Posts Tagged ‘Noorduyn Norseman’
Harold David McNeill: About the Author
Photo (2014): Winter Storm Watch in Tofino, British Columbia
An avid West Coast and Prairie Explorer, there are few parts of Western Canada that
Harold has not touched by land, sea, or air. Many dozens of these adventures with
family, friends, work, and volunteerism, are chronicled on this blog and in hundreds of Facebook posts.
Most of the stories are now being rewritten, proofed, and published in book form (see Appendix A)
Harold was born in 1941 and started life on his parent’s homestead in Northwest Saskatchewan where he was surrounded by a wider family circle who immigrated to Canada from the United States in the early 1900s. In his early teens, the family settled in Cold Lake, Alberta, where Harold became interested in flying bush planes as they were still in regular use throughout the area and next door was the largest airforce training base in Canada, RCAF Station Cold Lake. During his High School years, along with his best friend, Aaron Pinsky, the boys worked part-time filleting fish at a packing plant owned by Aaron’s dad. As Aaron’s dad also leased a number of aircraft to haul fish from northern
lakes, the boys picked up a lot of ad hoc flying time while assisting the regular pilots in loading and unloading airplanes as well as prepping the float or ski equipped aircraft for flight.
After Harold landed his first major job as a Crash Rescue Fireman with the United States Air Force Strategic Air Command based at Cold Lake, he also began flying training at the RCAF Station Flying Club were he was surrounded by the latest fighter jets and bombers that arrived from around the world for all-weather training. It was a crazy time when the world teetered at the edge of a nuclear apocalypse during the Cold War. After gaining his private pilots licence and float endorsement, he began flying as pilot in command on many of the aircraft on which he worked during his high school years. He later earned his Commercial Pilots Licence and one of the bush planes he flew, CF-AXL, holds special memories as it is now housed in the National Air and Space Museum in Ottawa.
Photo: This photo of an Oil Painting of CF-AXL graced the cover of the Canadian Aviation Historical Society’s 2000 Edition. Built in the 1930s, the aircraft was taken out of production in the early 1940s so the Fairchild Aircraft Company could concentrate on building bombers for World War II.
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