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Visions Of Flight

August/September 2016

Take-offs and landings in Northern art

By Katie Weaver

For some, the plane is a muse; for others, it is a saviour, as depicted here in Wally Wolfe's "Found at last."

For some, the plane is a muse; for others, it is a saviour, as depicted here in Wally Wolfe's "Found at last."

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One day, a couple summers ago, I sat on a rock by the lake shore in Yellowknife and ate elk stew and bannock. It was my dinner break during NARWAL’s dinner theatre, in which I performed a skit written by local playwright Ben Nind about a Norseman plane crash that happened around Great Bear Lake in 1942. As my scene partner and I performed on a floating dock, a Norseman bobbed in the water to our left. Meanwhile, set up with a canvas a foot away from the water, local artists Terry Pamplin and Jen Walden worked together to paint a scene of a yellow bush plane landing on the lake in front of us. The mythos of the bushplane, that has been steadily building since planes came north, had never been more obvious. It's not just an industry; it's a muse. Here's a taste of the art its inspired.

1. An illustration for "The Kuujjuaq Christmas Candy Drop", written by Linda Brand and illustrated by François Gauvreau. It depicts the true story of Johnny May saving a young girl from freezing to death in a Nunavik blizzard.

2. Designed by Dawn Oman and painted by the cast of Bushpilot. Find it on the back of The Gallery of the Midnight Sun in Yellowknife.

3. Walt Humphries re-imagines his surroundings in "Old Town Revisited."

4. Helene Girard's "The Silent Sentries of the Arctic." It took her 16 hours to paint the large tower in hundreds of lines in shades of white, blue and grey. It depicts a maintenance visit on Christmas Day 2014 to a DEW line radar site southeast of Cambridge Bay—it was -52 C that day.

5. "Flight North," painted in 1989 by Pudlo Pudlat, a Cape Dorset-based artist who grew up on the land and died in 1992.

6. Sheila Hodgkinson's interpretation of a plane landing on a makeshift ice runway, a flare pot and the dusky light the only signs of warmth.

August/September 2016

Illustration by Beth Covvey

Running out of aces

Mike Murphy’s harrowing flight during Yellowknife’s smoke-pocalypse

By Katie Weaver

Illustration by Beth Covvey

October 9th, 2025 October 9th, 2025

August/September 2016

Chris Hadfield speaks in Budapest in May 2016—the celebrated astronaut was at one time a CF-18 pilot, testing the boundaries of the Canadian Arctic. Photo by Elekes Andor

WEB EXTRA: Intercepting The Bear

Giving foreign borders a buzz was a routine practice of former CF-18 pilot, turned rock start astronaut Chris Hadfield

By Herb Mathisen

Chris Hadfield speaks in Budapest in May 2016—the celebrated astronaut was at one time a CF-18 pilot, testing the boundaries of the Canadian Arctic. Photo by Elekes Andor

October 9th, 2025 October 9th, 2025

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