Finding the Form with Trish Sissons

Pilots are good for lots of things. They excel at getting you from A to B, throwing good parties, and telling even better stories.

I grew up in a remote community on the west coast where healthcare and diverse career options are hard to come by. My dad was a bush pilot in the area for fifty-ish years—a fixture of the aviation community—and working at the airport as a teenager, I was surrounded by the lore of both the profession and the area. Mostly, these tales were of funny escapades, practical jokes, daring landings. Ace McCool moments, if you like. There were also moments of lowered, glassy eyes, talk of lost friends, and musings about whether some of the more daring rescue trips in inclement weather were worth the price.

The shape of the land in the Coast Mountain Range, and the work done on it, is difficult and sometimes deadly. For those injured on the job, the landscape often means the only way to safety is by air. Medivac flights are just a part of life across rural Canada. For those of us lucky enough to have locums and a clinic with a bed or two, that can mean people from further afield being medivaced to us. More often, it’s a connecting flight to a bigger urban centre, prohibitively far from loved ones during traumatic experiences. Medivac flights are a lifeline for those of us whose provincial and territorial governments have deemed too insignificant to have local care, and in my family, they have long been part of our livelihoods.