Dawn Ostrem
Northern News Services

Yellowknife ( Jun 05/00) - Airline services in the North were born from a 1955 trip taken by Robert Engle, to search out the Arctic in the hopes of starting an airline here.

He did it and was named a pioneer in Canadian aviation by the Western Canada Aviation Museum in Winnipeg for changing the face of the North with the establishment of Northwest Territorial Airways (NWT Air).

"I'm aware of one (change) that is recently becoming more identifiable and that is Canadian sovereignty," Engle said recently from a seasonal home he has in Yellowknife. He also owns homes in Palm Springs and B.C.

"If you look at Canadian sovereignty, the opening up of the Arctic and the Canadian northern peoples - those were my priorities. A more personal one was financial independence which goes along with business enterprise."

The history of pioneering aviation in the North can be told through Engle's experiences and business decisions. It can also be shown on a larger scale through the evolution of Northern development and what Northerners have become accustomed to today regarding air transportation.

During his first scouting trip North Engle flew from B.C. to Yellowknife and down the Mackenzie River to the Beaufort Sea, through the Yukon and up to Alaska.

"The thrust of that trip was really a survey to find out what was going on in aviation in the North," he said "I came back in 1958 with a Beaver, this time under contract with Max Ward."

Under that contract Engle flew A McGill Arctic Expedition to Shepherd's Bay, on the Boothia Peninsula. Ward flew the prominent Bristol Freighter that is perched near Yellowknife Airport while Engle flew a Beaver on pontoons along the Arctic coast.

He said that was the beginning of his love affair with Yellowknife - after returning from seven weeks of Arctic flying. Yellowknife then was about 2,500 people, there were no roads and communication technology consisted of hand-cranked telephones.

"From that time on Yellowknife became my home," Engle said. "There were two groups of pilots who made their way North to find a career in Northern aviation and from the early days of bush flying Canada was seen as very romantic in that it was daring and rather risky. I did my best to remove the risk and reduce the daring to make a business out of flying and established Northwest Territorial Airways in 1961."

The first NWT Air float base is now the Prospector Restaurant. On the west side Engle neighboured Wardair and on the south, CP Air, he said, adding there was no airport then. Planes operated on skis in the winter and pontoons in the summer using the lake as a runway.

From there Engle built up his fleet with a Haviland Otter in 1962, twin-engine Beech 18s the following year and a DC-3 the year after.

This plane made NWT Air's first scheduled flight service possible in 1968.

"Everything happened in the 50s around the rock, which is of course Old Town," Engle reminisced. "New Town was being built after the war - that's Yellowknife today. We flew float planes around the clock in the long days of summer and spent more time warming up the planes in the winter than we did flying them because the trips were usually pretty short in the winter time.

"In those early days there was a lot of camaraderie because of the risk and dependency of one with the other air crew.

"Search and rescue was a military role but your best bet was your fellow bush pilots if you were down."

In 1968 the first hangar was built at the Yellowknife Airport. NWT Air's hangar was large enough to service multi-engine transport planes and broke new ground in Northern aviation. Prior to that all large carriers had to be routed through Edmonton.

Engle said the company soon found itself a scheduled airline after that and quickly moved into usage of Lockheed Electras, a large turbo-prop airplane in 1975.

The acquisition that airplane enabled the company to carry passengers as well as freight. In 1978 NWT Air bought a Hercules to accommodate the budding oil and gas industry.

In 1988, after purchasing Boeing 737 aircraft Engle had accumulated about 30 years in the Northern aviation business and a wealth of Northern experience. It was then that he sold the company to Air Canada, who subsequently sold to First Air.

"Aviation is not always a history of success," Engle said. "You can look back and see the successes because they stick out but behind that success is always good fortune.

"It's essential to be in the right place at he right time and that is based on planning."

Engle also received a membership to the Order of Canada in 1989 for dramatically reducing isolation in the North through aviation pioneering.