Dear Editor,
My father, William Ross Lennox, will be inducted posthumously into the Canadian Aviation Hall of Fame on June 9, 2016 in Ottawa. I have the privilege of accepting this special honour on his behalf.
As part of my research for the acceptance speech, I Googled his name to see what might come up and the first item was The Reminder’s recent story “Ross Lennox, one-time Flin Flon bush pilot, bound for Aviation Hall of Fame.”
It seemed so fitting to me that Flin Flon would rank at the top of a list of articles connected to my dad.
While it has been many years since my family left Flin Flon, it has a special place in all our hearts. My parents met at the Flin Flon flying school, where my dad was an instructor after the war, and before he moved to Hudson Bay Air Transport as a bush pilot, first on fixed wing, and then on helicopters.
My mom, Gladys Walker, was a nurse at Flin Flon General Hospital and in her free time was taking flying lessons. She never did get her pilot’s license and my dad always claimed she had to marry him because she owed him so much for those lessons! They married in 1948 and my three siblings and I were all born there.
Dad truly loved the North and his flying for exploration work with the company took him to northern Saskatchewan, the Barren Lands in the Northwest Territories, northern British Columbia and the Yukon.
While our family ultimately settled in Montreal in 1963, when Dad went to work for Pratt & Whitney Canada as a test pilot and later chief pilot, he remained connected to his many friends and co-workers at HBM&S.
Over the years, Dad made many return visits to Flin Flon and never tired of talking of those early days of his flying career.
On behalf of my siblings JA, Chuck and Gina (Shapiro), thank you for sharing a part of his story. It was a wonderful gift to our family!
Donna-Lee Waymann
Toronto
