bri,
yes, it's a Wright B Flyer:
You are right about the silk, but I'm pretty sure the pilot is Phil Parmelee. He is doing his pre-takeoff checks - note the props are rotating. The caption on my photo reads (in part):
Morehouse-Martens, a department store in Columbus, Ohio, hired pilot Phil Parmalee to deliver rolls of silk from Dayton in the passenger seat of his Wright Model B -- then promptly sold the fabric as souvenirs and made a handsome profit.
This is supported by a photo of Phil (
Philip Orin Parmelee), wearing the same distinctive jacket.
I had been planning to use this photo below (cropped to remove the disctinctively grim-faced Wilbur) taken at Hunaudieres racetrack, Le Mans in 1908:
but I discovered that windriver had previously posted a sketch (
http://www.pprune.org/3037927-post385.html) which is clearly derived from the Le Mans photo:
All of my photos are taken from a really good book, which I was given some time ago, but only recently got around to reading - "On Great White Wings - The Wright Brothers and the Race for Flight" by Fred Culick and Spencer Dunmore, McArthur and Company, Toronto, 2001.
Over to you in Sunny Alberta.