Frederick William Hotson

Frederick William (Fred) Hotson was born in Toronto, Ontario, on December 29, 1913. He received his early education at Fergus, Ontario. In 1934 he entered the aircraft engineering course at the Central Technical School in Toronto.

Hotson was chosen from the graduating class of 1935 for a position with the de Havilland Aircraft Company of Canada Ltd. (DHC). He gained valuable experience in all departments at the time, particularly during the introduction of the Canadian Tiger Moth.

He obtained his Pilot's Licence from the Toronto Flying Club in 1938 and during the same year, test flew his home-built Heath Parasol sport plane. He completed the Department of Transport's Engineer's Licence, A and C, in 1939. He stored the Parasol and continued as foreman of DHC aerodrome service during the first nine months of the war.

In 1941 Hotson left DHC to join the British Commonwealth Air Training Plan (BCATP) as instructor at No. 1 Air Observers School, Toronto, and pilot-instructor and operations manager at No. 9 AOS, St. Jean, Quebec. He served as duty pilot, chief instructor and assistant operations manager as the school grew under Canadian Pacific Airlines (CPA). In 1944 CPA was asked to assist the Royal Air Force Transport Command (RAFTC) in delivering aircraft to Britain. A ferry flight department was quickly put together by CPA with captains from the western lines and first officers from the AOS schools. Hotson was chosen to join the group in March 1944, and completed a total of twenty Atlantic flights to Europe and Africa. He spent the last six months of the war in service with No.  231 Communications Squadron, RAFTC.

At war's end Hotson obtained his Public Transport Licence and Instrument Rating. He made several aircraft deliveries to South America in the employ of Aircraft Industries Ltd. He flew a Fairchild Husky as a bush pilot in northern Ontario and Quebec until 1948. At that time he became personal pilot for Major A. P. Holt, flying a Grumman Mallard. He then moved with the same aircraft to become Chief Pilot for the Ontario Paper Company. He continued in that capacity for 18 years and added a DC-3 to the company fleet in 1955. In 1958 he was a founding Director of the Canadian Business Aircraft Association (CBAA) and served as its President in 1964.

In 1966 he was granted a leave of absence to conduct a two month study in Afghanistan for the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) on the technical and economic use of short take-off and landing (STOL) aircraft in the remote areas of that country. After studying its history, geography, economics, and culture, Hotson realized the challenge of introducing any modern airplane into a country of such rugged and inhospitable terrain. There were very few landing strips, navigation aids or weather stations. There were few locally trained pilots, mechanics or other specialists needed to run an airline. Nor were there hotels, taxis or fuel in the back country.

He traveled extensively within Afghanistan and, on completion of his report, rejoined DHC in 1967 in the flight test department, primarily as a Twin Otter flight instructor. He returned to Afghanistan with their first aircraft and instructed pilots on how to fly it. Similar flight instructor assignments were carried out in Norway, the United States and Canada. He joined DHC's product support department in 1969, and acted as Sales Engineer until his retirement in 1978, with a total of 13,000 flying hours on 25 types of aircraft.

Hotson has had a continuing interest in preserving Canada's aviation history. In 1969 he became President of the Canadian Aviation Historical Society (CAHS), an office he held for 15 years. In 1977 he received the Aircraft Owners and Pilots Award from the Canadian Owners and Pilots Association (COPA) for the promotion of Canadian aviation history. Hotson has written over 25 meticulously researched history-related articles for the CAHS Journal and publications in Canada, the U.S. and the U.K. During 1983 he edited and published a 325-page CAHS chronology, 125 Years of Canadian Aviation, earning him the 1986 Ninety-Nines' Canadian Award in Aviation.

On the occasion of the 50th anniversary of DHC, Hotson wrote a 65-page book on the history of that company in 1983, The de Havilland Canada Story. This book received the Aviation Writer's Association Citation of Merit. In 1988 he completed a long-standing personal research project, the story of the first east to west air crossing of the Atlantic. The crew of two Germans and an Irishman, flying from Ireland to New York, were far north of their intended course and were forced to land during a snowstorm on Greenly Island off the southern tip of Labrador, Newfoundland. Hotson's book about this adventure, The Bremen, earned him the AWA non-fiction award for that year.

In 1980 he was made an Associate Fellow of the Canadian Aeronautics and Space Institute (CASI) and four years later, raised to Fellow. He took an active role in the formation of the National Aviation Museum Society with the objective of providing fireproof accommodation for the national aviation collection at Rockcliffe Airport, Ottawa. The Society remains active as an advisory group.

In 1985 Hotson retired as the President of CAHS and was made Chairman. Returning to his CBAA interests in 1991, Hotson wrote and published Business Wings, a 30-year history of the Association and received the CBAA Award of Merit in 1994. In 2005 he co-authored a new book with Matthew Rodina, Jr. titled “Grumman Mallard: the Enduring Classic”. Fred Hotson died July 20th 2012 at Toronto, Ontario.

Frederick William (Fred) Hotson was inducted as a Member of Canada's Aviation Hall of Fame in 1998 at a ceremony held in Toronto, Ontario.