This column will be a bit of a departure today as I pause to remember a dear friend of the family, James “Stocky” Edwards, who until his death this week, just shy of 101 years, was Canada’s greatest living fighter pilot..Flying his “Kittyhawk” over North Africa, he shot down 20 enemy aircraft. My father knew Stocky well and while growing up in Comox, B.C. he would often stop and chat with the fighter ace as we went for an evening walk down Beaufort Ave. .I grew up in an idyllic town that was home to so many living legends who would never have imagined thinking of themselves in such grandiose terms. They just did their jobs in the Second World War and Korea and were lucky enough or blessed enough to come home again to talk about it. They always told you that. They always talked about the heroes that didn’t come home, the ones who died in combat or perished when their aircraft crashed..In addition to Stocky, I grew up knowing and admiring so many men who were not just fighter aces, but the people who built the Royal Canadian Air Force. They were the bush pilots who were recruited at the RCAF’s birth, like Wing Commander Harry Bryant, who literally lived across the street from me. .Or Lt.-Col. Duke Warren, who braved the skies over Dieppe while German troops waited for a poorly planned and executed invasion that sacrificed many Canadian Army soldiers. That was Lord Louis Mountbatten’s folly, but it did provide some valuable lessons for the invasion of Normandy two years later..And I won’t forget Lt.-Col. Syd Burrows, that aerobatic master, who's still there and reading my columns! Per Ardua ad Astra Syd!.Group Captain “Irish” Ireland was another favorite of mine, a base commander at Comox who used to come to the annual Battle of Britain ceremony to read “High Flight,” that masterpiece of prose that captures the skill, the daring, the excitement, the euphoria and the proximity to death that is the life of a the fighter pilot. Ireland would read it with such raw emotion paired with perfect diction; ah, it was joy to behold. I was the master of ceremonies for this annual event during my years as the public affairs officer at CFB/19 Wing Comox and I would have paid the military for the honor to do so..I detailed them all in my book, “On Windswept Heights: Historical Highlights of Canada’s Air Force,” written for the Canadian Armed Forces..Why did so many Air Force greats retire in Comox? Well it’s simply the most beautiful place on earth. Am I biased? Yes, I was born there, went to junior high and high school there and returned when I joined the Air Force. Where else can you play tennis in the morning and ski in the afternoon during your Christmas vacation? There was a golf course on the base and as you drove your ball off the first tee, there were often deer grazing near the hole. In the distance was the glacier and around that Mount Washington and Forbidden Plateau, ski resorts that welcome guests from around the world..Conducting tours of the base, people would always ask me just why someone decided to build a base here. I replied that it was built in 1942 as an outpost to oppose any Japanese invasion. It managed to survive the war and became a key maritime patrol base during the early Cold War and eventually became a primary fighter base, with 409 Squadron flying the CF-101 Voodoo, an aircraft that could be equipped with nuclear Genie missiles. The missiles belonged to the United States Air Force but were stored at the base. Canada was supposedly a nuclear-free country during these years; but it wasn’t. The base always said it “could not confirm or deny” the presence of nuclear weapons on the premises. .Those were the days when Canadian pilots, as part of their NORAD mission, would have been deployed to the Soviet border along with aircraft from Alaska to counter any Russian threat. The pilots and base personnel told jokes about nuclear war — black comedy — because it helped them live with the odd logic of Mutually Assured Destruction..I think about those days now as we inch closer to nuclear war every day over the war in Ukraine. The Biden administration is sending hundreds of billions of dollars in arms to Ukraine and completely ignoring the signals from Russian President Vladimir Putin that he's prepared to bring the whole world down with him. Yet Republicans and Democrats in the U.S. and Liberals and Conservatives in Canada are blithely moving the whole process onward as if there will be no consequences..It engenders almost a fondness for the Cold War when people at least agreed that rushing into nuclear war was not a good idea..I wish I had had a chance to say goodbye to Stocky, but I haven’t been back to Comox in too many years. I remain in the true madhouse of Ottawa where bureaucrats went into psychiatric shock over the sound of honking horns and the federal government invoked the current version of the War Measures Act to get rid of some trucks parked on the street..But when I think of people like Stocky, a man who experienced all of the great events of the Twentieth Century, save the First World War, I am reminded of how they faced economic crisis, war and potential nuclear oblivion with guts and grace. This was a generation that just knew how to get on with it and to face life with honesty. Think of it: they went through the Great Depression as kids, only to be asked to go overseas and fight in the most massive war in history. And they did so..But I’ll tell you this, this is a generation that must wonder what the sacrifice was all about as they are eclipsed by time and pass into eternity. It’s not that Canada has become a small country, but its leaders have: petty rulers who are obsessed with identity politics and race; gender pronouns and disinformation. This is not what they fought for. This is not what their friends and comrades died for. .One of the greatest joys of my life has been listening to veterans and telling their stories. I love who they are and what they’ve done for Canada. I wish my career in the military and out of it could have achieved half of what they did. .So Stocky, Godspeed. You and your like might not be encountered with great regularity in this very temporal and narcissistic age but your memory will be preserved and your deeds remembered. .Those who remain can do no less.
This column will be a bit of a departure today as I pause to remember a dear friend of the family, James “Stocky” Edwards, who until his death this week, just shy of 101 years, was Canada’s greatest living fighter pilot..Flying his “Kittyhawk” over North Africa, he shot down 20 enemy aircraft. My father knew Stocky well and while growing up in Comox, B.C. he would often stop and chat with the fighter ace as we went for an evening walk down Beaufort Ave. .I grew up in an idyllic town that was home to so many living legends who would never have imagined thinking of themselves in such grandiose terms. They just did their jobs in the Second World War and Korea and were lucky enough or blessed enough to come home again to talk about it. They always told you that. They always talked about the heroes that didn’t come home, the ones who died in combat or perished when their aircraft crashed..In addition to Stocky, I grew up knowing and admiring so many men who were not just fighter aces, but the people who built the Royal Canadian Air Force. They were the bush pilots who were recruited at the RCAF’s birth, like Wing Commander Harry Bryant, who literally lived across the street from me. .Or Lt.-Col. Duke Warren, who braved the skies over Dieppe while German troops waited for a poorly planned and executed invasion that sacrificed many Canadian Army soldiers. That was Lord Louis Mountbatten’s folly, but it did provide some valuable lessons for the invasion of Normandy two years later..And I won’t forget Lt.-Col. Syd Burrows, that aerobatic master, who's still there and reading my columns! Per Ardua ad Astra Syd!.Group Captain “Irish” Ireland was another favorite of mine, a base commander at Comox who used to come to the annual Battle of Britain ceremony to read “High Flight,” that masterpiece of prose that captures the skill, the daring, the excitement, the euphoria and the proximity to death that is the life of a the fighter pilot. Ireland would read it with such raw emotion paired with perfect diction; ah, it was joy to behold. I was the master of ceremonies for this annual event during my years as the public affairs officer at CFB/19 Wing Comox and I would have paid the military for the honor to do so..I detailed them all in my book, “On Windswept Heights: Historical Highlights of Canada’s Air Force,” written for the Canadian Armed Forces..Why did so many Air Force greats retire in Comox? Well it’s simply the most beautiful place on earth. Am I biased? Yes, I was born there, went to junior high and high school there and returned when I joined the Air Force. Where else can you play tennis in the morning and ski in the afternoon during your Christmas vacation? There was a golf course on the base and as you drove your ball off the first tee, there were often deer grazing near the hole. In the distance was the glacier and around that Mount Washington and Forbidden Plateau, ski resorts that welcome guests from around the world..Conducting tours of the base, people would always ask me just why someone decided to build a base here. I replied that it was built in 1942 as an outpost to oppose any Japanese invasion. It managed to survive the war and became a key maritime patrol base during the early Cold War and eventually became a primary fighter base, with 409 Squadron flying the CF-101 Voodoo, an aircraft that could be equipped with nuclear Genie missiles. The missiles belonged to the United States Air Force but were stored at the base. Canada was supposedly a nuclear-free country during these years; but it wasn’t. The base always said it “could not confirm or deny” the presence of nuclear weapons on the premises. .Those were the days when Canadian pilots, as part of their NORAD mission, would have been deployed to the Soviet border along with aircraft from Alaska to counter any Russian threat. The pilots and base personnel told jokes about nuclear war — black comedy — because it helped them live with the odd logic of Mutually Assured Destruction..I think about those days now as we inch closer to nuclear war every day over the war in Ukraine. The Biden administration is sending hundreds of billions of dollars in arms to Ukraine and completely ignoring the signals from Russian President Vladimir Putin that he's prepared to bring the whole world down with him. Yet Republicans and Democrats in the U.S. and Liberals and Conservatives in Canada are blithely moving the whole process onward as if there will be no consequences..It engenders almost a fondness for the Cold War when people at least agreed that rushing into nuclear war was not a good idea..I wish I had had a chance to say goodbye to Stocky, but I haven’t been back to Comox in too many years. I remain in the true madhouse of Ottawa where bureaucrats went into psychiatric shock over the sound of honking horns and the federal government invoked the current version of the War Measures Act to get rid of some trucks parked on the street..But when I think of people like Stocky, a man who experienced all of the great events of the Twentieth Century, save the First World War, I am reminded of how they faced economic crisis, war and potential nuclear oblivion with guts and grace. This was a generation that just knew how to get on with it and to face life with honesty. Think of it: they went through the Great Depression as kids, only to be asked to go overseas and fight in the most massive war in history. And they did so..But I’ll tell you this, this is a generation that must wonder what the sacrifice was all about as they are eclipsed by time and pass into eternity. It’s not that Canada has become a small country, but its leaders have: petty rulers who are obsessed with identity politics and race; gender pronouns and disinformation. This is not what they fought for. This is not what their friends and comrades died for. .One of the greatest joys of my life has been listening to veterans and telling their stories. I love who they are and what they’ve done for Canada. I wish my career in the military and out of it could have achieved half of what they did. .So Stocky, Godspeed. You and your like might not be encountered with great regularity in this very temporal and narcissistic age but your memory will be preserved and your deeds remembered. .Those who remain can do no less.
