Yellowknife (Mar 06/06) - Two flying friends, who for more than 40 years have fostered an interest in Yellowknife history and spirit, Mike Piro and Roger Zarudzki, were honoured for their achievements with the 2006 Heritage Award at a special banquet in their honour, recently.

Roger Zarudzki proudly holds the heritage award given him in recognition of his decades helping preserve NWT mining heritage. Below, Mike Piro was the posthumous winner of the annual heritage award. His wife Jean Piro helped make the honours night a success by accepting the award and enjoying anecdotes about her husband.- Chris Woodall/NNSL photos

Mike is gone now, his award held high by wife Jean at the Prince of Wales Northern Heritage Centre dinner. But from the accolades and quirky tales told by Catherine Pellerin, Yvonne Quick and others, Roger and Mike's close relationship was only slightly tighter than their relationship with Yellowknife.

The annual City of Yellowknife Heritage Committee award is given out every year, since 1999, to Yellowknifers who have been nominated by fellow residents.

Previous recipients have been Walt Humphries, the Mining Heritage Society, Erica Tesar, Ryan Silke and Eric Watt.

This is the first year two people have been honoured.

To look at the list of activities Piro and Zarudzki took part in over the decades is to look back on the history of Yellowknife itself.

When Piro came to Yellowknife in 1947 after a six-week trek over land and Great Slave Lake from Edmonton, two important things happened to him.

The first and least of the two was that he had no trouble getting work, joining a cab company he would later own and decorate in "ladybug colours" of orange, yellow and black, said Quick, who has known Piro since the late 1960S.

But most important, he met his future wife, Jean (nee Elliot), Quick said. "They were married in 1949."

Mike and Jean went on to have four children - Gordon, Brian, Laurie and Sandra. "They are all still in Yellowknife and take an active part in the community, just as their parents did," Quick said.

Zarudzki met Piro in 1964 when the long arm of the Caribou Cops swept them up in the winter festival fun, Pellerin said at the awards dinner.

From there emerged a hunger to fly, that took them over the years to develop a keen interest in documenting sites of downed bush planes and abandoned mines across the NWT.

Photos and pieces from those sites have been stored in the city until a mining heritage museum can be established, Quick said.

When not flying or running their various businesses - which for Piro included staking and sinking a shaft of the Ragged Ass Mine with Frank Avery, Orst Wist and Paul Conroy in the 1960s - they were founding or keeping busy with several service organizations.

Piro was a founding member of the Yellowknife Chamber of Commerce and was president in 1966; he helped organize dog derby championships, snowmobile races, formed Spirit Yk with Eric Watt and the Fox Moth Society that restored the aircraft for the museum.

"Mike (Piro) was there when the Northern Frontier Visitors Centre started, and when we decided we could put on a float plane fly-in," Quick, another of the fly-in founders, remembered. "He would never say no to any community activities."

Zarudzki was another of the float plane fly-in founders - with Mike Stevens and Jeff Rocher - and has continued to be active organizing it since the first event in 1995.

Zarudzki continues to preserve the mining sites that he and Piro created awareness of, through visitor guides and his stories.

"Both were instrumental in getting the mining equipment display at the Yellowknife Airport and have contributed many artifacts to the Mining Heritage Society," Pellerin said.

"Roger still flies his Super Cub and is putting together a guide for the NWT Float Plane Association of interesting sites that he and Mike documented over the years," Pellerin said.

Piro's son Gordon still works with Zarudzki to find locations and old relics to pass on for future generations.