In April of 1929, on the hunt for gold, the legendary bush pilot Punch Dickens landed his single-engine Fokker Super Universal on the deep clear ice of Great Slave Lake’s North Arm, becoming the first pilot to land in the region that would soon become home to Yellowknife. He was on the vanguard of a new way of travel that transformed the North, and many more were quick to follow as Yellowknife became a hub for gold mining and exploration. In just a few years, a half-dozen or more enterprising bush charter outfits girdled “The Rock” in Yellowknife’s Old Town. One of them, Yellowknife Air Taxi, even set up a flying school from 1945 to 1948.
Today, aviation remains at the heart of northern experience and mythology, but it’s no longer strictly a business. Especially in Yellowknife, where the waters of Great Slave Lake meet a community with modern aviation infrastructure—both fixed-wheel and float—and a tireless enthusiasm for life in the air, the joy of flying holds many citizens in its thrall.
“I’ve always claimed that aviation is a love industry, and it’s gotta be your first love – even above your spouse,” says Yvonne Quick, a legend on the Yellowknife flying scene. “I get in an airplane and I just love it. I sit down and I do up the seat belt and … let’s go. There’s just something about the freedom of being able to go wherever you want.”
Yellowknife has long been home to private pilots, but they didn’t properly emerge as a community until 1964. That’s when private pilot Mike Piro, a local businessman, and Bill Hetrick Sr., a co-owner of Ptarmigan Airways and part-time flying instructor, called a meeting for anyone interested in learning how to fly. The meeting struck a chord, recalls Roger Zarudzki, then a young finance assistant for the Town of Yellowknife, newly arrived from Mildred, Sask., and it quickly led to the founding of the Yellowknife Fliers Club. (Not “flying.” Federal rules in those days denied the word if the club wasn’t certified.)
“We had, oh man, about 75 members,” Zarudzki says. “We came up with a down payment among the members and bought Hetrick’s two-seater Cessna 120, C-FECP, as the trainer for $2,500.” A second airplane, a Piper J3, was soon added to the fleet, and the club’s momentum continued to build. At least until 1968, when one of the planes ran into the other in a careless ground mishap. That pretty much grounded the club and left a number of students with unfinished training.
Enter Yvonne Quick, in 1968 a partner with Bob Jensen in Mel Air of Swift Current, Sask., which operated satellite flying schools across western Canada. On Mike Piro’s invitation, she stepped up and put the club back in the air, organizing its flying school over the next few summers. “We had 18 people, and they were so excited to learn how to fly,” Quick says. Zarudzki was one of them, as was Wally Firth, who went on to become the first Indigenous person to represent the NWT in Parliament and one of the territory’s first Indigenous commercial pilots.
Over the years, the fliers club attained status as the Yellowknife Flying Club but eventually dropped its training program and later dissolved. In 2004, however, an entirely new group formed as the Northwest Territories Floatplane Association, then in 2022 as the Northwest Territories Flying Association to capture a bigger audience, whether on wheel, skis, or floats.
“The group has morphed into something quite unlike a club,” president Kevin Brezinski says. “Since its creation, we’ve been a prominent voice for private pilots, aircraft owners, and supporters of general aviation. We regularly engage in consultation and advocacy for general aviation in the Northwest Territories.”
It’s a social and self-help group, too. With visiting pilots, it has organized occasional poker rally circuits to favourite fishing spots at nearby lakes and lodges. They’ve also organized cleanups of neglected camping spots at Lower Pensive Lake and Fishing Lake.
The club’s outreach today includes a “Rust Remover” workshop each spring, refresher sessions on airworthiness, and the intricacies of air traffic control. And, reviving the spirit of that original 1964 gathering, the club this year hosted “Discover General Aviation” for aspiring pilots and enthusiasts. The $40 day included a flight with a member, association membership, 12 months of free online ground school, and a 90-day free trial of a flight simulator for mobile devices, courtesy of COPA, the Canadian Owners and Pilots Association.
The club’s leadership also takes on some heavy lifting as advocates for local and visiting owners of private planes, Brezinski says. One of their key concerns is that long-range planning for a large-scale rebuild of the Yellowknife airport has so far not mentioned general—private, in other words—aviation needs. “We’re excited about the future of the airport,” Brezinski says, underlining the potential for general (private) aviation has untapped potential for local economic and aviation tourism. Integrating this into planning could capture some missed opportunities, he adds.
Brezinski and a club member recently presented a “visioning” outline to airport officials and NWT Infrastructure Minister Carolyn Wawzonek. They made the case that enabling user-pay land leases and facilities such as parking, tie-downs, electricity, and a maintenance hangar, which are available to pilots in communities such as Regina and Vernon, B.C., would help grow Yellowknife’s profile in the flying community.
“We’re a sexy destination,” says Brezinski, a retired emergency measures planner with the territorial government and the owner, with his wife Cynthia Levy (also club secretary), of a Cessna 172. “People enjoy coming up here because it’s a long way. It’s an interesting trip, 24-hour daylight, a great destination when you do get here. But we don’t do enough to market it to pilots.”
There’s evidence to back up Brezinki’s view of Yellowknife’s potential as an aviation destination. Since 1983, the city has been hosting the biennial Midnight Sun Fly-In, organized by Quick, which has attracted adventuresome pilots and their sometimes exotic aircraft from across North America. The 2023 event hosted 14 visiting wheeled aircraft along with 10 float and amphibious planes, none of them local.
The future of the Fly-In is in question, however, as Quick, now 94, has declared the 2023 edition to be her last. But she, too, believes more can be done to attract fliers. “The challenge is the Department of Transportation,” she says with a glare. “They have never encouraged civil aviation, not in the least bit … To be on the lake and have access to this amazing country is absolutely wonderful for visiting pilots.”
But if past is prologue, Yellowknife’s flying enthusiasts have reason for optimism. They have 60 years of history that proves enthusiasm can overcome obstacles, be they lack of planes, loss of planes, or a few fallow years. The challenge now is to create infrastructure to promote growth—and the story so far suggests it’s hard to keep a good private pilot down.
