Bush Pilots Monument

Yellowknife’s Old Town sits on a granite outcrop jutting into Great Slave Lake, and the highest point of it, a rounded dome of Canadian Shield rock known simply as The Rock, carries a tribute to the people who opened the North by air. The Bush Pilots Monument stands on top of The Rock and honours the pilots and engineers who flew in the early days of northern aviation, when there were no roads, little navigation equipment and a landscape of lakes and forest that could only be crossed from the sky. The monument is a short climb from the streets of Old Town, and the view is a good reward.

The story it recalls is one of the great chapters of Canadian history. In the 1920s and 1930s, small aircraft fitted with floats in summer and skis in winter linked remote settlements, mines and trading posts across the territory. Pilots such as Wop May and Punch Dickins became famous. Dickins, nicknamed the Snow Eagle, flew millions of kilometres in bush planes and charted much of the Arctic coast and the northern landscape, and May took part in dramatic mercy flights and the hunt for the Mad Trapper of Rat River. The planes carried prospectors, mail, medicine and supplies, and in the 1930s they brought geologists and miners to Great Bear and Great Slave Lakes and to the gold and mineral discoveries that led to the founding of Yellowknife itself. The bush pilot, flying by sight and instinct, became a figure of legend.

Visitors reach the monument by walking up a steep wooden staircase from Franklin Avenue, with a couple of resting places along the way. The steps are not wheelchair accessible, so those with limited mobility may prefer to enjoy the Old Town below. At the top, two viewing platforms look out over Yellowknife Bay, the harbour where floatplanes still take off and land through the summer, over Great Slave Lake and across the roofs of Old Town. The view of a floatplane taking off from the bay is especially striking, and a sunset or a midnight-sun evening in summer, when the light lasts almost all night, is memorable.

The monument is free and open at any time, and no tickets are needed. Wear sturdy shoes, as the rock can be slippery, and bring a jacket since the wind off the lake is cool. Combined with a walk through Old Town, its houseboats, Back Bay and the cafés of Old Town, it makes an easy hour or two.