One of the earliest pictures I remember being taken is of me at probably five years old sitting in the left seat of a Cessna 150, on the ground naturally, in Squamish. I was pretty little, but can still remember how enthusiastic I was and the deep impression it made on me. As a little kid a 150 seemed like a huge and impressive piece of machinery!
There wasn’t much flying background in my family, certainly no one with a pilot’s license much less an airplane. My maternal grandfather had wanted to be a pilot, but, born in 1910 he was too old at the start of WW2 to be trained as a pilot, but did fly in DC3s as a navigator, mostly in Burma. He died in 1974, two years before I was born, but I suspect I have inherited most of my interests in life from him. And his size - I have a suit that belonged to him and it fits me nearly perfectly.
Growing up in Vancouver, Boundary Bay was within easy reach, even by bus, and after several years of pestering my dad to take me to the airport we went out one Saturday, when I was probably about 10. We went into what I think I remember being a Cessna Pilot Training Center. It was a very wet lower mainland afternoon, quiet at the flying school, and when we asked to go look around they said sure, go ahead, just don’t try to get in anything locked and stay away from moving aircraft!
Out on the ramp was a single Otter on wheels; we climbed into the cockpit and I got to sit left seat for the second time. An Otter with its tail down and nose in the air is a pretty intimidating airplane to climb into, so sitting at that giant throw over yoke and what was a huge panel compared to the 150 was inspirational: the radial engine, the 11 foot prop, the smell of aluminum, oil, and avgas was pretty addictive to a kid fascinated by machines from his earliest memories.
By the time high school started my desire to fly was extremely strong, but opportunities weren’t there, until a High School Friday afternoon in grade 8 when we heard over the PA that they were giving tickets for free to get into some sort of recreation / sportsman’s show at the Pacific Coliseum. My friend Paul and I took the bus over after school and wandered around looking at boat displays, fishing lodges, and hunting outfitters, but I was most drawn to a display from Airflow Ultralight Aviation, aka King George Airpark, that was offering demo flights in ultralights. From what I remember it was $25.00 for about a 20 minute flight in a Beaver RX 550 (I think!). The next Saturday I took the bus from Vancouver to Surrey, somehow convinced the instructor that my parents were fine with me taking a demo flight in an ultralight aircraft, and spent half an hour flying a couple of thousand feet above the Fraser Valley before returning to land on a grass field. If that’s what flying could be I was hooked and ready for more!
Through the rest of high school spending much more time flying wasn’t an option, though I did get a couple of Familiarization Flights out of Boundary Bay in 150s and 172s.
By 1998 I was working as a shop teacher in Surrey, my girlfriend Kim who became my wife a couple of years later, and my future brother-in-law Peter were taking flight training at Boundary Bay. Kim and Peter’s dad, also Pete, had left his credit card at the Pacific Flying Club with instructions that whatever they needed could go on his card. Unfortunately that didn’t apply to me! We all did ground school together, Peter and Kim did a couple of lessons each and lost interest, and I made it through about half a dozen flights before running out of money. After that came a couple year break while Kim and I got married and organized what life would look like together. The desire to fly held on though, but as a new teacher I didn’t have a lot of extra money, so I looked around for alternatives.
I was always encouraged to keep an interest in flying, and eventually I came back to King George Airpark, and saw that ultralights had become much more substantial since my 1989 flight - their training aircraft was now a Rans S-6 - a side by side, enclosed, 4 stroke powered airplane that was a lot of fun to fly, climbed well, and had great visibility. I trained through the summer and into the fall, when, to our surprise and happiness Kim found out she was pregnant. Living in a rented basement suite in East Van was no longer appealing, so flying once again paused as life moved on to looking to buy a house and figure out where we would live.
In the meantime a change of cities, Vancouver to Vernon, two more kids, and quite a few years went by. After our third child Sam was born, Kim unfortunately became really ill with leukemia. She worked hard to stay healthy and had a terrible time going through every treatment you could imagine to keep her illness at bay for as long as possible.
In the spring of 2020 for Father’s Day she and I went on a familiarization flight with Aurora Aviation, and the negotiation process to get my pilot’s license began. By then Kim’s health was really not good, I had moved into a Vice Principal job so had a bit more money, kids were older and a little more independent, so it seemed like I needed to be serious about it, or not worry about it anymore.
So in the summer of 2020 I began working on my PPL and I would love to say I was a natural pilot after so many years of wanting to fly, but it was a slow process for me. By the fall of that year I had soloed though, and was starting to feel more confident in an airplane. I worked with several instructors (many were hired away in the boom times!) and some I moved on from because I really didn’t like how they were trying to instruct me but finally, by February 2022 I was ready for my flight test. I made one navigation mistake, didn’t get the sharpest steep turns, and was pretty anxious about my first try at the flight test. But we landed, taxied back, and my examiner said “well, as long as you don’t crash into the hangar on the way back you’ve passed.”
The instructor I had done most of my prep hours with, Aaron, was finishing another flight as we were tying down. He walked over to see how it had went, when he was told I had passed he was so excited he hugged me. When I checked in with him later he told me he was triply happy I’d passed - for me, he knew how desperate I was to get my PPL, secondly because he needed to have a student pass his flight test to keep instructing, and thirdly because I was his first student to make it to the flight test!
Through the spring I flew renting from Aurora and in April 2022 I joined the club and took the club checkout (thanks Jamie!) and started flying GGHB actively in May and through the summer. Friends started to fly with me, and I got my father in law out for a flight in September of 2022 for his first time in a small plane since the 60s. Though he did end up with about 18000 hours in Boeings…
Kim’s health got worse and worse through that year, I left work at Thanksgiving to be home and with her while over the next several weeks she endured a couple of major surgeries with the hope she would be able to leave the hospital and come home, but sadly she did not, and on Nov 11th 2022 she very unexpectedly died. One of the many regrets I have was that we were never able to fly together - she hadn’t enjoyed her training, but had loved the freedom, mobility, and view of being in the airplane, and I’m grateful that she encouraged me to keep going as she became more and more ill.
Needless to say I took a bit of time off everything, but came back after a couple of months away and a few hours with an instructor.
By mid 2023 I was flying regularly again, thanks to SAFC and GGHB and flew consistently through 2023 and 2024.
We know that things changed for the club in August of 2024, and things had changed for me too. In December 2024 I started seeing an awesome lady who loved flying, and my last two flights logged in GGHB have the remarks ‘First Flight with Kate!’ followed by ‘2nd Flight w Kate’ in July of 2024.
I’m happy to say there are plans for more dual flights to follow with Kate, and even more importantly plans to get married in the summer of 2026!
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