SOMBA K'E/YELLOWKNIFE - Jim McAvoy flew planes in a time before satellite phones and GPS systems, before stringent aviation regulations and cargo limits, when paycheques were often dependent on the same gamble that prospectors and fishermen relied on - the balance of weather, luck and determination.

Jim McAvoy greets a young Dene boy in Fort Reliance in 1991 while flying a Single Otter plane for Air Tindi. The long-time aviator died last week at the age of 79. - Photo courtesy of Air Tindi

McAvoy died at his home outside of Thorsby, Alta. on Nov. 21. He was 79.

McAvoy was a legend among pilots and prospectors, well-liked, well-respected and relied upon by those who travelled in the North.

"If you were living in the bush, in the mining camps or the fish camps, you could have no better friend than Jimmy. He kept an eye out for everybody," said pilot Joe McBryan.

"He had an uncanny knack for being able to pick out where lost or off-course people, including downed pilots, were and where to begin the search."

One such story was in 1957, when McAvoy was grounded for 30 days after he insisted on going to find a plane forced to land in the Rae Lakes area, McBryan recounted. Three people went missing after bad weather hit on a flight between Kugluktuk, then known as Coppermine, and Norman Wells. It was too late in the season to fly float planes but too early for ski planes. McAvoy went anyway, taking off in his float plane from the frozen Back Bay and rescuing the three people stranded.

McAvoy also had to search for his brother Chuck, whose Fairchild 82 went missing in 1964. That summer, McAvoy and a team of pilots searched for the plane in the Barren Lands. The incident gained notoriety but the wreckage of Chuck McAvoy's plane wasn't found until 2003.

McBryan said regardless of what Jim McAvoy said publicly about his brother's disappearance, there was no messing around when it came to looking for Chuck.

"He was all business," said McBryan. "The animosity was mainly for cover. They were opposites ... Jimmy was quiet in a lot of ways, Chuck was outgoing."

In addition to being a prospector and developer in his own right, McAvoy served as a teacher to aspiring pilots, first at McAvoy Air Service, the company he had with his brother, and later at his own, Latham Island Airways.

"A great deal of my success and being able to fly a lifetime was through the lessons taught to me by Jimmy," said McBryan, who worked under McAvoy between 1963 and 1965.

"What I learnt from him held me in good stead on many occasions when maybe I was offshore a little too far, " he said. "I got to apprentice under the best."

McAvoy flew out of Yellowknife for 46 years, said Peter Arychuk, who stayed with McAvoy and his wife Betty when he first moved to Yellowknife in the mid-1970s. It was McAvoy who helped get the now-president of Air Tindi interested in aviation.

"Besides being a wealth of knowledge, he was an all-round mentor of the flying community," Arychuk said.

McAvoy worked as a pilot with Air Tindi for four years, flying a Single Otter 185 and Turbo Beaver, from 1989 to 1992.

"He was a straight shooter, he said what was on his mind," said Arychuk, adding that McAvoy never liked being in the spotlight but was generous with his time and knowledge.

"Around the coffee pot talk, it was always a learning experience, a lot of the younger guys that grew up in Yellowknife that worked around the older people like Jimmy ... they definitely learned a tremendous pile, he was a tremendous mentor," he said.

His family is hosting a coffee at the Alberta Aviation Museum in Edmonton at 3 p.m. today.

He leaves behind his wife of 58 years, Betty, and his children Lynette, Jim and Jack, as well as grandchildren Rod, Shannon, Amber (Greg), Laura and J.D; great-grandchildren Mackenzie, Liam and Jack, sister Eva (Peter) Pocklington and Carolyn Bruneau of Princeton, B.C.