The first time I met Archie Pennie, he was 92 years old—a tall, slender and boney man in a blue on blue argyle sweater and powder blue trousers. His face was long and narrow, full of anticipation…

I often shake my head today at the voyeuristic and Pavlovian attention certain, shall we say, “celebrities” get for doing so very little. In the worst case scenarios, you have those plasticized…

When my father, F/L John W. (Jack) Chalmers wrote his memoirs as an RCAF navigator instructor, it was appropriate that he include some of his poetry that was inspired by his service in uniform during …

We were grinding along at twelve thousand feet in cloud, minding our own business halfway between Ottawa and New York City in a North Star freighter. It was the gutted…

Since the early years of the last century, when the bewildering sight of flying machines began to fill the sky, the dreams of young boys and girls were lit by a new fire, one painted…

A day or so after rejoining the squadron, a number of army officers were attached to us for ten days, while some of our fellows went on exchange to see how the army functioned….

The first day I met Gordon face to face, I brought him a lemon meringue pie. Little did I know how much he liked pie. Over the past two years and dozens and dozens of interviews, driving from Calgary to High River…

As is our tradition, we raise a banner honouring a living veteran pilot of the Second World War. In past years, we have honoured men like Max Ward, Stocky Edwards and Bill McRae. This year, a year we celebrated leadership …

This past summer, while researching images of the British Commonwealth Air Training Plan operations at No. 36 Service Flying Training School at Penhold, Alberta, I went to one of the greatest …

You are standing at the very edge of a steel cliff, high above the Indian Ocean. You look backwards across a hot steel deck shimmering in the 100ºF heat to the vast expanse of pale white-blue ocean….

Over the past seven years of researching aviation stories on the web, I have kept a folder on my laptop dedicated to images of Second World War aircraft that had been captured and had suffered the indignity of being painted …

If there ever was a heartland of Canada, a place where our traditional pre-electronic age Canadian values of humility, hard work, family, honesty and cheerfulness are alive and well, …

I have never been to New Zealand, that nation of two islands on the far side of my world, but I have this dreamlike image that runs in my head when that adventurous nation comes to mind….

Back in 1991, working at Ottawa’s National Capital Air Show, I welcomed a young Rockwell B-1B bomber pilot as he stepped down from the ladder of his “Bone” after the long flight from Ellsworth ….

I was lucky enough to be part of The Snowbirds for the 05-06 seasons. I was Snowbird 10, team co-ordinator. During this time, and since, I have heard the term "life of the rock star" bandied about….

As the Second World War wound down in Europe, the Allied powers, which had previously been focused on the destruction of Hitler’s Nazi-run Germany, began to think about the battle to come…

Mori Juzo was a torpedo bomber pilot of the Imperial Japanese Navy and one of the aviators who participated in the attack on Pearl Harbor. In 1973, Juzo wrote his autobiography…

In the third and final episode of Navy Blue Fighter Pilot, Lieutenant Don Sheppard is now a blooded veteran, a respected and much-loved member of 1836 Squadron…

Throughout all of Continental Europe and the Soviet Union during the Second World War, nearly a quarter million aircraft were destroyed in combat, most falling from the skies to…