About the Book
They were nicknamed Snow Eagle, Flying Knight, Bush Angel, Punch, Doc and Wop. They worked in open cockpits and flew through cold, snow and fog without the benefit of radios, maps or weather reports. They flew over the Barrens, frozen lakes, boreal forests and mountain ranges by dead reckoning and line of sight. They landed on makeshift runways, glaciers, muskeg, tundra and glassy lakes. Comrades of the wilderness, they were Canada’s early bush pilots.
L.D. Cross brings us the incredible stories of the brave and enterprising pilots who rolled back the boundaries of western and northern Canada, delivering mail, medicine, miners and all the supplies needed by frontier settlements. Flying such planes as Curtiss, Bellanca, de Havilland, Fairchild, Junkers, Norseman, Stinson and Vickers, they were the off-roaders of aviation, venturing where no others dared to go. Climb into the cockpit with these pioneering pilots for an exciting trip into Canadian aviation history.
About the Author(s)
L.D. (Dyan) Cross is an Ottawa writer and member of the Professional Writers Association of Canada, the Canadian Authors Association, and the Creative Non-Fiction Collective. Her business and lifestyle articles have appeared in The Globe and Mail and in magazines such as Weddingbells, Home Business Report, Legion Magazine, Profit Magazine, enRoute, and This Country Canada. Her creative non-fiction has been recognized by the International Association of Business Communicators, the EXCEL Awards for features and editorial writing, and the National Mature Media Awards. In 2011 she received the Ontario Historical Award for her book The Underground Railroad: The Long Journey to Freedom in Canada.
Reviews
"The era of the bush planes and the pilots who flew them is filled with stories of exploration and adventures . . . A recent title that is easy to read and focuses as much attention on the machines and the historical 'firsts' as the people who built and flew them is Flying on Instinct: Canada’s Bush Pilot Pioneers by L. Dyan Cross." —Winnipeg Public Library Reader’s Salon
"A fascinating look at an important but unknown aspect of Canadian history." —BC Books for BC Schools
