by Janet Smellie
Northern News Services

NNSL (Nov 03/97) - When I first met Max Ward last year at a Yellowknife float base I had no idea that I was meeting the man who's now being called "the oldest jet pilot in Canada."

Instead, I met a man who, like anyone who's been lucky enough to fly in the North, was excited about his trip to his cabin north of Yellowknife. While he waited for his wife Marjorie to get back from grocery shopping, he spoke candidly about the changes he's seen in Yellowknife during the 50 years he'd been returning North.

The story of Max Ward, how he built his airline Wardair, and fought a political war with Ottawa will be told next weekend on the CBC Television's biography series, Life & Times.

One of Canada's most successful Northern bush pilots, who parlayed a single-engine bi-plane into Wardair, a $250-million international airline famous for its first-class service, Ward was born in Edmonton in 1921. The story follows his life through those "daring and dangerous" years as a successful bush pilot.

Archival footage and photographs tell the story of how Ward had moved up from bush planes to airliners by 1961 and invented the holiday charter business in Canada.

It offers insights into how the government, bent on protecting Trans Canada Airlines (now Air Canada), created numerous regulations and obstacles designed to prevent Ward from becoming too competitive.

Despite these obstacles Wardair became Canada's third-largest airline with a world-wide reputation for excellent in-flight services. During the program, Ward's wife and four grown children talk about their involvement with Wardair, their father's obsession with customer satisfaction and the strike that shut them down for three months.

In 1988, at 75, Ward sold the company he spent his life building, but he still flies and is reputedly the oldest jet pilot in Canada.

"Frontier to First Class" will air Nov. 9, at 10 p.m. MT.