HAY RIVER - Gary Wilson's path to Hay River began with the fall of Saigon at the end of the Vietnam War in 1975.

Wilson, now the manager of Arctic Front Windows Ltd., was then a 21-year-old helicopter pilot in the South Vietnamese Army.

Gary Wilson, manager of Arctic Front Windows Ltd. in Hay River, is a former helicopter pilot in the South Vietnamese Army. - Paul Bickford/NNSL photo

As Communists from North Vietnam made their final push into the South Vietnamese capital city, Wilson and thousands of others made their escapes to freedom.

"The war ended and I flew my helicopter to an American ship," he said, noting he landed on an aircraft carrier. "And they pushed my helicopter down to the water."

That was to make room for more helicopters carrying more refugees.

Wilson eventually made his way to California.

"I just started looking for my relatives and my friends," he recalled, noting he stayed in California for only three months while looking for somewhere to start a new life.

"I checked around," he said. "Even in that time, Canada was one of the top countries for everything, so I decided to come to Canada."

Wilson was welcomed in Canada because of his experience as a pilot.

"They needed professional people so they took me right away," he said, adding the government even tried to help him get a job as a pilot in the Edmonton area where he moved because of the just-beginning oil sands boom in the Fort McMurray area.

However, all companies required him to have a Canadian helicopter pilot's licence, he said. "I just had a Vietnamese licence and they wanted me to retest in Canada, but the retesting would take about 100 hours for retraining. During that time in 1975, it would cost $200 per hour."

Basically, he couldn't afford the retraining, he said, adding he needed money as a recent immigrant. "I came here with an empty hand."

So he ended up working with a window construction company.

It was while working in Edmonton that Wilson acquired his current name, after some co-workers suggested he switch to a more common Canadian name when applying for citizenship.

Wilson said he had no idea what name to choose, and asked his coworkers to suggest one.

"That's how I ended up with Gary Wilson," he said.

However, he said the name sometimes drives people crazy, especially when going through airports. "When they see the name Gary Wilson, they expect a white guy, not an Asian guy."

His original name is Tran Van Hai (with Tran being his family name).

Wilson worked in Edmonton for 17 years with several window companies before coming to Hay River in 1993 for what was to be just three months to help Arctic Front Windows Ltd. That company and the one he worked for in Edmonton are owned by Igloo Building Supplies.

Arctic Front Windows supplies custom-made, Energy Star windows all over NWT and into Nunavut.

Wilson, now 57, said he stayed in Hay River because the owners of Igloo Building Supplies have been so good to him, and he likes the natural surroundings of Hay River.

"I had been living in a big city all my life," he said. "In my country, I open the door and I can see people in front of my eye more than the people in the town of Hay River combined."

Wilson said he does not often talk about his past life in Vietnam, which he described as an amazing adventure.

"Not many people know, because I don't want people to think I'm a showoff or whatever," he said.

Wilson volunteered for the South Vietnamese Army as a 19-year-old right out of high school.

"I thought a pilot is cool, but I also know that you can get killed any second, too," he said.

After he completed a year and a half of training, the war ended three months later without him ever seeing any combat.

"When you were a new pilot, they'd not actually allow you to control the fighting helicopter," he explained. "You just take the big shots who go from one spot to the other spot."

The closest he got to combat was flying a top general about 10,000 feet above a battlefield.

"No gun can shoot that high," he noted.

Wilson returned to visit Vietnam 15 years after the war ended and every two or three years since.

It was "wonderful" to go back, he said, adding he found the country to be 10 times better than before the war.

The people are free to make their own money, he said.

Wilson may eventually return to Vietnam to retire.

While he said he is OK in Hay River, his wife, whom he married in Vietnam in 1997, misses her homeland and culture, and having friends to talk to in Vietnamese.

Their son, now a Grade 7 student, was born in Hay River.

Wilson said he doesn't really miss Vietnam, saying, "I have been living here in Canada more than I lived in Vietnam."

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