Sunsets

I have taken a lot of pictures of sunsets in my life and as a result have become a bit of a connoisseur. They come in lots of different colors. 

There are the standard red ones.

The orange ones are fairly common.

There are the gold ones.

Not many people have seen the blue ones.

Rarer still are the black ones.

Sometimes a bird would sneak in and ruin the picture.

Sometimes an airplane would.

Sometimes someone will step in and make the picture.

Sometimes not.

I have been blessed to see them in all kinds of places. When I lived in Zanzibar I used to time how long it took the sun to dip into the Indian Ocean. It usually took the same amount of time as drinking two and a half beer. 

When I lived in the jungles of Guyana, the sunsets usually came right after the second rainfall of the afternoon. Parrots usually flocked and the mosquitoes came out. The sunset was a gentile reminder to put on pants and a long sleeve shirt. 

In Haiti, the sunset signaled the end of flying. For a couple of moments it allowed us to pause and reflect on those who had to endure the coming darkness. I didn’t like sunsets in Haiti.

Sunsets in Eastern Passage are nice. I don’t reflect or pause to consider greater truths. I enjoy them like I would a cup of tea. They do remind me however that I should lock my car door.

Gollum worked at FDC

I have turned into Gollum.

I used to be a fairly happy fellow. Content at home and at my job, I skipped and whistled my way through the day. People would often stop and say “Hey look at that really happy fellow. Wow, imagine if we were as happy as him.”

Birds sang for no reason when I walked by. They sang for the pure enjoyment of singing. They felt no pressure. They didn’t worry if they were off key or if I had heard the song before, because they knew I was carefree and without judgement. Sometimes they would just whistle or hum. A couple of times I heard them work on new material- experimenting with new rifts and tempos. 

I can’t remember now the last time I heard a bird sing.

I discovered something so powerful that Tolkien himself would not be able to comprehend. It has changed me- slowly but now completely. I was naive in the beginning, believing that this super human power would not affect who I was or how I saw people.

I now have the ability to force aviators to sit in aircraft for hours at a time and not fly. Usually these hours are after many of their friends have gone home. At the drop of a hat, I can pick a name, and force a person to sit in a dark room for three hours. Their only enjoyment would be a box lunch made by a company who's sole qualification was that it submitted the lowest bid. 

I can make people stand under a hovering helicopter for two hours holding a metal cable- two hours under a 20,000 lbs helicopter in -15 Celsius. ‘Their crime,’ you ask? I bumped into them in the hall.

Today, I actually said “Well tower can piss off.”

Never in the history of the English language have those words ever been grumbled together before. 

‘What was their crime’ you ask? They wanted to go home because of a snow storm, and I wanted to wait and see if the weather would improve enough to test an engine on a 50 year old helicopter.

I’d like to think that I had friends before this new found power. I walk into rooms now filled with my colleagues, and no-one makes eye contact. I am invisible, distorted, and insane just like poor ol Gollum.

Merry Christmas Bigfoot.

Merry Christmas.

I make a point of saying Merry Christmas instead of the generic Happy Holidays, or Seasons Greetings. It isn’t that I am insensitive to other corresponding holidays but rather I don’t celebrate them. More importantly, I have never known anyone to get upset by wishing them a Merry Christmas.

I think that the fear of making someone uncomfortable distracts us and ultimately diminishes the significance of the season. I mean, I don’t go out of my way ensuring that I don’t unintentionally insult Bigfoot, or Sasquatch, so why should I worry about offending someone by saying Merry Christmas? I think the chances of doing either is statistically the same. 

It isn't call a Christmas Concert anymore.
They are called 'Winter Sit through until you kid is finished.'

The meaning of Christmas has changed for me over the years as I’m sure it has changed for all of us. As a child, Christmas vacation was a mash of festive cartoons, school concerts, hockey tournaments, and wrapping paper. I vaguely remember something about a star, donkeys and wise men dressed in period costume, but principally Christmas was about family being together.

I was never really impressed with Santa Claus. He was always at the end of a line- a line that you had to wait in for what seemed like days and days wearing your snow-pants and holiday sweater. The wait was never worth it. It just made you feel tired and dirty. 

I don't think either of them wanted to be there.

More importantly, Santa flew one night a year- my Dad was often gone flying 6 months at a time. The jingling bells of Santa's sleigh could not compete with the sound of four Wright Turbo-compound engines of the CP -107 Argus. So what if Santa could deliver presents, the Argus could drop torpedos. The only thing that made me happy about Santa flying on Christmas eve was that I knew my father didn’t have to. 

Presents were great too. Don’t get me wrong, I love presents, but I can only remember a handful of them. The ones I do remember (the table hockey game, the race track, the army men, the parachute SAR game), I played with my Dad. 

Now I am the Dad, and like my father I am away from time to time. My kids don’t seem all that interested with Santa. My oldest is mostly curious about the great elve’s logistical considerations. She is concerned about the lack of snow and high winds and how it may affect his approach plans to the roof. My son is just happy that there is an endless supply of chips and dip.

Chutes Away- the best ever game ever made.

I sat down with them a couple of days ago and made sure they knew the reason why we celebrate Christmas. My daughter did a pretty good job. I thought though she gave too much detail when she started describing the modern Geopolitical implications. My son mumbled something about chips and dip.

I don’t think in the coming months my kids will remember what Santa brought them this year. I’m sure they will remember that Mom and Dad were home, and they spent the day with their Grandparents. When they get older, I’m sure they will understand that was the most precious gift any family could get. 

Merry Christmas.

I miss Kamchatka.

My wife has decided to paint the house over the Christmas holidays. That in itself isn’t really blogworthy, because she has been painting the house for the past two years. It has been a piecemeal process since we moved in.

She loves to be busy and is inspired by challenges. I think that is why she married me. I have enough character flaws to keep her busy for a lifetime. 

When we moved into our home, I liked the colors that were on the walls. If I didn’t like the color of one room, I just moved to another. We were living in a crayon box. Each part of the house was demarced like the countries on a Risk board. I spent most of my time in Kamchatka, the kids played in Ural, and my wife liked read in Western Australia.

On my first deployment my wife discovered a coping strategy. She painted. When I came home my beloved Kamchatka was overrun by some Beige/Taupe hoard. She didn’t call it beige or taupe, it was “Pony Tail.”

Each time I went away the hoard returned. Soon, my home was a patchwork of beige. “Straw Hat” blitzkrieg the kitchen. “Lion’s Mane” conducted unspeakable atrocities to the the family room. The stairway and main foyer were rolled over by “Sand Stone.”

I tried to voice my concerns. Like the the United Nations, I suggested that we form a committee to study the color arrangements of the rooms and perhaps created some kind of framework for future considerations. 

My wife is a scholar of Sun Tsu’s “Art of War.” She knew her adversary and plotted accordingly. She ‘appeased me” by suggesting that she wouldn’t mind if I painted over what she had done. It was agreed. If I didn’t like the color of a room, I could paint it back.

It was a victory for me- or so I thought. Unfortunately, my apathy of color and my laziness of work trumped my desired to have a say. War is hell, and I didn’t even get a medal.

All these subtle tones of beige has caused me a bit of private grief. I can’t tell them apart, and I am wondering if these color shades are an elaborate practical joke. When new people come over to the house, my wife will take them on a tour and describe the color. Women in the tour will always smirk knowingly, and the men always rub their eyes.

In order for me to do my job, the government of Canada poked, prodded, and made me ‘turn my head and cough’ my way into a cockpit. They wouldn’t accept anything less that a ‘perfect physical specimen.” (Just to let you know, I laughed to myself when I typed that.) So, I should be able to tell the difference between “Snowflake skin” and “Moldy Walnut’. 

Nope.

I do like this blue. I call it Eastern Passage Whooping Crane Dream.

This is a nice orange. I think it is called Beach Garbage Orange.

This is my favourite color of beige. It is called Weathered Pier.

My Haitian make work project.

It has been almost a year since the earthquake. 

Big Dawg delivering 750 litres of water.

A couple of days ago, a young guy at work was giving a power point history lesson on 423 Maritime Helicopter Squadron. It was a pretty dry summary of someone else’s research. The presenter stumbled over the script and the slides. Unfamiliar with the material and nervous about the crowd, he tried to ad lib.

He spoke of 423’s battle honors, listing Normandy, the Bay of Biscay, Battle of the Atlantic, and Kuwait- then he added that our tradition of excellence continued in Haiti. The rest of the audience fidgeted and did not notice the addition. To me, it was the only thing he said that I remember.

I was a member of the air detachment that sailed with HMCS Athabaskan 36 hours after the terrible quake. Looking back, I remember being excited to be going on this mission. That feeling of boyhood thrill was soon tempered when we loaded 10,000 body bags on the back of the ship. They came stacked on pallets. My last thought sailing out of Halifax harbour was that we were going someplace that a part of us was never going to leave.

Our crew launched at daybreak the first day on scene. The sun was rising over the early morning cloud and the air smelled like fire. Everything felt still. As soon as we made landfall we began to assess the destruction- calling out on the aircraft’s intercom the various points of interest- a collapsed building, a fire, signs for help, bodies. Soon we realized that we didn’t need to highlight areas of destruction- everything was destroyed.

One of the many signs for help.

That first morning we had to transport the ship’s Executive Officer (XO) to meet with the Canadian point of contact and the UN representative in Leogane- and this would lead to my greatest single accomplishment of the entire mission. 

The day was just beginning, but it was already getting hot. There was’t any wind that morning and I’m sure if it was anyplace else in the Caribbean it would have been the nicest day. 

Heavy helicopters don’t like hot, humid, windless days. The landing zone for the meeting was relayed to us, and it soon became apparent that we were limited (torque limited to be exact) with the number of options as to how to land there. I briefed my approach plan to the crew. I detailed the wind and obstacles and an escape route in the event we had an engine malfunction. My approach was to maximize the limited wind we had available and I was going to use a shallow approach path to limit the power requirements that I would need to stop. Unfortunately, my approach path flew directly over the only undamaged building in Leogane.

As we flew over, the guys in the back of the aircraft said, “Oh, we just blew the roof off that house.” We continued with the approach. The XO met with the military commanders on the ground and they began to develop a coordinated relief strategy. When we departed the landing zone, we learned that we flew over an orphanage.

I blew the roof off the only standing orphanage in Haiti.

I felt pretty bad about it. Later that evening, the Captain of the ship called me to his cabin to talk about what I had done.  He told me that we are all doing our very best under very difficult circumstances and although I blew the roof off the orphanage, the Canadian command team was able to solidify a relief strategy. He continued by reassuring me that he had assigned a ship’s team of engineers to go to the orphanage the next day and make it “better than before.”

I snapped to attention and said “Thank you sir,” And then with a smirk I continued. “...being from Newfoundland I am quite familiar with make work projects. I’m am just glad I could provide my expertise.” Thankfully the ship’s command team appreciated my sarcasm. 

I believe by the time we left Haiti to return to Canada, the ship constructed eight separate orphanages in Leogane.

Moving a hospital over a mountain.

I was the only clown on that deployment. The other members of the air detachment were average Canadians who did unimaginable feats exceptionally well. 

My aircraft captain (AC) once shot an approach into a remote mountain valley to deliver food and water to a village that had not received supplies for weeks. The landing zone was so small and off level, that the AC had to hover on two wheels for twenty minutes while the two ‘backenders’ unloaded 3000 lbs of aid.

My AESOP (don’t ask me what it stands for), held a dying woman’s hand for a half hour while we tried to transport her to the USS Comfort. She smiled at him and whispered thank you.

My TACCO embodied the Canadian effort in Haiti. His leadership was the reason why we were successful. This photo of him lifting an elderly woman from the aircraft will forever represent to me what it means to be Canadian.

The Tacco is the guy with the wedgie.

Sometime during the mission, we went back to our early squadron roots and painted some nose art on our aircraft. We delivered two mobile hospitals, over 160 000 lbs of supplies and 45 000 litres of drinkable water. 

Big Dawg's nose art.

It was very humbling to be on that air detachment with those people.  IMAX just completed a movie about the event. If you watch carefully you will see those great people and the clown.

Eastern Passage Baby Reindeer.

The elusive Eastern Passage baby Reindeer.

I left work a little early today. It was the office’s Christmas party. As I was walking out, a colleague asked me where I was going. I told her that I had to go home and walk my goat. 

“A goat?” she asked.

“Yes.” I replied rather matter of factly.

“You have a goat?”

“Yah, he is great. Cheaper than owning a lawn mower and he eats garbage. We only have to put too bags out on the curb every other week. Contrary to popular belief, they don’t eat cans though.”

“How are you allowed to have a goat in Eastern Passage. Aren’t there zoning regulations against farm animals in the town?”

“I don’t know. No one has ever said anything about it. Neighbors love my goat too. In fact people have been stopping in front of my house this past week to look at my Christmas lights and see the ‘baby reindeer’ in my backyard. Kids get a big kick out of it. They are so gullible cause it looks nothing like a baby reindeer.”

“You’re joking, right?” she asked.

“Who could lie about something as special as the Eastern Passage Baby Reindeer?”

An afternoon with David Hornell.

A while back, my son and I were introduced to David Hornell. We bumped into him rather unexpectedly while we were at the Shearwater Aviation Museum. 

My Son, using the same Cockpit Procedure Trainer my Dad used.

Mr. Hornell is from Mimico, Ontario. He spends all his time now in Lerwick, a small town situated on the Shetland Islands of Northern Scotland. He doesn’t get around much anymore, so it was very fortunate that we had a chance to make his acquaintance.

He was a pilot during the second world war and flew with 162 Bomber Reconnaissance Squadron. Most of his time during the war was spent patrolling Northern England and Scotland for Nazi submarines. He logged 60 coastal patrol missions and finished his career with 600 flight hours on the PBY Canso. He successfully ditched the aircraft on his last mission, and never flew operationally again.

Submarines, I looked for in Scotland.

I told my son that his Grandfather also flew in Northern Scotland, looking for submarines. I mentioned that I have as well, but I don’t think my son was listening to me anymore. He was mesmerized by Mr. Hornell’s story. 

I’ll try and retell it the best I can remember.

Sometime in June of 1944, Mr. Hornell and his crew were on patrol somewhere over the North Sea. The day started like any other, and the crew were fully expecting another long, uneventful trip. It wouldn’t be what they expected. To their surprise, they sighted a fully surfaced U-boat.

Mr. Hornell and his crew closed to attack. At a three quarters of a mile, the submarine began to fire at the Canso with its anti-aircraft guns. Mr. Hornell continued to press.

At roughly 1200 yards Hornell engaged the boat with his two guns. Almost immediately, their starboard gun jammed. Mr. Hornell continued to press.

At 800 yards the aircraft was hit by flak. Two fairly large holes appeared in the wing. Mr. Hornell pressed.

At approximately 500 yards it was noticed that the starboard engine was pouring oil and a fire had started trailing on the leading edge of the wing. He did not waiver.

At 300 yards the starboard engined feathered, but Hornell pressed on with the attack, dropping the depth charges it was carrying. The first depth charge hit between the bow and the conning tower of the submarine. The second hit the water approximately 45 feet from the port side of the U-Boat.

The pilots struggled with controlling the aircraft.  Starboard engine continued to vibrate and fell out of the wing. The aircraft couldn’t stay airborne, so Hornell decided to ditch. The aircraft was brought into wind and the pilots carried out a fully stalled landing, boucing twice. The first time approximately 150 feet, and the second time about 50 feet. Ditching successfully accomplished despite 50 foot swells.

It is our responsibility to teach the future of our past.

The aircraft sank to wing level within 8 minutes and completely disappeared within twenty. No one was injured in the ditching. For 21 hours the crew took turns in the life raft. The wind was 45 knots and the waves were 50 feet tall. Hornell lead his men, keeping moral and spirits high. He whistled and sang. They invented a game of “Ride em Cowboy” as big swells threatened to swamp the dingy.

They lost two men due to exposure. They released their bodies to the sea. Hornell was blinded by the fuel and oil. He lead his men, without sight until the end. He died fifteen minutes after his crew was rescued. He was posthumously awarded the Victoria Cross for his actions. It is one of three that Canadian airmen were awarded during the second world war.

F/L Hornell is buried in Lerwick, Scotland. His Victoria Cross can be seen at the Shearwater Aviation Museum. His account can be read here.