course if they knocked back too many we refused to fly them anyway.

Don Braithwaite: I had my sights on Trans Pacific out of Rupert. In the meantime I was already flying to Ocean Falls, Bella Bella, Bella Coola and up through that country. It would have taken me straight right down from the top end. Then I would have started to look at land for runways because we would have come out of Rupert right to Vancouver and Port Hardy. It was that close. It’s a deal that could have developed.

Don Braithwaite: I had a hanger full of parts and spare, overhauled engines for my Otter and Beaver all mounted and ready to go. I had built a new hanger and the whole issue. It was really a good set up. I had hot section for the PT6 engines which were on the Twin Otter and a lot of spare parts for it. I was in good shape. So that’s when I decided to get out. Pattison bought out Island Airlines too.

Don Braithwaite: I just got so fed up with it between the bank, union and the MOT.

Don Braithwaite: That was basically the end of the airlines. Pattison came in around the end of September in 1979. That had to go to the Air Transport Board in Ottawa for approval and it was official on March 1 st 1980. I put twelve years in. By that time I was out of it completely.

Don Braithwaite: We had a lot of fun at it and the whole deal. There’s no two ways about that. I guess I was basically one of the biggest regional air/postal carriers around.

Lee Frankham: There was such a terrific amount of logging. Everywhere you went it was five guys and his brother out here logging. And they had to use aircraft because there was no other way of getting in.

Logging Boom

Phil Bergman: I think floatplanes changed the logging industry over time. Loggers used to travel from Vancouver to the camps on the old Union steamships. When the floatplanes came in, loggers could live in this area and fly into and out of camp really easily. They no longer had that long journey back to Vancouver. It was also easier to get injured loggers to the hospitals. It played a big part with the camps. The airlines could adapt easily to their schedule.

Bob Langdon (1975): The aircraft have changed the type of living on the coast. The logger no longer spends three months in isolation and then tears off to Vancouver for a celebration. He now lives quite a normal life—he’s home every ten days and a lot of them have moved their homes closer to the settlements from which they fly. It’s changed the people.

Walter Davidson: I started logging in 1965.  That was a good period of time for coast logging. There were many small operators making a good living on the coast. A lot of these people were very innovative and seasoned loggers, and operated their own aircraft. 

Don Thompson: We didn’t have a set schedule. If somebody wanted to go somewhere, we would take them. Loggers who’d been too drunk to get back home over the weekend; people that were hurt; the Indian Health Nurse making her rounds—people like that. Run of the mill business. A lot of money was generated by the logging and fishing business as well.

Mark Murphy: There were hundreds of camps and there wasn’t the roads and the ferries like there is now. Even the Cortes ferry, it didn’t start until the very late 60’s, early 70’s.

Dr. John Ross: The gypos could log a lot of sites that large outfits weren’t willing to do. For instance, a mountain where there was some pretty good wood, but it involved building a road and so forth. A company that was paying big wages and workers compensation just wouldn’t go for it. But the gypo outfits, they would build roads or whatever it took to get up there. There are still gypo loggers around but not nearly as many as there used to be. That really cut into the float plane business.

Len Crawford: The gypo logger can be a good logger. The thing is he doesn’t have medical coverage, he doesn’t have a pension plan and that kind of thing for his men. Quite often, because we didn’t have all those things, we had to pay more to our men. We paid more than union rates. We had good guys. Just because we were non-union didn’t mean we were chiselling on our workers. You couldn’t get good guys if you did. Believe it or not, my boss in the bush was an AA guy, so we didn’t have to worry too much about boozing.

Bob Langdon (1975): Its (airline industry) done away with the small stores and post offices where these people used to go back and forth in little boats to get their mail. Now we bring the mail into the logging camps.

Harvey Hahn: There were camps all over the place. Actually, in the early 70’s, we did a bit of a survey there, and there was over 500 logging camps between Powell River, and the north end of Vancouver Island. That’s where our market was. That’s why we were so busy down there; two or three airlines working and flying into all these camps.

Len Crawford: We moved our camp 30 times around the coast. We have pictures of the camp on floats, moving down the channel with the airplane tied behind it. We always had a ramp for the plane in camp.

Craig Houston: The decision to put a base here in Campbell River was due to the logging industry. The heli-logging started up in the late 70’s, and there were a lot of machines out of here.

Bob Langdon (1975): The trend of logging has changed drastically on the coast with the advent of the (seaplane). Where the logger, who comprises a great deal of our business, would come up on the boat from Vancouver, it would probably be a day to a day and a half (trip) Then (he would) go into a camp and perhaps work for four to six months. Now, if we can call him a gentleman logger, now he lives in Campbell River or Vancouver Island—a lot of them do, and they fly home.

Gord Beadle: [Island Air] had Teakerne Arm camp. It was a big log sorting ground for MacMillan Bloedel. These guys were in camp for five days, Monday to Friday, and we would take them all in on Monday morning and take them out on Friday afternoon. It was fifty guys. That’s a lot of shuttling.

Len Crawford: The problem with the Coast is transferring goods from place to place—it’s so expensive. It’s a 4 or 5 hour run with an old gas boat. With a plane, you can do the same job in 20 minutes.

Rolly Bartlett: In those days, there were so many little operators. Guys would go to one place, get fed up, and quit the next day. Then you’d fly them to another one. There were a lot of people moving around. Even as late as 1974 there were still lots of guys out there in the camps. Whereas now, there’s very small crews comparatively and everybody stays with a company now.

Patty Kaardal: I met lots of characters—mostly loggers and fishermen. They just have a different way of life, a different breed.

Gord Beadle: I don’t know how many, but there were a lot of camps, particularly ten-man camps. In Gold River and on up into Tahsis, there were a lot of A-frames. They were just a big float with an A-frame on it. They would run a cable up these steep hills and drag the logs down to the beach. A lot of those were just mom and pop operations.

Walter Davidson: I was given the opportunity to go into sales.  My territory was Vancouver Island, the coast to Prince Rupert, and the Charlottes. On days with no set plan I would fly for [around].  I became very adept at finding out whose camp I was at by reading time slips or purchase orders up side down at the camp office. Of course I didn't want those loggers to think I was just wandering around. I would often travel with some booze and a stock of fresh newspapers, and was pretty much well received. I became good friends with a lot of these loggers and their families.

Don Braithwaite: A lot of the guys bought their own planes for the simple reason if you break something in camp you can load it on the airplane and be out. Downtime was the deal where it really cost you a lot of money. It was a lot quicker to fly parts up there if they needed them.

Irvin Olsen: Where we logged you couldn’t survive without an airplane. You can’t lose a day out logging; that’s a lot of money down the tubes.

Phil Bergman: In years past, places like Toba Inlet, Kincome Inlet, and many spots on the coast, functioned as small communities. They were logging camps, but they were small communities. They had a school. Families lived there, that kind of thing. The isolation of these areas disappeared over time.

Bob Langdon (1975): The majority of our traffic is associated with the logging industry; but, we have the school boards, department of health and welfare, public health, social welfare, post office, telephone companies—just generally everyday living. They all fly. This is the thing I want to get across: everyone flies!

Irvin Olsen: When I first came up to Campbell River in 1966, it was just like a beehive on the Spit—planes continually coming and going. I leased the area where Vancouver Island Air is for 10 years from Elk River. I used to park my planes there, but I got all my gas from Gulf Air and they had room so I used to leave planes there as well.

Len Crawford: For the small logger, the boom years came to an end on January 24 th, 1984. That’s when Forestry cancelled the TFL2 (Tree Farm License) for loggers and it went to the mill here. We were booted out—we were all booted out. That was the downfall.

Irvin Olsen: When Crown Zellerbach shut down TFL 2 for contractors, well, that was the end of the good logging. Then the few surviving ones—it’s so expensive to fly—they did it by crew boats. All of sudden, it was just like shutting the Spit down. Just about all the loggers had their own airplane too.

Len Crawford: The last comment Forestry made to everyone was ‘Well, you knew this was coming. You should have been prepared.’ Things went downhill after that.

Walter Davidson: As the coast freight services such as coast ferries slowly shut down, the aircraft became even more necessary for such things as machinery parts, groceries, and crew.  If you had your own aircraft, and flew it yourself as I did, you had a distinct advantage over people who had to charter. 

Craig Houston: Originally, when we first came down here, 80% of what we did was logging related. Now, it’s probably reversed—only about 20% of what we do is logging, the rest is other things.

Walter Davidson: The aircraft was one of the most important tools in the coast logging industry.  Today, more and more operators are using helicopters, or building landing strips and using wheeled aircraft. I can hardly imagine operating our logging at White & Davidson Logging Ltd. without our own aircraft. It became indispensable.

Harvey Hahn: It finished up. You could see it couldn’t sustain that. Gradually the logging went further north and after a while it was out of Port Hardy and around Alert Bay. All these camps moved up the coast and I guess they’re up in the mid coast now. I guess everything has changed now.

Phil Bergman: As the logging industry shrank, so did the need for aircraft. There are more high speed water taxis which take away the short trips that floatplanes used to do. As well, there are less people living out in the wilderness then there used to be.

Harvey Hahn: The years that the lumber was booming the airlines were booming. But as soon as things went bad for them, the airlines went down the tube. You were just locked right in with the lumbering.

Jim Creighton: All of sudden, everything just went for a total crap. It just kept getting worse and worse.

Don Thompson: Things started to go downhill after 1973—the logging industry was declining and fishing wasn’t as good as it used to be.

Irvin Olsen: In 1966, I first came to Campbell River. To begin with, I was contracting up in Knight Inlet for Don Braithwaite.

Mark Murphy: The big change is logging on the coast. It’s gone from a hundred little camps to half a dozen big ones. Some of the logging companies own planes but they just they play with it. They get in and out of that, but it’s never worked very well for them. They’re in the logging business, not the airplane business and they don’t do a good job of it, although other people will tell you differently. It works far better off chartering.

Steve Todd: It wasn’t just the airline industry that fell. It was the logging industry, the fisheries—all that changed in a short number of years. The airlines were serving those industries specifically, which created a lot of the little town sites and what have you up and down the coast.

Mark Murphy: Aside from changes in the logging industry, it’s in the high speed crew boats. Every time one of those goes by, it used to be an airplane doing it. And every camp has one now. It’s cheaper, but more so, they don’t have to think about weights, and groceries and freight. So, for the logging industry, they like it. It makes it real easy. And they’re not that much slower if the weather’s good.

Steve Todd: Once the major lumber companies pulled their tree forest licenses—pulled the gypos out of the forest—things went down hill. That’s who we were servicing, all the gypo operators. From the moment the sun went up to the moment the sun came down. It was constant.

Phil Bergman: Pretty much any logging company of any size has used the floatplanes for years. Up until about ten or twelve years ago that is how the vast majority of people and equipment got in and out of logging camps.

Mark Murphy: It might take ½ hour in an airplane, 2 ½ by boat. And, a lot of the guys would rather go by boat than fly. There’s been a few bad accidents out of Campbell River and there’s a lot of movement out here.

Phil Bergman: There are far less people working in the logging camps these days and it’s difficult at times to get people on the phone. In the old days every logging camp had a first aid attendant who would always answer the phone. Now, rarely is there someone in the office.

Walter Davidson: Today the situation is very tough. There are a much reduced number of contractors being pushed hard by one or two dominant companies, attempting to squeeze the last bit of profit from these hard working contractors.  I am happy I was able to log in much better times and to make it work profitability.

Phil Bergman: Any of the big players on the coast would have used the floatplanes. Western Forest Products today uses floatplanes. A lot of smaller, owner-operated companies over the years that have now fallen by the wayside used the floatplanes.

Bill Alder: There were airplanes all over the place, but as the tree farm licenses started to disappear and become obsolete, all these gypo loggers went by the wayside. There were no airplanes left. Over a period of 10 years, you couldn’t believe the difference. It used to be wall to wall airplanes

Union Blues

Gord Beadle: I often think that we ended up with the union here, but it didn’t really have to come to that.

Jackie Langdon: Bob fought the union. He wasn’t happy with it all. He was used to a “family style” sort-of operation where you looked after your family and they did a good job for you. The better job they did, the more perks they got.

Stan Kaardal: The first contract we negotiated with BC Air Lines won us one day a week off—because at that time we were working 7 days a week—daylight to dark. If you didn’t, there was always someone waiting outside the door. The second contract, we won two days a week off. From then on, we gradually got the pay sorted out a little bit.

Jackie Langdon: I think (the other companies) treated their employees fairly, but the union movement started in Vancouver, where maybe they needed it more, I am not sure. But it was a sign of the times.

Tom Langdon: He thought he treated everybody well and that should be good enough. And of course it isn’t for a lot of people. My dad would have taken it very personally.

Stan Kaardal: For a lot of years, the majority of our pay was incentive pay and then we became unionized in BC Air Lines, much to the chagrin of other smaller operators.

Jackie Langdon: One thing that Bob couldn’t understand was his crew were paid better under him then they would have under union wages. So he couldn’t understand why they would want to give up the better pay.

Tom Langdon: During the 70s, when I actually started to understand more about this stuff, he took it very personally. This wasn’t just a business, this was his business.

Jackie Langdon: All through the years from the beginning he treated his staff well and paid them according to what pilots were getting. He didn’t pay them any less and he gave them bonuses.

Gord Beadle: There was no union to start with. Later years we became unionized. BC Air Lines was union and Island Airlines wasn’t to start with.

Jackie Langdon: And I think when the union started that bothered him. He felt he could keep his people happy; and, in a sense, he didn’t see the larger picture there.

Gord Beadle: Actually, Island Airlines had the BC Air Lines union agreement; so, even though we weren’t technically unionized, we got paid the union agreement.

Tom Langdon: He took a certain twisted delight in union negotiations and he was very good at it.

Harvey Hahn: We actually had a union of sorts. BC Air Lines were union and we were not.

Tom Langdon: All it takes is a few people to be distrustful of the management’s intentions towards the employees to bring change, and of course change is inevitable.

Gord Beadle: We basically went two years without a pay increase; so, when the third year came up, and the boss announced he couldn’t afford another pay increase, that was kind of the straw that broke the camel’s back.

Tom Langdon: The union came in full time in the early 70s. When it went from being a non-union to a union operation, they were, at the time, the highest paid float plane pilots on the coast.

Jackie Langdon: He felt that this union effort on parts of some of his staff was an act of disloyalty. And in way it was, and in a way it wasn’t.

Don Braithwaite: Island Airlines had been union then everybody dropped out. They were still certified though, so all they had to do was go back and pick up the certification and they were in.

Gord Beadle: I think as far as all the guys were concerned there was no question that we were going to get a pay increase, it was just a matter of how much.

Gordie Wilkinson: When Bob left BC Air Lines, they brought back Wally Wiggins to be the manager. I went back and worked with Wally at BC Air Lines from May of 1960 to May of 1965. I got busy and organized a union there and eventually the guys at Island Airlines belonged to the same union. Langdon said, “I’m gonna buy BC Air Lines and fire that bastard!” That was his one goal in life and he never got it.

Gord Beadle: Somewhere along the line the base pay got really lowered down and mileage pay really increased. You basically couldn’t live on it, but hey had to give us base pay in order to keep us around. The rest was mileage so you had to fly.

Harvey Hahn: We were working a lot cheaper than our counterparts, and we were working a lot harder. We were taking quite a lot of their business away from them and we thought we should do a little better.

Gord Beadle: In the wintertime, for the most part, you were on starvation wages because the days are short, flying time is cut down, and a lot of the logging camps were starting to shut down.

Don Braithwaite: My guys asked if I was going to give them a raise. I said, “Not right now. Probably in the spring, but you’re getting more money than those guys over there already.”

Gord Beadle: When BC Air Lines left, Bob Langdon basically said, “Well, my agreement was to pay the BC Air Lines agreement and BC Air Lines is no longer.” So, there was a bit of a kerfuffle for a couple of years.

Harvey Hahn: There were a lot of hard feelings.

Don Braithwaite: We had a strike. My people were not union. I was paying more money than the Island Airline guys were getting, but they decided they wanted to join the union.

Harvey Hahn: In fact we went on strike for a whole summer in 1976  a little over two months. We just shut down. We did very little flying – just emergencies. Bob flew a bit himself but by that time he had health problems. Eventually he got cancer. He was getting pretty sick then.

Tom Langdon: That was a big part of why he wanted to sell: it wasn’t fun anymore.

Don Braithwaite: Of course we were getting Island Airlines passengers because they still had to get out there. Some of them never went back to Island Airlines because we were cheaper.

Ted Turner: We went on strike and we were picketing up across the road from the Tyee Club. We were on strike for about 2 or 3 weeks.

Jim Creighton: Whether it was the spin the owners put on it, or whether it was actually true, we all considered the union something that would be an impeding force, it wouldn’t help.

Harvey Hahn: We had picket lines down there and everything. I preferred not to get involved with it. I just told them, “Give me a call when you get it all straightened out.” I thought their demands were totally way off. I just went to work somewhere else doing other things.

Don Braithwaite: I couldn’t afford a strike when I came so I had to keep going. I said to Langdon, “You have been in business for quite a long time, but I’ve got the bankers sitting there wanting their money, so I have to keep going.” So, whatever they negotiated, I paid, so the crew kept going and we kept operating.

Ted Turner: Gulf Air started a union. The pilots at Island Air were quite annoyed. The attitude was, “If they’re getting a union, we want one too.”

Harvey Hahn: I went back when they settled. We never did go back to work for Bob. He sold the airline while we were still on strike. The new owners called us all back.

Jim Creighton: Everybody was anti-union from day one. Even though you got paid piss-poor wages and you worked til you dropped, the union was never welcome.

Bob Early: It was Gordie Wilkinson that was spearheading the union. He was a good guy though.

Don Braithwaite: Gordie Wilkinson is a heck-of-a-good fella and a good pilot but he got mouthing off at me. I had enough.

Bob Early: I left about the time that the union came in. I was in the middle between the union and Don. I was operations manager at the time, I believe. It was just awful.

Gordie Wilkinson: Don actually fired me. I was on compensation at the time and when I was ready to come back to work, Bob Early, who was the chief pilot at that time, told me, “Well, Don doesn’t want you back.”

Don Braithwaite: I thought, “Do I need this?” I had a bellyful between trying to argue with the bank, argue with the MOT, and argue with the union . . . who needs it?

Gordie Wilkinson: And I said to (Bob Early), “Well, you fire me.” He said, “I’m not firing you.” So I told him I’d be back at work tomorrow. I went into work the next morning and I sat there and sat there. Don came in the back door, said, “Hi”, and walked into his office.

Don Braithwaite: My operations manager, said, “I ain’t gonna fire him.” I said, “That’s alright, send him into my office.” I said to Gord, “I’ve had enough of your bullshit. You are a good pilot but I just can’t take this.”

Gordie Wilkinson: He told me they’d had letters of complaint about my flying, etc., etc. and that they didn’t want me back. I told him he’d have to fire me if he wanted me gone, but he just kept telling me that they didn’t want me back, but he wouldn’t actually fire me.

Anne Wilkinson: Of course, there were no complaints, ever. We never found out the truth of what had happened. After this, we used to get invited to all of the Christmas parties that this company ever had. In fact, when he started working for BC Forest Products again, Don said “Write your own ticket – I want you back.” We never figured it out.

Gordie Wilkinson: They wouldn’t give me a trip and I just sat there for most of the morning. So finally he asks “You wanted to see me?” and I said, “Nope.” He says, ‘”Well, come into my office.”

Bob Early: I felt betrayed by the pilots because I’d flown with them all that time. They didn’t include me in their negotiations and I didn’t know they were getting a union because they felt that I was too close to Don; that I would tell Don.

Don Braithwaite: “Okay”, he said. “I want a written letter as to why I was fired.” I told him to come back at four o’clock for his letter and cheque and the whole issue. So away he went.

Gordie Wilkinson: I told him that the only way they were getting rid of me was to fire me and to say it to my face, so finally he did. So I went back at 2 o’clock for my paycheque and that was the end of that.

Ed Wilcock: I don’t know of any helicopter companies that are unionized in Canada. There’s no need for a union if you treat your people properly.

Tom Langdon: Since those days, flying for both floatplane and helicopter outfits, I have never seen a union rep. I have never belonged to a union. The only time I ever belonged to a union was when I worked for my dad’s company because I had to join the union to work on the dock and in the hanger.

Crazy Regulations

Lee Frankham: Oh, shit, they were always interfering! Planes too heavy, etc. The airlines—they were a little tougher on them, but when we were flying for the logging camps…Jesus! We didn’t care, we’d do anything. It didn’t matter, if it worked, we did it. It would be highly illegal—you wouldn’t do that with an airline.

Mark Murphy: Before 911, you could use an airplane for six months and just pay partial insurance rates for the other 6—they called it a lay-up clause, but the insurance companies did away with all that.

Phil Bergman: Governments are not happy unless they are adding more and more regulations. Whether it’s stricter or better is open to debate.

Dave Nilson: All the aircraft had to be overhauled after a certain amount of time. You’d get all these books and sheets regarding what you had to do. It didn’t seem like overkill in those days, but it got that way. It keeps getting worse all the time. And now it’s so bad, I don’t even want to go near an airplane— somebody will sue me. Bureaucracy has killed aviation right to the ground.

Irvin Olsen: It just got worse and worse and worse. It wasn’t too bad when we started in it. But now . . . it’s just ridiculous. Actually, the logging is getting just as bad now. All these fellas have to be certified now—like a faller, he’s gotta be certified that he’s capable of doing the job.

Ed Wilcock: The government regulations have changed. And the bigger you get, the more regulations you fall under. Transport Canada pretty much knows who the good people are and who the bad people are. The bigger you get, the harder it is to hide anything.

Lyle Whyte: Everything that we do has to be recorded in books that Transport Canada has access to. If we’re working on a major repair over a certain size, that has to be written down on the proper form and gets sent to Transport Canada. We have to abide by the books. There are guidelines. Most manufacturers come out with their own maintenance books and their own repair books, so you are aware of the kinds of things you can do and things that you can’t do. If it’s not in those books, then there is another book which is the AC4313 book and it’s more or less the Bible on everything. It has the basic layout of what you should and shouldn’t do.

Mark Murphy: They’re idiots! Transport Canada, all they’re interested in is paperwork. They don’t know anything or do anything, they’re just a waste of time; it’s just a government bureaucracy. You can have the best operators and the worst operators side by side and as long as the bad one has their paperwork, it’s fine. Everybody knows it’s a joke. That’s one of the reasons I got out of it—I just couldn’t be bothered.

Bob Langdon (1975): We don’t fly at night at all. We are restricted to daylight flying. In the case of extreme emergencies: they would have to be very extreme before we would hazard a night flight. I mean a serious emergency; involving a whole lot of people because we would be contravening our license, and I think even our ability.

Ed Wilcock: In the early years of the helicopter business, you went out flying in April and didn’t come home until October or November. You lived in a tent out in the bush. That’s not the business now. In the old days, there were no regulations; you could fly and fly and fly. Nowadays, Transport has it regulated.

Steve Todd: Even Cessna stopped building aircraft because of the liability factor.

Val Todd: They’ve just gone back into production in the last little while if I’m not mistaken, but they are not producing single engine Cessnas anymore. At one point they had to have a little placard on the front of the aircraft stating, “Flying this aircraft could be dangerous to your health’.

Steve Todd: Like a cigarette package.

Val Todd: That’s what it got down to. And they couldn’t’ afford the liability insurance. I guess they were being sued by people who were crashing the planes. It got to ridiculous, basically.

Steve Todd: There was deregulation of the airways and over regulation of the industry. For good and for bad.

Larry Langford: That was part of the problem with deregulation: you didn’t always end up with people with the experience and good management structure needed. As a result of that, a lot of those airlines that were servicing are gone. And that’s one of the big drawbacks: It created a negative effect for a considerable period of time and obviously, when you have a lot of little airlines with little or no experience, you end up with a lot of accidents.

Phil Bergman: After 9/11 our insurance went way up. It affected everything: The economy; the logging industry; tourism. There was a really big ripple effect. But it was mainly the insurance costs.

Jack Kirk: You have a certain length of time—you have your 50 or 100 hour checks to maintain your CNA (Certificate of Air Worthiness) and when your major time comes up, if your engine is in good shape, they might give you an extension or something.

Bob Langdon (1975): Requirements sent down by the Department of Transport are such that we must maintain visual contact (with the ground) and basically you don’t dare not because we have so many rocks in the clouds around here. The channels are such that they twist and turn that you must maintain visual contact with the water at all times.

Don Braithwaite: You can’t both raise your rates at the same time. So Landgon would say, “I’m gonna raise my rates.” I’d say, “Okay.” So he’d apply to MOT and I’d wait about six months, and then I’d raise my rates up and I might go higher than his, or whatever. We’d always talk about the thing.

Ed Wilcock: The BC Coast is probably some of the most challenging flying of all for helicopters. You can’t fly for the government out here with basically less than 1000 hours. Industries are starting to put some pretty stringent guidelines in place. There have been some accidents in the past with people and now industry is auditing us more than Transport Canada.

Larry Langford: Years ago, you had to apply and get approval for all of your licenses—even to make changes to your fares. We’ve had deregulation, but you still have to apply for a license and you specify what you’re going to do. It is still difficult to qualify. Years ago, no one could operate within 25 miles of another base that had an approved license. But nowadays, it doesn’t matter. We had four air carriers on the Spit here. Qualifying for the license is still as difficult or more difficult that it used to be, which is a good thing. But it’s open to competition, just like the airlines. It’s more open than say, taxis or even buses because they still have to apply for fare change which we don’t. Sometimes that competition is good, sometimes it’s not.

Lyle Whyte: There’s a daily inspection, more or less a visual walk-around inspection that’s done by the pilots. You have to write your daily inspections in the journey log, which the pilots carry with them. Precise record-keeping is very important.

Norene Reedel: Back in the Gulf Air days getting your radio license was a bit of a joke. I remember this Scottish gent came up from Transport Canada; took us in the back office and basically asked us how to spell our named phonetically. That was the test. It was too funny. After that, we were presented with our little piece of paper. (Laughs) It’s tucked away and a little dog eared and weathered, but I still have it. Now, you have to have a proper license for dispatching. I dispatched for 23 years without a license because in those days it was learn-as-you-go. When I worked at Air BC you didn’t need one.

Frank Roberts: Most of these first licenses granted to independent airlines such as Island Air and Alert Bay Air Services were what they called Class 4 Charter licenses. Scheduled service was run under Class 3 and Class 2 licenses, and then the big guys under Class 1. Class 3 licenses were provided to BC Air Lines, and they could schedule service, say from Campbell River to places like Tahsis on the West Coast, and Zeballos and Kyuquot and so on. This was generally open to competition—a charter carrier could also apply for those routes, although there was a period of time in the 60’s when the air transport board granted some protected licenses. This meant that only a particular airline could fly between certain points and other carriers could not.

Phil Bergman: Insurance requirements are far more strict and expensive then they used to be. It would be prohibitively expensive for us to bring someone new into the company with no time. It’s just simply not worth it. We don’t have the small aircraft like the Cessnas anymore, and that’s traditionally what pilots started out on when they were working their way up the company.

Don Braithwaite: I did quite a bit as far as getting airports together and getting them licensed on the Coast here. Bella Bella didn’t have an airport so I was instigator there. I went up and had a look around. I got enough people interested in it and we got a contractor and started building the airport up there at Denny Island and consequently it was constructed. There were problems with the Indians. They wanted a strip over at Campbell Island. Campbell Island had a hill or mountain on it that was 900 feet high. In that country you need IFL let down. At 900 feet in the air you can’t see ground. On Denny Island you are 900 feet lower, which had a better chance of breaking out of the fog and seeing the runway. Anyway, the Indians all jumped up and down and I don’t know where they got their money from, but they built one. There was no airport between Port Hardy and Rupert, but they had two airports at Bella Bella.

Pattison 'Daze'

Don Braithwaite: I call him ‘Uncle Jimmy’. Pattison wanted to buy an airline and I thought, “You are just the man for me.”

Gord Beadle: The stories have it that Jimmy Pattison tried to buy PWA. PWA wouldn’t even entertain the idea and wouldn’t even let him look at the books, “Go away little guy you can’t afford us,” sort-of-thing. Pattison says, “Okay, I’ll fix you, I’ll build my own airline”.

Don Braithwaite: I enjoyed building the airlines up but it just got to ya. Every time ya moved there was someone there between the union, the Ministry of Transport and the bank. You don’t need all that stuff.

Gordie Wilkinson: I was on Don’s dock when Jimmy Pattison came walking up. Don introduced me to him and he had a handshake like a wet dishrag. He bought everything up— Alert Bay, everything he could find. I don’t even know what the hell he was gonna do with them. Then he started selling them off. He didn’t want this one, didn’t want that one.

Jim Creighton: When I first came here, the one evil character that kept rearing his ugly head was Jim Pattison. Apparently, he totally screwed everything up. Larry doesn’t even shop at Save-On-Foods, he refuses to.

Stan Kaardal: Jimmy Pattison came in and purchased almost all the airlines and then he offered me a position as Vice President in Vancouver and also as Chief Pilot. I didn’t want any part of it. They gave me an excellent package and I left.

Ted Turner: I remember the day when Jimmy Pattison and his big shots came walking up the dock looking at the planes. And we thought, “Oh, I guess we’re gonna be owned by him.” He was doing the same thing to every airline on the coast. As soon as he bought the airline, he would dissolve them.

Tom Langdon: What he wanted was the licenses. At the time it was very difficult to start there from scratch and get them approved. You needed to jump through lots and lots of hoops from the Ministry of Transport. So it was a lot easier to buy all these little airlines, sell the assets, lay off the pilots, and then do whatever you wanted with it. So that was the basis of Air BC. It got started with these licenses between Hardy, Vancouver and Campbell River and all those little commuter routes.

Don Braithwaite: They wanted me to run it, so I said, “Okay I’ll run it for a while.” That was probably one of the worst parts in my life. I had to fire a lot of people. They got everybody together in our office and told us no-one would be laid off, you know, just like one big happy family. I said to Rusty—Pattison’s guy—“Where in the hell did you get that bullshit from?”

Norene Reedel: It didn’t really start going to hell until Pattison bought out the seven coastal airlines, and made them into what became Air BC. I was part of that whole transition.

Gord Beadle: One of the first things they did after the sale was merge the two Campbell River airlines. This was Gulf Island Air and we were operating under one roof but as individual entities. I could only fly an Island Air airplane and the Gulf guys could only fly Gulf Air because of the licenses.

Val Todd: Gulf Island Air was a just a name. The Island Air building was here and the Gulf Air building was here. What they did for a while was operated scheduled service out of one building and chartered service out of the other—which meant for some awkward stuff trying to dispatch it.

Norene Reedel: There was some dissention too. When they merged Gulf Air and Island Air, there were hard feelings with some of the management. They didn’t keep everybody and that was bad. It was really hard to see guys like Old Harry Taylor phased out all together. Harry had been the Chief Pilot at Island Air and he actually was the one that originally hired me. There was some bad blood, and that was hard. Harry, still to this day, doesn’t come to any airline reunions. It’s sad.