Chapter 13 - A Different Kind of Boss

Working with "Gauch"

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It was early April, approaching twelve hours of daylight each day. Walter returned to his trailer at twilight, with a simple dinner on his mind. As he tidied up from his meal, he was surprised to receive a call from Barney. Barney told him that a Hydro crew was past due. They had set out at first light in a Nodwell – a large snow machine on big tracks – to check the power line. They hadn’t returned, and now it was dark.

“Don’t fill out a charter ticket – this is completely unofficial,” Barney said. “You can go if you want; they can pay you if they want. We won’t pay you. You don’t exist while this is going on.”

Walter understood clearly what Barney was saying. Going to find the missing crew was the right thing to do, but it was against regulation to fly a single-engine charter at night. Barney was letting him know the situation and wouldn’t stop him from flying to find the crew, but he made it crystal clear he wasn’t asking him to go. If Walter went, he would be a ghost on the mission.

Walter didn’t hesitate. Not only did he know a few of the Hydro guys, he knew that spending the night out there in the cold and dark, even with basic winter gear, would not be comfortable. He wouldn’t be able to land in the dark, but if he could find them, Hydro could send out snowmobiles to bring the crew home. They could worry about recovering the Nodwell in daylight.

Tugging the power cord free from the block heater that kept his truck’s engine warm enough to turn over, Walter climbed into his otherwise frozen truck and wondered what problem the crew had encountered this time. It was a regular duty to check the power lines that extended from the hydro dam on the Taltson River to Fort Smith, and on to a mine further out. The inspection could be done in just a few hours from the air. The crew looked for any problem with the towers or the lines that could cause a power failure. Sometimes, though, the higher-ups at Hydro became money-conscious and said it cost too much to charter a flight for the work. Instead, the crew could take the Nodwell.

Walter’s friend had told him of the Nodwell breaking down, getting stuck, or otherwise stranding the crew along the route on multiple occasions. Even on a good day, it was a slow old tank, a workhorse intended for moving cargo, not for covering a lot of ground. The guys disliked taking the snow machine on their rounds; it meant a job that took only a few hours by air, would instead take all day, and would likely include a serious hassle at some point in the trip.

When Walter arrived at the airbase, everything was quiet. The light was on in the Gateway office. Walter knew whoever was inside would wait until he safely returned from his task. He walked straight to the Cessna 180. It was parked near the shack that housed the Gateway office and, like his truck, was plugged in so it would start in the cold temperatures. There was no new snow that evening, that was a relief. He settled into the cockpit, and fired up the engine. It chugged to life, breaking the silence of the night air. He taxied out to the airstrip, the lights on either side of the airstrip laying out a diminishing “v” ahead of him in the darkness.

Walter knew the route the crew should have taken, he had flown it several times before. When the lights of the Nodwell came into view, Walter flew in as close as he could get. He couldn’t land, but he wanted to confirm the crew was in the machine, and that they saw him. He saw the machine was still moving, but just crawling along at a rate of no more than a couple of miles an hour. At that speed, it would take them all night to get back to Fort Smith. He suspected they were experiencing some sort of engine trouble. He reported the location of the disabled machine and his observations to Barney, who could relay it to staff at Hydro, before banking the aircraft away and returning to Fort Smith. Hydro would have to send out a crew to rescue their guys – Walter couldn’t land at night off the airstrip.

The next day he learned that the Nodwell indeed had engine trouble; the transmission had failed, leaving the machine with only its lowest gear. That’s why it had been crawling along so slowly. That last gear did hold out to get the crew home, but the incident seemed to be what it took to finally convince the decision-makers at Hydro to charter flights for the power line checks in the future.

Although Walter had learned a lot during his year with Gateway, and he was very appreciative of the opportunity to stay on over the winter months, he had already decided he wanted to see what additional experience he could pile on by flying for Bob Gauchie. In March, he had given notice to Barney; his last day of work at Gateway would be April 30th, 1970. The summer pilots would be at the base by then, and Walter’s departure wouldn’t leave Barney in a bind.

In some ways, the move from Gateway to Buffalo would require little change on Walter’s part – he would simply park his truck in front of a different shed at the airbase when he went to work. There was, however, an additional endorsement he needed on his license: the multi-engine endorsement. He also thought he’d move back into his camper for the summer, so the trailer could be rented out to someone who needed it more than he did.

He notified his landlord he’d be moving out at the end of April, and registered for his multi-engine endorsement with Skyways in Langley, BC. When he finished his final flight for Gateway on April 30th , and Barney had signed off his logbook to confirm the hours he had flown for the company, Walter climbed into his truck and started driving south.

He stopped overnight at his parents’ home in Kelowna before carrying on to Langley, with a promise to return for a longer visit once he had obtained his endorsement. Back at the coast, he visited a few friends, but his main focus was preparing for the multi-engine endorsement. In addition to studying, and some classroom sessions, Walter booked two lessons with an instructor to make sure he had adequate practice time, as operating a multi-engine aircraft took some getting used to. His first lesson had him in the right-hand seat of a Piper Apache, but he was pilot in command for the second one. The training flights covered flight manoeuvres and emergency procedures specific to multi-engine aircraft, especially the all-important question of what to do when one engine failed.

Walter already knew that one of the most critical emergency skills in multi-engine flying was how to tell which engine had quit, and how to safely manoeuvre on one engine. It sounded simple enough, but in practice it could fool even an experienced pilot. When an engine lost power, the airplane would yaw toward the dead side, the drag from the failed propeller pulling it around. If you pushed hard on the opposite rudder pedal, you could keep the nose straight — but that’s when the body could trick the mind. Instinct could make it seem that the leg doing all the work indicated the problem side, and it was easy to get confused.

That was why pilots were drilled in the “dead-engine check.” It was a deliberate, step-by-step test designed to make sure you knew which engine had failed. The procedure was straightforward: pull the throttle back on the engine you think has failed. If nothing changes – no extra yaw, no new vibration, no drop in sound – that’s the dead one. But if the airplane suddenly swings harder, you’ve just pulled the power on the good engine, and you’d better get it back fast.

It was a lesson that stuck with Walter. He had read that many pilots had lost airplanes because they guessed instead of checking. The dead-engine check took only seconds to perform, but it could mean the difference between a safe landing and ending up in an accident report.

The second of Walter’s training flights took place on the morning of May 8th. That afternoon, he went up again, this time with the evaluator who signed him off for the endorsement. With that job complete, he returned to Kelowna for a longer visit with his family. He enjoyed a week spent catching up with his siblings, their growing families, and his parents, who filled him in on the latest news from friends and relatives. He particularly enjoyed hearing the latest news from his Uncle Herb. Herb had gotten married, and he and his wife, Grace, were on a mission in Africa. From the stories that made it back to the family, it was clear that Uncle Herb still had a creative approach to everyday problems. Now his problems were just larger – specifically the size of the elephants that were creating havoc in the village where he and Grace lived. Bigger problems required bigger innovations. Walter listened to the stories with amusement. He had always admired his uncle’s “can do” attitude, and it looked like adulthood had not diminished his positive outlook on life.

When Walter returned to Fort Smith on May 24th, 1970, to begin work for Bob Gauchie, his new boss already had a job waiting for him. Walter took the details; Bob pointed him to a Cessna 185, tail number CF-PCA, that was sitting on the ramp, and a new chapter began.

The aircraft he’d been assigned was one of the original 185s, another very old airplane, with a less powerful engine than 185s that were built later. It became Walter’s main ride until Gauch leased a Beaver a few months later.

The 185 was a real “water lover”, as Walter and his colleagues joked. It took effort to power it up off the water, though Walter figured it had more to do with its rigging than the engine. It was important to keep in mind, though. One day, he had a slightly heavier load than the aircraft could comfortably handle, but he managed to coax it off the water at Instant Lake. The moment he tried to lift the nose to climb, though, the plane began to slow and sink. He was skimming along, just six feet above the lake, held aloft only by ground effect.

Realizing he really had no real lift, he pushed the nose down – a counter-intuitive move when his instinct was to climb – and let the aircraft build speed. Gradually, the controls responded. He eased the nose up again, and the plane began to claw its way skyward, but at a rate of about 50 feet a minute. Instant Lake was not big, and he ran out of lake in no time. No longer above water, he was committed. For a long while, he wasn’t able climb much higher than the treetops. He paid careful attention to his cargo weight after that experience.

The 185 (CF-PCA) that gave Walter trouble on Instant Lake. Photo: Walter Harms

Around the base, Walter liked the upbeat attitude in the Buffalo offices and hangar – nothing was a problem. He had known before he accepted the job that working for Bob would be unlike any job he had previously held. The job would be different because Bob was different. Bob was outcome oriented, and flexible and creative with regard to how outcomes were achieved. He knew a vast network of people ranging from the aircraft industry to politicians of the day, both provincial and federal. He had previously run for office in the North, and everyone knew him. His epic survival story – being stranded on a frozen lake for fifty-eight days before being rescued – also afforded him celebrity status in the region. When he wanted to do something, he was a guy who didn’t see obstacles; he saw opportunities.

There was another pilot working for Bob at that time, a fellow Walter knew from around the base, Freddie Keuber. Freddie had worked with Bob, flying a Cessna 206 the previous summer while Walter was at Gateway. Freddie was a quiet, unassuming guy, and Walter liked him.

One afternoon, as the two men were talking in the office, Bob walked in and said, “You guys need to tell me where you want to work this summer.”

He started running through the shortlist of charter opportunities he was considering bidding on for the season – the Wood Buffalo Park contract that Walter had flown the year before for Gateway, a Forest Service contract, and a few smaller ones. Walter and Freddie listened while Bob laid out the details, then talked it over between themselves once he’d gone.

They both liked the sound of the Forestry job. For one thing, it covered a vast area, even larger than Wood Buffalo, and more miles meant more money. The Forest Service also kept its pilots busy. They went after fires even in remote areas that posed no threat to communities or infrastructure, so there was always work to be done if a guy was willing.

What really appealed to Walter was the terrain itself. The Forest Service looked after everything outside the park boundary, and that land had bigger, deeper lakes. Walter still remembered the rude shock of running aground in a deceptively shallow lake in Wood Buffalo. When the water level dropped just a few inches, a change barely noticeable from the shore or the air, and the a once-navigable lake became a trap. He was determined not to repeat that experience.

They told Bob they were keen to take the Forest Services contract. A few days later, he came back with the news: they’d landed it. For Walter, it was a new experience to have a boss with that kind of inside track.

Fire season quickly took over the activity at the base, and Walter settled into its exhausting rhythm. Many days he logged between nine and eleven hours of flying time, sometimes taking twenty to thirty separate flights. Most were short hops – fifteen or twenty minutes from one area of the fire to another. Often, he was hauling crew around, but he also moved a lot of their fire-fighting equipment. The 185 didn’t have a lot of cargo space, big items like fuel barrels didn’t fit inside, but supplies for the firefighting crews, and smaller equipment did.

Despite the long days, the crew kept things light around the base. One evening, as Walter stopped by the office to hand in his charter tickets, Freddie’s wife dropped in, asking where he was. One of the guys in the office said, “We don’t know where he is, or when he’ll be back – he said he was going to find some peace and quiet.” Walter wondered what such a comment would do to Freddie’s domestic situation, but she didn’t seem too put out by the comment. That was just the type of banter that kept everyone sane.

Later that month, when Walter returned to Instant Lake after a long day, he noticed a crowd gathered around a Beaver that was tied up to the dock. Wandering over, he learned it was the very first de Havilland Beaver ever built – construction number one. Gateway had leased the historic aircraft for the season, and it was on its way south to their Edmonton base. Walter and the crews from both Gateway and Buffalo gathered around, admiring the airplane that had started it all. Seeing it tied up there beside other hardworking float planes, they couldn’t help but feel like they were a small part of the history it represented.

In early July, Bob acquired another Beaver – CF-ODE – for their operation in Fort Smith, and it became Walter’s new ride. Unlike the 185, the Beaver had real hauling power. It could carry three full 55-gallon drums, each weighing about 450 pounds. The barrels needed to be rolled through the door horizontally, then stood upright once they were inside the airplane. It was hard work, and Walter was often alone to load and unload the barrels. Using a ramp, he rolled the barrels up into the plane, then climbed in himself. There was no room to stand up straight, so he was bent over, picking up one end of the barrel – which weighed over 200 pounds – with his back. He did this over and over, day after day. He, like the other pilots, carried some camp gear with him. When he was too exhausted to carry on, he found a sandy beach on a lake in the area, and heeled the airplane up. He set up his small camp-cot on the cargo deck of the airplane for an hour or two, and had a nap before getting back at it. The cot was a tight fit in the Beaver, but it was possible. Sometimes he took a dip in the frigid lake before settling in for the nap. The shock of the cold water helped him feel a little more human again. There was a reason, he thought, bush pilots often called themselves “bush apes”.

A good example of a typical stretch occurred in the middle of June, he was supporting the ground crew on Fire 3. On June 15th, Walter logged nine and a half hours in the air, spread over thirty to forty flights, most just fifteen to thirty minutes long. The days themselves ran much longer, often close to twenty hours, with the heavy work of loading and unloading book-ending each short flight. The following day he flew more than eleven hours. Occasionally there was a longer flight back to Fort Smith, but most were short cycles that were punishing on both man and machine. It was exhausting work for the pilots, and the aircraft were constantly hammering across waves on the lakes under take-off power, carrying heavy loads. Walter appreciated that Bob insisted on keeping the aircraft well maintained. Any repairs that couldn’t be done by the mechanics in Fort Smith were sent out to Northern Mountain Airways in Prince George, British Columbia, for major overhauls.

To help shorten Walter’s long workdays, Bob brought in another pilot for a few weeks during the height of the fire season – a fellow named of Cedric Mah. The plan was to split operations into two twelve hour shifts, so the Beaver could fly around the clock. With more than twenty hours of daylight that far north, fire crews were working nearly nonstop, and they needed air support to match.

Cedric was an interesting guy with an equally interesting past. He told Walter he’d flown a DC3 between Southeast Asia and China – a dangerous route over the Himalayas. These days, he described himself as a “freelance” bush pilot, and he made it clear he didn’t work nights. Walter didn’t mind working the overnight hours, so he adjusted his schedule to take over when Cedric returned to Instant Lake at the end of the day.

Cedric flew the Beaver by day, then handed it off to Walter for the night-shift. Cedric said he had crashed in the Arctic before, and he’d gotten pretty hungry while he waited for a ride out. Now, in the spirit of preparedness, he carried more gear and supplies than most of the other guys. He stowed the usual survival gear everyone carried, but also a barbecue, a sizable food stash, and a tent, into the back of the Beaver every day.

Cedric didn’t stay in Fort Smith for long, and after he left, Walter returned to daytime flying. Before long, though, he noticed an unusual smell in the plane. Each day, it seemed to get worse. He had searched everywhere but had found nothing, so he mentioned it to the ground crew. They’d noticed it too, though they hadn’t been able to track down the source, either. Finally, curiosity – and the stench – got the better of them, and they pulled off the tail cone. That’s where they found it: a pound of rancid butter, likely a forgotten item from Cedric’s supplies. Cedric had moved on, but a bit of his cargo had stayed behind.

Before the summer was out, another pilot arrived at the base – Joe McBryan. Joe had been flying DC3s on a route further north for Great Northern Airways. Joe didn’t yet have his float endorsement – he hadn’t needed it for his previous work – so he couldn’t fly most of the existing fleet. Bob quickly brought in a Piper Aztec for Joe, and he began flying government charters between Yellowknife and Cambridge Bay.

The Aztec (CF-MIG) and the Beaver (CF-ODE) on the apron at Fort Smith Airbase. Photo: Walter Harms

As the first summer at Buffalo wrapped up, the work became lighter, and the air cooler. Bob invited Walter to park his truck and camper in the hangar, where the overnight temperatures were much warmer. That was a nice gesture, and saved Walter from having to rent a place in Fort Smith once the night-time temperatures dropped.

There were more hunting groups and other recreational clients chartering flights. When there were no chartered flights booked, Bob let the crew use the planes for personal use, and Bob did the same. On October 6, 1970 he took a group of guys up to a small lake to fish. He used the Noorduyn Norseman, a single-engine bush plane that was designed to be able to take off from rough ground, though it was still on floats that day. When it was time to return to Fort Smith, Bob taxied the Norseman, and took off. Immediately after takeoff, the engine died, so he quickly turned it around to try land back on the lake. He didn’t have enough speed to flare properly, and the plane dove into the water. Everyone got out with only minor injuries, and the Norseman ended up submerged.

Walter didn’t hear about this incident until the next day, when he met Joe at the Buffalo office. They had arranged to go up together in the Aztec, so Joe could check Walter out on the twin-engine aircraft. Joe told him what he knew about Bob’s crash, and the men mused about what would happen next.

They didn’t have to wait long to find out. Within a few days, Department of Transportation accident investigators arrived at the base on their way to the crash site. Rumour had it that Bob was already on their radar, and they were especially eager to get to the bottom of this latest incident. Over the following weeks, the investigators went so far as to haul the Norseman up out of the lake and perch it on a large boulder in the water to give them better access. They went to the crash site daily, before retreating back to Ottawa to write up their reports. As far as Walter was concerned, the whole circus was just one more good reason to do whatever it took to avoid bending your airplane.  

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Author’s Notes:

N.B.1: We often see our parents through the lens of their roles in our lives— caregivers, disciplinarians, cheerleaders. Perhaps they are our role models or mentors, but who were they before they became these things to us?”

To better understand who my parents were before they were, well, my parents, I set about interviewing them about their lives before marriage and kids. I started with my mom, and you can read her story here, and now, “Learning to Fly” is the story of my dad.

Walter Harms was the oldest son of Mary and Jake Harms, Mennonites who fled to Canada in search of safety and the hope for a better future. He was a curious child, always interested in the land they lived on, and how things worked. As a young man, this curiosity led him to respond to an advertisement for flying lessons, and the rest, as they say, is history.

Walter is my dad, and this is his story, as told to me in a series of interviews in 2024-25. The story is pieced together from Dad’s memory, photos, and documents. As we all know, memory is fallible. In the telling of this story, some names have been changed, either because they could not be recalled, or to protect the privacy of the person.

N.B.2: The town of Fort Smith is located within Treaty 8 Territory, and encompasses the traditional homelands of Salt River First Nation, Smith’s Landing First Nation, and the Indigenous Metis people of Fort Smith.