Side Trips and Sideslips

Standing in front of the giant map, I am struck by the reach of the Mackenzie Delta. Flying overhead a few days earlier in an Air North Hawker Siddeley 748, my face all but pressed against the frosted window, I’d studied the expanse of water and earth. The tributaries and lakes, the dead ends where the water is trying to push into new territory; they had all caught my attention as I tried to memorize the topography of a foreign land. On the ground in Inuvik in the Northwest Territories, though, it’s easy enough to forget this place is more water than terra firma – that this town was actually created in the 1950s to relocate the people of flood-prone Aklavik. Staring at the map tacked to the back wall of the Gwich’in Helicopters hangar, I am reminded.

This article was published in the Spring 2011 issue of the Journal of the Canadian Aviation Historical Society. The full text of this article will be available here shortly.