This article describes the first Float Plane Fly In. Dates and Activities of this years Fly In can be found on the Home page and the Events page of this Site.

Northern Skies will be buzzing on Canada’s birthday weekend, as we host the first-ever Midnight Sun Seaplane Fly-in.

The Canada Day weekend, June 30 to July 2, promises to be a whole lot of high-flying fun in Yellowknife, as hundreds of visitors skim into town in floatplanes from all over North America. They’re in for plenty of treats, because a dedicated group of Northerners is planning a whirlwind weekend packed with special events for visiting pilots, their families and their friends.

This first-ever fly-in event is a natural for our City in the Wilderness, where planes on pontoons have played a dramatic role in our history.  In fact, Yellowknife began as a log cabin floatplane base on Latham Island in the early 1930’s, and we’re a still town where scores of bush-planes roar in and out of the bay every summer day.  It’s an unfailing thrill to see them taxi out on still mornings, plowing the ice-blue surface of Great Slave into foaming, arcs, till they thunder up and away, into the limitless sky.

Our city is on of the busiest seaplane bases in Northern Canada. Prospectors, mine owners, diamond drillers and geologists head out into the wilderness adding to the volume of tourists and business travelers connecting to other communities and wilderness lodges.  You can see anything from a Bell helicopter on floats to a Boeing Stearman.  Seventeen aviation companies are based here, employing up to 350 pilots in high season. In addition, a good proportion of Northerners are recreational flyers, enjoying the vast freedom of our skies as they head out to cabins, camps, or nameless lakes far from town.

Bush pilots are aviation’s rugged individualists, our version of cowboy heroes (and heroines), whose exploits have spawned many a Northern legend.  No wonder the June 30 Fly-in has us so excited.

Invitations went out in March to some 5,000 private float-pilots in Canada and the States, and the response has been brisk.  Anywhere from 50 to 250 float-equipped aircraft are expected, along with other flying tourists who’ll arrive in aircraft on wheels – or even on plain old “sked” flights from the South.

The program is expected to include a Midnight Sun golf tournament as well as an airborne “poker rally”, fishing trips, Northern entertainment, and feasting on such delicacies as Arctic char, caribou and musk ox.  There’ll be a dance, performances, and a chance to take part in Yellowknife’s Canada day festivities on July 1.

The Fly-in is the brainchild of Archie Gillies, executive director of the Economic Development Authority.  When Archie visited Greenfield, Maine, for its annual fly-in last fall, he asked himself why Yellowknife couldn’t stage a similar event.

Good question.  This is a town practically invented by floatplanes.
Archie Gillies took his idea to the people at the Northern Frontier Visitor’s Association, and the party was on.

Lieutenant Colonel Jim Kerr, commanding officer of 440 Squadron of the Canadian Armed Forces in Yellowknife, agreed to act as chairman and community response was immediate and enthusiastic.

Floatplanes are big business in Yellowknife; about a third of the aircraft based in the Northwest Territories’ capital operated on floats in summer and skis in winter, flying off Yellowknife Bay.  Float-flying operations are co-ordinated through the Yellowknife Airport tower, and visitors can enjoy monitoring radio traffic through a remote installation in the aviation section of the Prince of Wales Northern Heritage Centre, the city’s first-rate museum.

Visitors will find an aviation scene markedly different from the days over half a century ago when Gordon Latham was sent to Yellowknife Bay to establish a refueling base for bush aircraft bound for Great Bear Lake.  At Latham’s cabin, grandly named the Corona Hotel after an Edmonton watering-hole, a pilot or prospector could find a meal and, in an emergency, a place to sleep: in the yard for 50 cents, or on the floor, for $1. (Rumor has it visitors could buy a drink there, too, if there was anything to be had.)  Fuel came in by barge from the Imperial Oil refinery at Norman Wells.  Pilots pumped their own, by hand-operated ‘wobble pump”.

Where two or three aircraft a week might have visited Latham’s base in the old days, up to 24 flights daily link Yellowknife with Edmonton and Winnipeg.  Other scheduled services reach out to Inuvik, Whitehorse, Resolute Bay, Rankin Inlet and Iqaluit, and many a smaller community in between.
The city boasts a gleaming new airport terminal and two runways, the longest 2,250 meters (7,500 feet) and capable of handling the C-51 Galaxy Transport, the world’s second-largest aircraft.  The airport is 9.8 km from downtown, and there’s a cluster of float bases around the Old Town peninsula towards Latham Island, and on the island itself.

Seventeen aviation companies and about 150 aircraft, 100 of them commercial, are based in Yellowknife today, including two helicopter companies and four major regional carriers.  They provide employment for about 225 pilots yearound, rising to as many as 350 in summer.  They and private owners fly everything from Boeing 737 jets to two-place Piper Cubs – and one vintage Stearman biplane, fully restored.

The twin Otter – on floats, oversized tundra tires, skis or ski-wheels, depending on the season – is the workhorse aircraft of the North today.  But history sill flies in Yellowknife too.
Buffalo Airways operates what is probably the second-largest fleet of DC3, DC4 and Curtiss Commando aircraft in the world today. None of its seven DC3s (with five more in reserve), two DC4s and two Commandos is less than 50 years old, and all are still performing admirably.

Air Tindi’s fleet include two De Haviland Beavers, one of them turbo-powered. These historic bush planes revolutionized frontier flying when they appeared in the North after the Second World War. The family-owned flying service also has two single Otters, big brothers of the Beaver.

There’s even a small squadron of float-equipped ultralight aircraft tucked away on Frame Lake, within the city limits, next to the kennel area where many Yellowknifers keep their sled dogs.  The putt-putt-putt of the utlralights, doing their low-level circuits, amid the howling of the huskies, are familiar sounds on summer evenings in YK,

“We really have no idea yet how many planes we’ll be getting” says Jackie Coulter, manager of the Visitor’s Association,” but we’re set to handle 250 already.  We can find dock space for 50 on Yellowknife Bay, and accommodate another 200 at Long Lake (opposite Yellowknife Airport). “There’s a big Territorial park, with hot showers, cooking facilities and a swimming beach, on Long Lake for those who want to camp out.  We’ll set up transportation into town for visitors too, and we have hotel space reserved as well.”

Final details of the Ragged Ass Poker Rally game were still being worked out as this story was being written.

The game is basically navigation exercises, in which pilots have to find five specific locations.  At each, pilots are given a poker card, randomly selected, and the pilot who has the best poker hand after completing the circuit wins the prize money.

“Safety is a prime consideration, especially up her,” says Coulter.  “We don’t want anyone getting lost.  We’re looking at running the competition out of a lodge not far north of the city and on a good-sized lake. We might have pilots radio a description of the location, rather than landing and checking in with a judge on the ground.

“Whatever the final choices, it’s going to be a fun contest”.

The rally takes its colorful name from Yellowknife’s most famous Old Town street, Ragged Ass Road (which the telephone company still refuses to show on the city map in it’s directory).  It was named for a group of down-on-their-luck 1940’s prospectors who called themselves the Ragged Ass Syndicate and inscribed the name on their tent with a piece of charcoal.

Fly-in headquarters will be the Bush Pilots’ Brew Pub in Old Town, located in a landmark building which in its time has housed pioneer Western Canada Airways, Canadian Pacific Air Lines and Pacific Western Airlines’ bush operations headquarters.  All are ancestors of Canadian North which, with NWT Air, flies the North’s mainline routes today.

Arctic Brewing Company, the only brewery in the NWT, occupies part of the old building, and the wing of a Beaver that made one low turn too many serves as the pub’s bar. (Pilot Carl Clouter of  Rae-Edzo is often around to explain how the accident happened. He’s still flying.)

Friday, June 30, is registration day, and there’ll be a barbecue that evening to kick off the weekend with a bang.  Visitors will be invited to join Yellowknifer’s in Canada Day celebrations on Saturday; planned events include a downtown parade and picnic at McNiven Beach, on Frame Lake in the heart of the city of 17,000. Fly-in celebrants will round out the day with an evening cruise on Great Slave Lake, wrapped up with a fish-fry.

A pancake breakfast at the Brew Pub begins the Sunday program. That will be followed by a memorial service at the Bush Pilots’ Monument, overlooking old and new Yellowknife, and a floatplane fly-past over Yellowknife Bay.

Bus or walking tours of Yellowknife’s picturesque Old Town, where many original log and frame buildings still stand, are also planned for Sunday, and pilot seminars are scheduled for both Saturday and Sunday. There’ll be a banquet and dance Saturday evening, as well as a program for teenagers accompanying their parents.

Then it’s off on the Ragged Ass Poker Rally Monday, to wind up the festivities.

Side-tours to other Northern communities are being offered through the Visitor’s Association, and duffers won’t want to miss the chance to play gold at midnight. (In fact, the tournament can run all night long. On our long June days, Yellowknife gets about 20 hours of sunlight, broken by four hours of twilight.)