ARCTIC IDOL

Hokitika Guardian, 30 March 1935, Page 6

ARCTIC IDOL

AX INTREPID CANADIAN FLYER

A HERO OF PEACE AND WAR

When Baron von Riehtofen was shot clown, in France in September., 1918, he was pursuing a young Canadian Hiei whose guns had jammed and whom the leader °of the famous “Circus” had chased from a height of 10,000 ft. That youth has now been decorated by the King with the Order of the British Empire, “for numerous mercy flights into the Canadian Arctic.” He is Captain Wilfred Reid Hay, D.K.C., whose exploits are known to every boy and girl from Nova Scotia to the Wikon. It was Captain May’s second meeting with Riehtofen, who had wounded him a month earlier with a bullet that went through the bottom of his machine and blew the rim of the cockpit in his face. He was sent to the base, but escaped from hospital on his way to England, and was back with his squadron in a week. Twelve years later Captain May entertained in Edmonton, Alberta, an original member of the Riehtofen squadron, Raron von Esehwcgc-Lich-berge, commissioned bv German newspapers to trace the cause of the death of Dr Kurt Eaber, who was mangled by wolves while travelling alone in Northwest Canada. On his return from the war Captain .May saw an aeroplane, a war trophy, hanging from the roof ' of the Alberta Exhibition Building, and persuaded the authorities to allow him to open a school for civilian airmen. With his brother and two open-cockpit airplanes he started the first commercial aviation company in Western Canada. Since then scores ol fliers have owed theii start in the air to him.

"While celebrating New Year’s Ev» in 1929, Captain May learned thait diphtheria had broken out at Fort Vermilion. The message was several days old, having come a considerble part of the distance by dog train. The manager of the Hudson’s Bay Company post was already dead. Anti-toxin was urgently needed. Captain May, accompanied by Lieutenant Victor Horner,, a member' of his wartime squadron, responded to the call. It was the offseason for northern flying, and they took off in an open-cockpit aeroplane, their onlv machine. Four days later, when they returned, ten thousand citizens greeted them on the flying field. Late in 1929 Captain May’s two machine company was awarded , . the contract for the- first Arctic air mail, from Edmonton t'o Aklavik, a 2000-nxile snan that had never been seen From the air in winter. The mail, which included 120,000 philatelists’ letters, weighed four tons and was flown in three scarlet Reliance machines, the first- of their type to operate on skis. Landing-places near the forts were problematical. The weather was very unfavourable. Beyond Good Hope the sun did not rise, and perpetual twilight reduced flying hours. The outward trip, piloted by May, Glyn-Roberts and Hollick-Tvenyon, occupied 17 days. The return journey took four. They had Christmas dinner at Good Hope, with the temperature at 60 below 'zero.- It took hours to warm the motors. Captain May was awarded the McKee Trophy for the year’s outstanding feat in aviation.

On one of his mercy flights Captain May was missing for a week. Those were trying days for Canada and recalled the world’s anxiety when Harry Hawker, the first to attempt to fly the Atlantic, was picked up by the little Danish steamer, Mary, which had no wireless and could not tell the good nows until she reached her home port. When the “Mad Trapper,” who had killed a mounted policeman and wounded another in north-eastern Yukon, was securely entrenched and was picking off his pursuers, Captain May flew north, located, him, dropped tear-gas liorabs on him and led the police tf) his lair. Then he landed and carried the trapper’s body to Aklavik. Captain May, who stands six feet one in his mukluks and is ns silent as the sentry at Buckingham Palace, admits that the most trying episode in his '•areer was hi s flight to Fort Vermilion. The only conversation he indulged in while returning from flying the mail down the Mackenzie was his observation when crossing Great Slave Lake. “A year ago to-day we took off for Vermilion.”