Previous chapter / Next chapter / Start at the beginning
Walter focused on the shoreline as he eased the throttle back on the Taylorcraft. A light breeze rippled Wood Lake, puckering the water into small waves that made it easier for him to judge his descent. The floats hung level, ready for landing, as he continued to bleed off speed. He felt them skim the surface, then the hiss of water fanning away from the floats. Once the plane slowed, Walter worked the rudder pedals and taxied the float plane—his float plane—toward the dock at the seaplane base at the south end of the lake.
He had visited the base a few weeks earlier, before leaving for Vancouver to buy the Taylorcraft. The owner had been busy shutting down the operation for the winter, but when Walter explained he hoped to moor a float plane there, the man readily agreed. And when Walter mentioned he planned to fly every day if he could, hoping to pile on enough hours to pick up a flying job the next summer, the owner surprised him with an offer:
“Help yourself to fuel whenever you need it, just write it down.”
A scribbler and a pencil sat in the shack by the fuel pump. Walter was to note the date and amount each time he fueled up, then settle the account in the spring. It was an unexpected gesture of trust, especially since they’d only just met—and Walter didn’t even own a plane yet. As he tucked the keys for the pump and the shack into his pocket, he conveyed his thanks, and his assurances that he would log what he used.
His brother John drove him to Vancouver, where Walter met Ed Zelesky. Ed had a two-seater Taylorcraft on floats, tied up at a private seaplane base on Deas Slough in Richmond. Walter took it for a test flight and liked how the little plane handled. With a slightly oversized propeller that provided two extra inches of sweep, the aircraft had more bite in the air, and Walter thought it flew beautifully.
They agreed on a price of $3,200, including a set of wheels and a set of skis. The purchase was uncomplicated, Walter handed over the money, and Ed handed over the plane. Other than a simple form to complete that registered Walter as the owner, there was nothing more to it. Walter owned a plane.
Because the Okanagan winter was unusually mild with little valley snow and the larger lakes were still open, and Walter had secured moorage on Wood Lake for the plane, they decided that Ed could store the wheels and skis in his Richmond hangar, and he would retrieve them if necessary.
Within days, he was flying the Taylorcraft back to the Okanagan. He had saved enough money from the gruelling job on the Upper Fraser to spend the rest of the winter in the air. His plan was simple: he would fly every day he could, piling on the hours and experience. He hoped that would be enough to get his foot in the door for a flying job in the spring.
He wasted no time. With basic camping gear stowed in the plane, Walter set out to build his flying experience. The Taylorcraft was very efficient with fuel, burning just 3.2 gallons per hour, and at only 32 cents per imperial gallon, it was remarkably affordable. Flying cost him just a few dollars an hour. The thought that it was cheaper to fly his plane than to drive his car, the Karmann Ghai, occurred to him more than once that winter.
By day, Walter flew around the region, exploring the landscape from above. If something caught his eye along the shore of a lake, he would land and investigate. He often ended his days on Adams Lake, a long, narrow stretch of water that separated the Thompson and Shuswap regions of the province. Its flat beaches made perfect places to tie up the plane and pitch a tent.
Sometimes he landed halfway up the lake, where he had noticed a small cabin tucked in the woods. Curious, he had once stopped to see what it was. An old trapper lived there, and after Walter explained how he had arrived, the fellow welcomed him inside. The cabin was only accessible by water or air. In winter, there was very little boat traffic, and even fewer float planes. It was an isolated place, and even a solitary trapper could get lonely. Over the season, Walter stopped in a few times for a visit before continuing north to camp at the far end of the lake.
One morning, as he looked out from his tent on a sandy beach at the head of Adams Lake, Walter found large wolf tracks circling around the tent. Relieved the animal had only passed by and had a sniff, Walter paused in the moment, struck by the reminder of how wild and untouched that corner of the province was.
The freedom of flight and the freedom of time felt both novel and thrilling for Walter. He often reflected on the contrast: only months earlier, in late 1966, he had nearly frozen to death working at the Upper Fraser mill site; now, in the first months of 1967, he was flying his own airplane, pulling up on remote beaches to camp, then taking off again the next morning to explore more. The difference was stark, and he revelled in it. He flew through the rest of that winter all around the Okanagan and Shuswap. The weather was perfect, with unfrozen lakes and bare shores.
On one of his flights down to the coast to visit his siblings, Gerda and Norman, in Vancouver, Walter also stopped in to see Ed. Ed had an engine sitting around, a four-cylinder Continental, the same one that powered the Taylorcraft, but with fewer hours on it. Walter made a plan to haul it up to Wood Lake. The engine wasn’t that heavy, and the swap wasn’t especially difficult, but it was still a two-man job, so he enlisted a friend to help. Together, they changed the engine without trouble. The Taylorcraft flew even better than before.
When he went home to Kelowna for a few days here and there, he eagerly checked the mail. He anticipated the arrival of communications from the federal Department of Transport - Aviation branch, the accident reports and safety summaries that were sent to all pilots with a commercial license or higher. Walter studied every one with keen interest. Each report detailed the aircraft type, the specific engine and any modifications, weather and environmental factors, and the pilot’s actions before and after the incident. They included probable causes and contributing factors such as mechanical failures or pilot error and occasionally carried notes on design flaws or service notices. By studying them, Walter gained valuable insight into how different aircraft responded to power loss or engine failure, knowledge he was grateful to learn second-hand rather than by experience.
That spring, Walter applied for the first job opening he found: a flying instructor position with Harrison Airways. By then, he had already logged over 1,000 hours of command time. He had hoped for a charter pilot job, since Harrison was involved in far more interesting work than instruction. Besides general charter services, the company also held a contract to fly harbour pilots to ports further up the west coast. They flew a Grumman Widgeon flying boat for that job. Vancouver, being a major port, had its own pool of harbour pilots. But many others, like Prince Rupert, Kitimat, Stewart, and a scattering of smaller, privately built harbours for mining companies, did not. Some ports were particularly challenging to navigate, requiring the skill of an experienced harbour pilot to bring ships safely in. The harbour pilots were based in Vancouver and Victoria, and when a ship was due to arrive at one of these northern ports, Harrison would fly them out to meet it.
Perhaps the most intriguing contract Harrison held, at least to Walter, was the newly awarded “ice contract”. The job involved flying DC-3s over Arctic ice floes to monitor the condition and location of shipping channels. Walter knew he would need more credibility in the industry before being considered for such work, but he took encouragement from the variety of flying opportunities that existed.
He also understood he was entering aviation when pilots were plentiful and breaking in would be tough. The job at the flight school wasn’t his first choice, but that’s where the work was, since nobody wanted to be an instructor. It was an opening, and a job was a job.
Harrison Airways ran its flying school out of a hangar at the South Terminal of Vancouver Airport on Sea Island. Two Cessna 150s, outfitted with dual controls, were used for lessons. Senior flight instructor Buzz Bivar introduced Walter to his new role. Buzz, an interesting character, arrived for work every day wearing a black suit, a white shirt, and a black tie, even though the suit had aged and discoloured. He stood out like the dickens; nobody else dressed like that around the airstrip. Walter found him to be very serious, if not aloof. Still, there was a lot to learn from him, and Walter enjoyed getting him talking about his career. Buzz had been an instructor all his life. He had taught on P-51s and other fighters during the war as part of the Commonwealth Air Training Plan, at Boundary Bay Airport in Richmond. There, they had trained hundreds of fighter pilots on their way to serve Britain and the Commonwealth. Walter soaked up the details of aviation history in the province.
Around the office, he heard stories of Harrison Airway’s own history. In their early days, based out of Harrison Lake, the company had done brisk business flying loggers in and out of remote coastal camps. They used a rugged bush plane for that work—a Norseman. The Norseman’s pilot was a fellow named Merv McCaroll, who was about thirty years old at the time but with a boyish look that made him seem far younger. For first-time passengers, it could be disconcerting to see what appeared to be a kid climbing into the cockpit and preparing to fly them out.
An amusing incident happened not long after Merv started at Harrison. One morning, a group of loggers arrived at the dock where Merv was readying the plane. He acknowledged them briefly, then went about his pre-flight routine, occasionally glancing up the dock and checking his watch as though he were waiting for someone. Finally, he turned to the men and said, “You might as well climb in and wait inside.”
The loggers did as he suggested, settling into their seats while Merv cast off from the dock and pushed away. As he settled himself into the cockpit, as casually as if announcing the weather, he leaned over his shoulder and said, “I guess he’s not coming. I’ll take you up.”
The previously boisterous passengers were silent, their nerves prickling at the idea that this “kid” was their pilot. But Merv knew what he was doing, and by the time the flight was over, they accepted that he wasn’t just some kid at the controls—he was the real deal. By the time Walter met him, Merv was flying the Grumman Widgeon, but he enjoyed telling stories from his days with the Norseman.
Once he started working for Harrison Airways, Walter didn’t have as much time to fly his Taylorcraft, so he approached Ed Zelesky to see if he could help find a buyer. Ed offered to purchase it back himself for the same $3,200 Walter had originally paid. Granted, Walter had invested in the engine change, but he still thought that was a pretty good deal and accepted.
Now that he was based back on the coast, where Norman was also renting a place, the brothers decided to pool their resources and buy a house trailer. They found one that suited them and took out a small mortgage. When the bank offered them life insurance on the mortgage, they signed up. They set their new home on a pad in a trailer park on King George Highway in Surrey, and settled in.
Although Walter didn’t mind his work as a flight instructor, he never stopped keeping an eye out for a pilot’s job. He also took practical steps toward the lifestyle he envisioned in his near future. His Karmann Ghia, once a source of excitement, no longer held the same appeal. The car stuck to the road, offering none of the freedom he found in flying, though it continued to draw speeding tickets. Walter sold the car and put the money toward a ‘64 Ford truck, a far more practical vehicle for the life he was building.
In March 1968, one pilot he knew recommended him to a small mining company called Spartan Explorations. A couple of guys who had struck it rich with a copper mine a few years earlier in the Yukon had founded the company, and their head office was in Vancouver. Walter went to the office to introduce himself, and to find out more about the job. He learned one of the company bosses was a prospector named Al Kulan, who was a well-known name in the North. He had been involved in the development of the Faro mine, a massive lead-zinc operation that had made many men wealthy, and now, he and his partners were turning their attention to uranium. For that, they needed to survey from the air, using a gamma ray spectrometer. They bought a plane, a Piper Super Cub on floats, and they needed a pilot to fly it. Walter had flown a Super Cub previously for Ed Zelesky, so he accepted the job. His first assignment was to reposition aircraft to the company’s base camp in Ross River.
When Walter arrived at the rudimentary base camp that afternoon, his spirits were high. The weather was splendid, with bright sunshine and temperatures near zero. He was full of anticipation about the work ahead.
The camp was new, and the accommodations were basic—a tent-frame structure. Walter would learn they were common in the North. They were constructed of plywood and canvas over a metal tent-frame. There was a plywood floor, and the lower four feet of the walls also roughed in with plywood, while canvas stretched over the upper walls and roof. They were sturdy enough to keep out the wind, and kept you up off the frozen ground, though they were hardly luxurious.
Tent-frame structures had popped up after the introduction of the single-engine Otter, designed with space to haul full sheets of plywood. Walter was coming to understand that nothing in aviation happened in isolation. Aircraft design influenced the way people lived and worked in the bush, and vice versa. He often thought about those connections, how one innovation enabled another.
That first night, the weather made the accommodations feel even more primitive. By dinnertime, the balmy daytime temperatures were dropping, and quickly. Walter stood in front of the thermometer, watching the needle sink. One night, it hit 72 below Fahrenheit—about minus 56 Celsius. At that temperature, a man couldn’t simply step outside and draw a breath; the air itself could freeze his lungs.
In the morning, though, the temperature rose almost as fast as it had fallen the night before, and with it, Walter’s enthusiasm. He was ready to get to work. Spartan’s geologists were testing a prototype gamma ray spectrometer, designed to detect uranium deposits. The system required flying extremely low and slow, close to the rugged mountain terrain below. Walter’s job was to follow the contours of the land as precisely as possible, an exercise in stick-and-rudder flying that honed his skills like few other experiences could.
When he was out on a survey, he often stayed in smaller bush camps, but occasionally he returned to the company’s hub in Ross River. One day, when he was there at the base camp, he saw that a hole had been dug for a basement, as a first step for building a proper bunkhouse. The crew boss told Walter they wanted to dig a well in the basement before carrying on with construction. A backhoe sat near the hole, and the crew boss asked Walter if he knew how to operate it. He did, so he agreed to take a try at digging the well. The ground was permafrost, mixed with gravel from the river valley, so digging by hand would have been an extraordinary effort. Even with the backhoe, he was chipping ice more than he was digging. He chipped and dug down as far as the backhoe could reach, about ten feet, and never broke through the permafrost. It wasn’t necessary to break through, though. As the construction continued, the ice began melting. Since the well and the pump were in the basement of the new bunkhouse, they wouldn’t freeze again, even in the coldest weather. That was the reason for that style of construction.
There were also other jobs for Walter that didn’t involve flying survey lines. Occasionally he was tasked with flying company staff around for meetings and other business. One of the more memorable stops was at a remote resort on Kinaskan Lake, near Iskut, in northern British Columbia.
The resort was owned by a man named Steele Hyland. Years earlier, Hyland, along with his wife, Lucy, had settled in the isolated community of Telegraph Creek, where they operated the Hudson Bay Store and post office. But even Telegraph Creek eventually became too crowded for Hyland’s liking. When the trickle of outsiders grew into a steady stream, the Hylands decided it was time to move further into the wilderness. They left Telegraph Creek, pushed deeper into the backcountry, and built an exclusive lodge on Kinaskan Lake.
Walter landed there one afternoon with one of the company geologists. They sat with Hyland, as he explained why he and his wife had left Telegraph Creek. “We had to move,” Hyland said, shaking his head. “That place was just getting ridiculous, hardly a week went by when we didn’t see a stranger.” As this was the first time Walter was meeting Hyland, it occurred to him he was, in fact, one of those strangers.
He thought about the old trapper he had visited on Adams Lake, and realized there were folks around for whom even the remotest locations could feel too crowded, and in his new line of work, he was meeting more and more of them.
Previous chapter / Next chapter / Start at the beginning
If you are enjoying reading Walter’s story, please consider supporting my work by buying me a coffee.
Coffee makes the world go round, and the words flow, as they say!
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: In 2023, Richmond News shared a brief article and a photo from its archives of the Harrison Airways Flight School. The Cessna 150s that Walter used to give flying lessons are seen parked on the airstrip in the left of the image.
N.B.3: Al Kulan, Walter’s boss at Spartan Explorations LTD was a well known figure in the North. He was a prospector involved in the development of the Faro mine, a project that made a lot of men in the day very wealthy, including Al. By the time Walter met him, Al and his partners were working multiple other claims, including the uranium exploration conducted through Spartan Explorations. In 1977, he was shot dead in a bar in Ross River, in front of stunned onlookers, bringing his name back into the news in a shocking way.
Al Kulan was inducted into the Yukon Hall of Fame in 1988, and the Canadian Mining Hall of Fame in 2005. There is a short story about his interesting life in the “Yukon Nugget.
I’m really enjoying your writing and your father’s story, Kathy. My grandparents used to attend the Abbotsford Airshow, and I wonder if they ever saw Walter fly by? Probably not with the flights you mentioned in this or the previous post, but I like to think maybe they did at some point. They went to Harrison Hot Springs probably every year too. Anyway we’re from Seattle but we all used to spend a lot of time in BC.