A unique celebration
Pilots and their flying machines: an integral part of Yellowknife's history

NNSL (June 20/97) - If the names Norseman, Stinson, Fairchild and Bellanca ring a bell, they should. The four Yellowknife streets were named for the types of early aircraft used for transportation and exploration in the North.

And while many Canadian towns and cities have streets named King, Queen, Main and Elm, where else would you find Albatross Court and Dakota Court?

Both were named after search planes used to look for Capt. Gitzel so many years ago. And if the name Gitzel sounds familiar, it's because Gitzel Street was named after the pilot.

But the list doesn't stop there. There's Pilots Lane, of course, named after the many pilots who lived along that lane in the early days. And finally, McAvoy Road, for Jim McAvoy, an area prospector and pilot.

And one of Yellowknife's key landmarks -- as much a must-see for any tourist as Ragged Ass Road and the rapidly disappearing Woodyard -- is none other than Pilots Monument, the spot in Old Town where thousands of aircraft have roared overhead over the decades.

With so many landmarks and streets named after and for aircraft and pilots, nobody should be surprised that Yellowknife is hosting a second Midnight Sun Seaplane Fly-In.

The first, held in 1995, was a booming success.

And why shouldn't it be? Flying is as much a part of Yellowknife and the North today as it was 20, 40 and even as far back as the 1920s.

That's when flying legend Punch Dickins made history's first flight over the rugged Barren Lands, forever changing the North and ushering in so much more than simply a new mode of transportation.

Dickins, the last of the early bush pilots, died in Toronto in 1995 at the age of 96.

But his spirit will be very much alive during the fly-in June 27 to 30, when planes of all types and pilots of all temperaments gather in the North to celebrate what Dickins himself called the dawn of an era.

"The bush aircraft was the first really big change in the method of transportation in over 300 years," he wrote in a document now displayed at the Prince of Wales Northern Heritage Centre.

"It speeded up the rate of development in the region by about 500 per cent, which is roughly the ratio of a bush plane to that of a boat, canoe or dog team," wrote the legend.

Indeed.