Air show returns for another fly-by
Event to celebrate industry that supports Yellowknife and the territory
Robin Grant
Northern News Services
Friday, July 8, 2016
SOMBA K'E/YELLOWKNIFE
While Canadian Forces Snowbirds are usually an airshow's main attraction, Gordon Van Tighem says the important role aviation has played in establishing Yellowknife makes the 2016 International Airshow, set for this weekend, such a quintessential local event.
Canadian Armed Forces paratroopers perform in tandem at the 2014 Yellowknife International Airshow. - NNSL file photo |
"Aviation transportation is the second largest industry in Yellowknife," said Van Tighem, who is a former Yellowknife mayor and president of the Yellowknife Airshow Society.
"There is so much that happens at our airport ... All of our food that doesn't come in trucks comes in airplanes. All of our people fly in airplanes back and forth for vacations and some commute to work. It's critical to our being able to be here."
Aviation in the region began in the 1920s, Van Tighem said, at first to transport fish and later to help prospect for suitable mining locations.
"Then the mines started then people started to move here and then we became a community and a territory," he said.
As aviation technology evolved, it became critical to the region.
Van Tighem said airplanes helped to catch the Mad Trapper of Rat River, a fugitive who was hunted through the NWT and Yukon in the early 1930s, and continued to play a pivotal role in other key events that put airplane usage on the map, including the development of commercial aviation.
This Saturday, the International Yellowknife Airshow will feature an assortment of aircraft related activities from flight aerobatics by the Canadian Snowbirds to a performance by Brent Handy, a solo aerobatic and formation pilot, and a show by the CF18 National demo team in jet aircrafts to more aerobatics in Harvard planes by the Yellow Thunder Harvard Formation Team.
Great Slave Helicopters will also demonstrate how to dump water on a forest fire.
There will also be an H-model Hercules owned by the Canadian military, Buffalo Airways aircrafts as well as airplanes from local companies, including First Air and Air Tindi on display.
While international in stature, the Yellowknife airshow is a community-organized event at its core.
"It's our residents (who organized it) who are not tied to the city or to the military or to any other organization," Van Tighem said. "So it's an event by the community to recognize and learn more about the aviation industry that supports us."
