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Winnipeg Free Press - PRINT EDITION

High flyer writes interesting book, too

Reviewed by: Bill Redekop

Posted: 12/19/2009 1:00 AM | Comments: 0 (including replies)

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Thicket Portage Base, 1957

From Fox Moths to Jet Rangers

A Bush Pilot's Life

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By Harvey Evans, with Doug Evans

Harbour Publishing, 263 pages, $27

It's always remarkable (and a bit scary to professional writers) just how good a local book by a non-writer can sometimes be, and this one is a prime example.

Harvey Evans, who grew up in Flin Flon, was a northern bush pilot from age 18 in 1952.

He logged some 20,000 hours of flying time, mostly by helicopter, before calling it a day in 1994.

His memoir is full of adventures, close calls and tales of holding aircraft together with elastic bands and binder twine in those early days of northern flight. Of course, it's all told in that un-wordy way pilots have, casually describing things that scare the bejeebers out of the non-aviation audience.

Only the first 90 pages or so take place in Manitoba before Evans moves west, mostly to northern B.C. But the stories don't lose anything from the change in geography.

One rescue made him nationally famous when a father and son from Flin Flon didn't return from a fly-in fishing trip. Evans was active in the air search that was finally called off after 14 days.

Two days later Evans was flying a building contractor from Flin Flon to Pukatawagan. He veered off course just to take another look at where the father and son got lost, and he thought he saw the wing of a plane.

He passed over again and saw nothing. He passed over a third time and saw a little boy come running out on a bald rock, waving frantically.

The father was dead and the boy had slept beside his corpse for many days, obeying his dad's orders to not leave the plane. That eventually saved his life.

The boy's age isn't given, nor how the father died, and omissions like these are fairly common in the book, oversights a more practised writer wouldn't make.

From a photo, the boy looks to be maybe 10 or 12 years old.

This story also highlights a continuing theme in the book: Evans' clashes with company management and owners. His employer orders Evans to bill the family for two weeks of flying time for his participation in the search.

"This was against the code of the North, where everyone was expected to search for a missing aircraft at no cost. Bush flying had so many hazards, and sometimes the only hope of a downed pilot was that other fliers would not give up until they found him."

A heated argument ensues, and Evans quits. It wouldn't be the last time he does that. Evans quits and quits again from various flying companies, gets hired somewhere else, quits there, returns to a previous employer, and on it goes.

He does eventually become a manager for a fledgling helicopter company, and takes it from a one-helicopter outfit to one with a fleet of almost 20, as former customers switch to him in droves.

Evans died in 2007. His older brother Doug is listed as helping with the writing of the book but it doesn't say how.

Even with such omissions, readers will be forgiving. The memoir is chock full of fun, daring, nerve and standing on principle.

Anyone with even a trace of blue dye in their collar will enjoy it.

Bill Redekop is the Free Press's rural beat reporter.

Republished from the Winnipeg Free Press print edition December 19, 2009 H8

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