The Immortal Beaver
THE WORLD’S GRATEST BUSH PLANE
SEAN ROSSITER
Copyright © 1996 by Sean Rossiter
First paperback edition 1999
99 00 01 02 03 5 4 3 2 1
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means without the prior permission of the publisher or, in the case of photocopying or other reprographic copying, a licence from CANCOPY (Canadian Reprography Collective), Toronto, Ontario.
Douglas & McIntyre
2323 Quebec Street, Suite 201
Vancouver, British Columbia V5T 4S7
Canadian Cataloguing in Publication Data
Rossiter, Sean, 1946–
The immortal Beaver
ISBN 1-55054-724-0
1. Beaver (Transport planes). I. Title.
TL686.D4R67 1996 387’.73343 C96-910459-6
Editing by Robin Brass
Cover & text design by Peter Cocking
Front cover photo by Graham Osborne
Airplane diagrams by Rhonda Ganz & Peter Cocking
Printed and bound in Canada by Friesens
Printed on acid-free paper
The publisher gratefully acknowledges the assistance of the Canada Council for the Arts and of the British Columbia Ministry of Tourism, Small Business and Culture. The publisher also acknowledges the financial support of the Government of Canada through the Book Publishing Industry Development Program.
Contents
Preface Beavers return to Dick Hiscock’s watery backyard
Chapter One The Beaver takes off
Chapter Two First to fight: Jaki Jakimiuk and the PZL fighters
Chapter Three Downsview goes to war
Chapter Four One thousand Mosquitoes
Chapter Five Fred Buller joins DHC
Chapter Six DHC-X: Halfway to greatness
Chapter Seven Phil Garratt’s half-ton flying pickup truck becomes the Beaver
Chapter Eight But will it fly? Testing the Beaver
Chapter Nine Russ Bannock takes the brass fishing
Chapter Ten Fort Rucker, Alabama, to Wanganui, New Zealand
Chapter Eleven The Turbo Beaver
Chapter Twelve Adventure stories from the moody Pacific Coast
Chapter Thirteen Beavers better than new
Chapter Fourteen Under the weather
Chapter Fifteen FHB’s last flight
Acknowledgements
This project originated with the photographer Alex Waterhouse-Hayward, who caught me in a moment of weakness—leaving a downtown Vancouver bar, where he had been drinking soda water and I beer—and asked me to write a magazine article about the de Havilland Beaver. He wanted to photograph the aircraft and needed someone to write an article for him to illustrate. I said sure. This is one of the few promises made in bars that I have kept.
The article, headlined “The Beaver Then and Now,” appeared in the Georgia Straight. It explained the Beaver’s importance as today’s sole means of transport to many outposts along the British Columbia coast and was a finalist for a 1995 Western Magazine Award. Straight editor Charles Campbell deserves credit for buying an arcane idea, and the final result reflected careful editing and fact-checking by Martin Dunphy and Naomi Pauls. Scott McIntyre read that article and suggested this book.
In a coincidence that is unprecedented in my twenty-three years of freelance writing, Western Living magazine’s Sue Fisher asked me to write a Canadian Classics column on the Beaver at the same time. Editor-in-chief Paula Brook gracefully confirmed the assignment anyway, and that piece focused on the engineering decisions that resulted in the Beaver’s distinctive silhouette.
Aside from Dick Hiscocks, who has been available to me over more than two years for several formal interviews and numberless editorial chores, a number of survivors from the impressive de Havilland Canada team that conceived, designed and built the Beaver were generous with their time, memories and materials. First among these is Russ Bannock, the Beaver’s first test pilot and later president
