When, in 1920, news reached Edmonton and Calgary that Imperial Oil's exploration team headed by geologist T.A. Link had struck oil at Fort Norman in the Northwest Territories, the search for oil in the North assumed a frantic pace. Imperial quickly acquired two metal Junkers W-34 aircraft from Germany. Powered by 175-horsepower engines and capable of carrying five people or two tonnes of cargo, they were named the "Vic" (G-CADP) and the "Rene" (G-CADQ). They were picked up in New York by the air veterans turned bush pilots, Captain W.R. "Wop" May and Lieutenant George Gorman, and flown to Edmonton and, in the case of the ill-fated "RenÄ" to Regina, where it suffered a badly damaged undercarriage. After further delays, the aircraft were flown to Fort Norman in the spring of 1921. The "RenÄ" subsequently suffered a badly damaged propeller and skis at Fort Simpson. After some ingenious improvisation by Imperial's mechanic, using oak sleigh boards and moosehide glue to fashion a propeller, the airplane flew again in April 1922, only to be grounded in another crash at Fort Simpson. This time a wing had to be shipped by rail and boat from Edmonton, only to be perforated by the sole horse north of Great Slave Lake, which grazed in the yard of the Hudson's Bay post where the wing was unloaded! Several tin cans were rivetted to the wing as a patch, and the "RenÄ" flew the Peace River, Fort Norman run of 820 kilometres for the rest of the season. Finally, it crashed and sank later that year at Peace River.
The other aircraft, the "Vic," proved more reliable, though costly, in ferrying geologists and supplies into Fort Norman. The supply of gasoline for the two aircraft became such a problem, in fact, that a crude still had to be fashioned to refine 900 litres of aviation fuel at the Discovery Well at Fort Norman. The expensive experiments proved vital in one aspect at least, for in the area of air reconnaissance and mapping Imperial later contracted out significant areas of the Alberta foothills in 1929 to Western Canada Airways.
While the "Vic" and the "RenÄ" had demonstrated the hazards of aviation in the North, they also dramatically reduced what had been forty-five days by dogsled to a six-hour flight.
Courtesy: Public Archives of Canada, Imperial Oil Collection (PA 96604)
