$10 · The Accidental Airline: Spilsbury’s QCA

The Accidental Airline: Spilsbury’s QCA by Howard White and Jim Spilsbury Hardcover, 1988, 238 pages. Gift inscription to previous owner’s on inside page. Jim Spilsbury bought an airplane in 1943, when wartime restrictions prevented the use of his boat to visit the upcoast camps and settlements where he repaired radios. From this innocent beginning grew Queen Charlotte Airlines, and when he sold the business to Pacific Western Airlines twelve years later, it was the third largest airline in Canada. This is the history of the accidental airline and those incredible years of flying, growing, and scrambling. There's the trip from Vancouver to the Queen Charlottes and back that took eleven days and three airplanes; the Waco covered with lamp-black, inside and out; the fatally jinxed Stranraer; and the twelve-gallon ice cream sundae in the muskeg. There are tales of mercy flights, tragic crashes, and miraculous rescues and escapes, and many entertaining details of the luck, business skill, and hard work needed to keep an airline aloft. See pictures Pickup in Langford Cross posted