Harvey Friesen

In 1970, at just 22 years old, Harvey Friesen joined Bearskin Lake Air Service, then a small air charter operator servicing remote Indigenous communities in northern Ontario. Two years later, he acquired a 50% share of the company, and five years after that he was installed as President and CEO. As Bearskin’s scheduled flights expanded from between Big Trout Lake and Sioux Lookout to include Thunder Bay, Kenora, Winnipeg, and beyond, Harvey made the most of the Ontario government’s ‘highway in the sky’ – the building of gravel strips in many remote, northern communities. The operation grew rapidly. So did its team and the Bearskin fleet. Twenty years after Harvey headed the company, ‘the Bear’ was providing scheduled service to all northern Ontario’s major cities and into northern Manitoba. The company changed direction in 2003 when it became a successful regional carrier. Harvey Friesen sold Bearskin in 2011, but over his more than forty years with the company he remained an enthusiastic supporter of aviation and his northern community, from development and fundraising to quiet philanthropy, to Bearskin’s close work with Hope Air and its free non-emergency medical flights for those in financial need.