To the Stars the Hard Way

It wasn't an easy war to get into, back in 1939 and 1940. In fact, if you lived in Canada and wanted to fly, you soon began to think it must be a private war, reserved for university graduates, or people with brown hair, or former glass blowers, but certainly not open to young men whose principal qualification was a desire to get in there and fight. Later you found that the trouble had been a lack of planes and schools and instructors, that the country wasn't organized for the job it had taken on. But you didn't know that at first and you hadn't realized that you wouldn't be allowed to fight Germans in the air unless you could prove that you had gone all the way through high school. It fried you to a crisp to learn these things, not to be able to get in, to feel that you were being barred from the job you had been living for, that you were all raveled in red tape. That was the way it hit me — and plenty of others.

Ever since I can remember, airplanes and to get up in them into the free sky had been the beginning and end of my thoughts and ambitions. The woods are full of youngsters who drop anything they're doing to watch the planes go by and who can tell by the drone of an engine exactly what type of aircraft is passing. All over North America kids by the tens of thousands are whittling flying models. But with me it went even deeper than that. I don't know exactly when I began to feel this way, by the time I was nine all my afterschool hours and my Saturdays were spent at the old Lasalle Road Airport, about three miles from home, watching the planes of the Montreal Light Aeroplane Club and others — I remember seeing a couple of Gypsy Moths, an Aironca and a Travelair — I remember seeing them take off and land.

I realize that even then flying was an obsession with me. From the first day I watched a Moth disappear beyond the St. Lawrence I knew I was going to be a pilot, or else. Instead of sitting behind my desk in Bannantyne School, the urge to sneak off to the airport was too strong and I'd play hooky, knowing the cost only too well — two lickings, one at school and another at home — but I figured it was well worth it. When I got out to the field I'd climb the fence and try to get near the planes, hoping I'd maybe even get a chance to talk to a pilot. Then, in the late afternoon, I'd sneak home, late for supper, and afterwards put in hours of homework on the newest model aircraft hidden in the bedroom cupboard.

That year the Lasalle Airport was closed down and the planes moved out behind Mount Royal, back of the city, to the Cartierville field. I was only nine or ten then, and it was a long trek, but I was out there every Saturday, and whenever else I could make it. Sometimes I was lucky enough to scrape up a couple of streetcar tickets. But no matter how I got there, I'd be at the field whenever I could, just hanging around, watching and hoping. Then, all of a sudden, the dream came true.

It was during the summer holidays, the year I was ten. As usual, I was at the airport and somewhere close to the hangar when a quick thundershower blew up. I was huddled against the wall and a man came along. It was a man I guess I had been watching and worshiping from afar for months.

"Come on in, kid, and keep dry," he said, pushing me toward the holy of holies, where the planes were kept. Inside, we talked all through the storm. That is, he talked and I said "Yessir" and "Nosir" every once in a while. Then the rain stopped and we started to go out,

"Thanks a lot, sir," I said.

"That's fine, kid," said my benefactor. "Say, you think a lot of flying, don't you? Like to take a flip someday?"

Would I! Okay. Go home and ask your mother, if she says it's all right, 111 take you for a ride. Can you picture the ten-year-old who rode the trolley back to Montreal and on down into Verdun, the suburb where home was?

The family thought it was just a gag. Who'd take a ten-year-old sky-riding? Sure, you can fly, mom said. Sure, you can go to the moon!

I was back at Cartierville the next morning, long before the planes were out on the apron, looking for my pilot. "Mister! Mister!" I began to yell when he was still fifty yards away. "It's all right. I can go. My mom says I can fly!"

"All right, son, all right," the man said. "Keep your shirt on. Well fly ... right now, if you like!"

Ten minutes later we were in the air, heading toward the mountain and the city ... and I was a flier for the rest of time, no matter what happened. From now on the world would never be the same again!

The man I rode out and up with that morning remains my best friend and adviser to this day. Bush pilot, barnstormer, instructor, and now parachute tester, Ted Hogan is the fellow who brought me along, who found odd jobs for me to do around the Cartierville field and who, by the time I was twelve, was letting me get the feel of the controls. Mom thought I ought to be a doctor. Dad hoped I would become a commercial artist. But Hogan always said: "Fly, kid. It's the only life!" It sure is!

By the time I was fourteen I was selling papers and magazines, building model aircraft and selling them to the other kids around Verdun, running errands, doing anything I could find time to do to scrape money together for flying lessons. Whenever he could find the time Ted would take me up and let me fly his Rambler around, always for free. Not once did he accept a cent from me. It used to take about a month to earn $10 and whenever that total had been reached I'd quit everything else to plunk my big bill down on the counter and buy an hour's dual from one of the other instructors, usually a chap named Champagne, whom everybody called "Fizzy." Finally, when I was sixteen, my dad helped out with the last wad of bills to let me finish my dual and start out on my own. I was away!

If you've come straight from school, factory, or office to the Air Force, your first solo is liable to be an occasion preceded by something closely resembling the jitters, I guess. But if you've been hanging around airdromes since you were nine and have spent the last couple of years running errands and washing down planes to earn money for flying lessons, it's your real big moment. Mine was, anyway. I did two circuits and landings, and they were good landings. I can still feel those skis touching snow, soft as feathers, for the great day happened in midwinter. You have to give some of the credit to the skis and the snow-covered field, because the combination gives better take-offs and smoother landings than wheels and hard ground. Even so, they were good landings, and I felt swell.

In the air I was tempted to chuck the little Rambler about, as Ted used to let me when we were up together and I had the controls. But I wanted to keep on flying, not to be...