SOMBA K'E/YELLOWKNIFE - It was 50 years ago last week that Buffalo Joe McBryan penned his first official entry in his pilot's log book, marking the beginning of his flying career.

Buffalo Joe McBryan sits in a Douglas DC-3, one of his favourite planes to fly. He’s celebrating 50 years of flying in the North this year. - Nicole Veerman/NNSL photo

"I was 17 years old," remembers the president of Buffalo Airways. "Seventeen was the magic age to learn to fly, with paperwork. You gotta be 17 to go to flying school."

Although May 18, 1961, was his first recorded flight, he said it wasn't his first time in the captain's seat.

By the time he signed up to get his permit, he had already been up in the air with some of the most well-known pilots in the North: Merlyn Carter, Willy Laserich, Chuck McAvoy and Jim McAvoy.

"After 50 years, I look back and I say, 'Hey, I had the best,'" said McBryan of his mentors.

"Most people go to flying school and they go get a job flying, these guys taught me to fly before I went to flying school. Then I had to go to flying school to make it official," he said.

"I went there that day because these guys had taught me the care and control of flying and a job an airplane has to do."

McBryan attributes his success as a pilot to all four men, all of whom are now in what he calls the "big air service in the sky."

When he was 16, Carter took McBryan for his first flight, which he described as orgasmic.

"I remember thinking I was very, very fortunate. I could have been stealing hubcaps in the city and living in a dumpster," he said. "I was very, very happy of the experience of it. I was very thankful of the people that took the time to apprentice me."

McBryan said since his first flight, he has probably logged more than 25,000 hours in the sky, most of which were in Canada's North - a stretch of land he thinks of dearly.

"The North being the top third of Canada gave me, through its diversified people and country, an area to operate. I call it Snow White."

McBryan started Buffalo Airways in 1970 in Fort Smith, the same year he bought his first plane, a Norseman 185.

The Norseman was also the first plane to take him up in the air.

McBryan was making the trip in his mother's tummy from Cameron Bay, near Great Bear Lake, to Yellowknife, where he was born 10 days later. His next trip, returning home, was 10 days after he was born.

He said having a father who was a miner, in a place with few roads, he spent more time in a plane than he ever did in a car. He said it was a way of life.

And that's still how he views flying.

"I never considered it a job," he said. "It's a great gift when you're happy doing what you're doing.

"It went by pretty quick the 50 years, far too quick. I should be able to stop the clock. You can't, but it would be very, very nice to do it over again.

"I was very fortunate that lady luck, or fate, or Jesus Christ himself dealt me a full hand."

A full hand that now includes a reality television show, Ice Pilots NWT, which airs on History Television.

"That was totally Mikey," McBryan said, crediting his son who made the show possible. "It had nothing to do with me this TV program. I tried to stay under the radar for 40 years."

Mikey McBryan, who is the general manager of Buffalo Airways, said although the show is on the air, his dad still manages to stay under the radar as much as possible.

"He's very hard to catch on camera," he said, adding that at the hangar they call Joe Big Foot because he often appears in a shot as nothing more than a blur.

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