by Mike W. Bryant
Northern News Services
Published Friday, November 16, 2007

YELLOWKNIFE - Branded an outlaw by the government, adored by the communities he served, there was no pilot quite like Adolph William "Willy" Laserich, even in the rich annals of Northern aviation history.

Willy Laserich died Monday at age 75. "Willy and the bandits" were one of the most celebrated flight crews in the North. Laserich flew until the end. - photo courtesy of Mike Murphy

Laserich died of heart failure in an Edmonton hospital Monday with his family at his side. He was 75.

He began his flying career at a time when the North was still relatively uncharted, and the only reliable means to move people, especially the injured and the sick, not to mention supplies and other essentials, was by bush plane.

"You can't be a mild charactered guy in the North when you're doing pioneer work," said Don Douglas, a friend and former flying colleague of Laserich's, and now the executive director of the Northern Air Transportation Association. "You do what you have to and you do it. There was nothing but good-heartedness in him. He was doing it for the good of other people."

As much as Laserich was a hero to the people of the high Arctic where he did most of his flying, he was viewed as a constant troublemaker by the federal air transport authorities.

In the early bush flying days of the 1930s, '40s, and '50s, the rules were what bush pilots made them, but by the time Laserich got his first air service, Altair Leasing, off the ground in the mid-1970s, the Canadian Transport Commission had entered the North with a vengeance.

Laserich racked up hundreds of charges - flying without a commercial licence and operating from an unlicensed base chief among them, plus numerous others both pointless and small. He was grounded several times, much to the protest of communities such as Cambridge Bay, Gjoa Haven, and Pelly Bay (Kugaaruk) that depended on him for supplies, fuel and medevac services. A lot of charges came at the behest of rival air companies, concerned that Laserich was moving in on their turf.

His constant legal troubles prompted him to name himself and his crew "Willy's bandits."

Yellowknife folk group The Gumboots later immortalized the high-flying outlaws with a ballad titled "Willy and the bandits." It's a regular request when The Gumboots come-a-playing for Northern Air Transportation Association meetings in Yellowknife.

Vic Waugh, a former Altair engineer, remembered one incident in particular.

"Again we were hauling without a licence," recalled Waugh, who accompanied Laserich on a trip from Churchill, Man., to Baker Lake in the late 1970s to drop off some lumber.

Their DC-4 aircraft was met by a lone RCMP officer on the runway, who marched up to Laserich, who was standing at the doorway, to inform him he was detaining the plane. Waugh suspects yet another envious airline had turned them in.

"Willy told him, 'I'm afraid we're going to Yellowknife and there is nothing you can do about it, so goodbye,'" said Waugh.

"We fired up and left him in a cloud of smoke.

"We got arrested as soon as we hit the ground in Yellowknife. There were a few instances like that."

Laserich had little time for the rules demanded by fusspot transport authorities in Winnipeg and Ottawa, but never refused someone in need of help. If a hunter was trapped on a ice floe in Prince Albert Sound, Laserich was the first to fly out to the rescue. Often, he was the only pilot around who could help.

"(My wife Elizabeth) was asked if she would go with a pregnant lady to take her down to Yellowknife," remembered retired Bishop John Sperry, who was in Kugluktuk serving as an Anglican minister during the 1950s and '60s. His wife was a trained midwife. Laserich came flying in from Cambridge Bay to pick them up.

"It was pitch black and the weather was not very good," said Sperry.

"Of course, Iris (the pregnant woman) indicated that something was happening. So my wife leaned over and told Willy that he was probably going to have another passenger.

"He said, 'well, I can't land here.' She said, 'well, that's all right.' The baby was born, there was no great problem with the birth, and they wrapped the little thing in what was there, and Willy had to stay in touch with Yellowknife to say on the manifest, 'we have another passenger.'"

In recognition of her in-flight birth, the child was named Angel. Five more babies were born in similar fashion with Laserich at the controls.

Born in Germany in 1932, Laserich came to Canada in a Norwegian sealing boat at age 19. It wasn't long before Laserich found himself in Hay River working as a diesel engineer tending an ice plant used to freeze fish before they were shipped south to market.

It was there he met his lifelong friend Bill Reid, who would later join him at Altair as an engineer.

"We hit it off right away," said Reid.

"We were together for many years. He was tough. He was disgustingly healthy."

In 1957, Laserich obtained his pilot's licence, and it wasn't long before Laserich acquired himself a little Stinson aircraft, which he used to build flight hours and haul fish from north of Great Slave Lake to Hay River.

It was in Edmonton while he was getting his licence that he met Margaret Rose Bunce, whom he married the following year.

Eventually, after upgrading to a Norseman plane, Laserich earned enough hours to qualify for a job as a pilot with Pacific Western Airlines. He started off in the early 1960s flying planes out of Yellowknife to smaller communities from the North Slave to the high Arctic. After a while, he was transferred to Cambridge Bay, his home ever since.

It was in Cambridge Bay that Laserich started his first air company, Altair. The Pelly Bay Co-op needed someone to fly in groceries and supplies and take Arctic char back to Winnipeg.

To get his new air venture started, Laserich acquired a DC-4, a four-engine prop airplane capable of carrying 20,000 lbs of cargo.

But the rules of the day required a company to have 25 per cent equity in a multi-propped plane in order to obtain a commercial licence, which Laserich didn't have. Without a licence, an air carrier could not legally accept contracts to carry freight. Laserich attempted to get around the rules by buying bulk fuel himself and then carrying it North where he would sell it.

In 1975, the Canadian Transport Commission charged Laserich with three counts under the Aeronautics Act for operating a commercial air service without a licence. In 1977, he was handed another 250 citations.

Laserich tried repeatedly to get a commercial licence but his applications were routinely denied. He was forced to fold Altair in 1981 but came back with Adlair Aviation the following year and was finally awarded a commercial licence after much protest from Arctic communities angered by his treatment from the federal government. Adlair is still in operation today.

It wasn't long before trouble brewed again, however, and in 1983 he was grounded by the Air Transport Committee for using Fort Smith as a base of operations, which wasn't allowed under his licence.

Northern News Services cartoonist Norm Muffitt, a former RCMP officer, pilot and Transport Canada official, remembers the controversy well. He drew many a cartoon in support of Laserich, which made for an uncomfortable moment when applying for an enforcement job with Transport Canada.

"I had done a cartoon of a Transport Canada guy behind a desk, and on the desk was a nail with a cord attached to it. The other end was fastened to Willy's licence," said Muffitt.

"When I went in for my interview, the first thing that happened was the guy sat down with this cartoon in front of me and said, 'before we start, maybe you'd like to explain this.'"

Despite his apparent sympathies, Muffitt got the job.

Eventually, Laserich's legal problems subsided. Adlair grew into a fair-sized operation with bases in Yellowknife and Cambridge Bay. His son Paul runs the Yellowknife operation, while his other son Rene flies out of Cambridge Bay. Daughter Joann minds the Cambridge Bay base.

In 50 years of flying, Laserich maintained a perfect safety record.

"It's sort of sad that there aren't very many people around like that anymore that have the amount of experience he had," said Air Tindi pilot Mike Murphy, who began his flying career with Laserich and Altair.

"A lot of guys flying right now have 1,000 or 2,000 hours pilot command time, where when I flew with him he might have had between 25,000 to 30,000 hours."

On Wednesday, family members flew back to Yellowknife with Laserich's ashes on board the Lear jet he had flown for the past 15 years.

"My dad was a very extraordinary person," said son Paul. "He was a pioneer, loved life, and loved flying."

Laserich is survived by his wife Margaret Rose, sons Paul and Rene, daughters Joann and Bessie, and grandchildren Jesce Rose, Bryan, Tamalyn, and Michelle.

A memorial service will be held for him in Yellowknife at the Adlair base Wednesday Nov. 21 at 1 p.m., and in Cambridge Bay Friday, Nov. 23 at 1 p.m.