Bush Pilot: Reflections on a Canadian Myth

The NFB's 27th Oscar®-nominated film.

Director Bill Mason's short film focuses on his friend and fellow filmmaker, Blake James. In his never-ending quest for freedom, Blake pilots his own plane. This film is Mason's view of his friend as a "hobo of the skies," but it is also an adventure that beckons the viewer to come along for the ride.

This short film takes a look at Saskatchewan’s air ambulance service, organized and operated by experienced flyers who provide speedy hospitalization and treatment to the ill and injured. Within 15 minutes of receiving a desperate phone call for help from a remote area, a plane is on its way, guided to the patient with the help of landmarks such as a coal bin or a thin column of smoke on a northern lakeshore.

This documentary short takes you on a tour of Trans-Canada Airlines’ maintenance shops in Winnipeg before taking off for a trial flight on the British-built Vickers Viscount airplane, the first propeller-turbine airliner.

This short animated film is about Wop May, one of Canada's leading bush pilots in the 1920s.

This short documentary from the On the Spot series—“the National Film Board’s up-to-the-minute report of what’s happening somewhere in Canada”—invites us aboard a transpacific flight. Host Fred Davis, on his way to shoot stories in Japan and Korea, interviews the pilot, navigator and flight attendants.

In this short documentary, Fred Davis visits the De Havilland Aircraft factory in Toronto, circa 1954. He interviews two test pilots, talks to one of their wives, and goes for a ride in a new Beaver airplane.

This documentary paints a vivid portrait of the bush pilots who soar daily above the boreal forests and tundra of Quebec's Great North. Who hasn't dreamed of flying? Head in the clouds, light-hearted giddiness, a surge of adrenaline, exhilarating freedom. Bush pilots of northern Quebec, the last of a dying breed, experience these sensations every day aboard their hydroplanes. Lakes, rivers, forests: this majestic North of open spaces and infinite silence is all theirs.

This documentary tells the story of Max Ward, a former bush pilot whose company grew to become one of the major airlines in Canada. A study of entrepreneurship, the film focuses on Ward himself, depicting his distinctive style of hands-on management. Between hallway meetings, informal chats with the staff, checks on maintenance, flight preparations and in-flight conversations with vacationing customers it becomes apparent that the president's personal touch is a key element in Wardair’s success story.

For more background info on this film, visit the NFB.ca blog.

This short wartime documentary describes Canada’s airmail service in 1944. Every night, Trans-Canada Airlines Flight 6 crossed Canada from Vancouver to Montreal with its load of blue and yellow airmail bags, playing an important role in Canadian life and business. Three times a week, cargoes bound eventually for London, Moscow, Lisbon and Paris were flown to Scotland. Letters and parcels for prisoners of war, diplomats, business executives and soldiers went into a thirty-ton Lancaster. When decisions were vital and information had to travel quickly, Canada's air service proved its value.

This short 1944 documentary is an account of the development of air transport during wartime and a review of issues to be solved in regulating international civil aviation. The film traces air routes established to connect Russia with Canada and the United States and highlights the contribution of air transport to world unity.

This documentary from the Salute to Flight series links the barnstormers and bush pilots who explored Canada's vast hinterland with the aviation heroes who flew the Bolingbrokes, Ansons, Mosquitoes and Hurricanes of World War II.