Canadian Pacific Vancouver late 67 the bottom 10 on the seniority list out on the street at one weeks notice. No unemployment insurance.
Gliding friend had a very small company repainting and refurbishing light aircraft. When he realised I'd do anything for a buck he offered me a job. I became the biggest applicator of paint remover in western North America.
Met many bush pilots and subsequently in Pacific Western flew with many who varied from brilliant to appalling.
We shared a small hangar with a float repair shop, they were always busy repairing deadhead damaged floats. The noisiest imaginable environment, the poor apprentices with their heads inside the floats holding the bucking bars.
The biggest re- covering job we did was a Norseman and I had the job of rib-stitching both wings. Wonder if it featured in the film. The needle was about 2ft long stitching about every six inches or so with a baseball knot top and bottom. Also covered a Stranraer elevator.
Talking to the Norseman pilots they never weighed the freight. If you loaded it till the top of the float was at water level then you were at MTOW.
Story from one bushman I flew with. Norseman coming out of a remote lake. Just before departure they found a body floating in the lake.Had to get it back to civilisation so into the right hand seat with a lap strap. This worked until he ran into turbulence when the stiff, having thawed a bit, starts flopping against him emitting liquid from every orifice. Treated himself to a new uniform after that.
A Fokker on skis had an interesting departure from Kitimat when they were building a strip for what was to become the aluminium smelter. Landing uphill from the sea and departing downhill. Didn't quite get airborne on departure and waterskied for some 20 minutes before finding some rougher water to unstick the skis.
Canadian Pacific link trainer instructor ( they still had one in 1967) was a legless only survivor from a York crash on the early Dewline construction. The link trainer was to practice for the world's last aural range approach at Nanaimo which was a requirement for the initial IR even if we were never going to do one in a DC8.
Chief Pilot 707s in PW was ex Luftwaffe, Dorniers and Condors. Solo operation in Ansons doing the Dewline setup. Buck an hour so 15 hour days in the summer to try to make a living. First class operator.
The worst one had survived a night flight over the prairies in winter in some light aircraft, hadn't bothered with carb heat and when things went quiet crashed through a barn and emerged wingless but uninjured, hadn't dented his overconfidence.
Unusually quite a few old and bold pilots.