William Gladstone Jewitt

William Gladstone Jewitt, B.Sc., LL.D.(Hon), was born in Marton, England, on May 15, 1897. The family moved to Calgary, Alberta, in 1908 where he completed his elementary and secondary school education. In 1915 he enlisted in the 3rd University Company of the Canadian Army and after training in England he served in France with the Princess Patricia's Canadian Light Infantry until 1917. Commissioned a Lieutenant, he transferred to the Royal Flying Corps and commenced flight training at Stamford, England.

On graduation as a pilot, Jewitt completed an instructor's course at Gosport, England, then returned to Stamford as an instructor until 1918, when he was assigned to ferry repaired aircraft to France. When he returned to Canada, he enrolled at the University of Alberta from where  he graduated in 1923 with a Bachelor of Science degree in mining engineering.

In 1927 he joined the Consolidated Mining and Smelting Company Limited at Trail, British Columbia. Two years later, W.M. Archibald asked him if he would be interested in flying aircraft on mining exploration in the Northwest Territories. He obtained his Commercial Pilot's Licence as well as his Air Engineer's Licence, and was assigned to explore for potash in northern Alberta and the Northwest Territories. The Cominco fleet at that time consisted of three Fairchild 71's, one Fokker Super Universal and three Gipsy Moths. The Moths were used for reconnaissance trips, the larger aircraft supplied camps and moved prospectors.

Archibald established a small flying school at Creston, British Columbia, early in 1930, and Jewitt's next assignment was to train company engineers as pilots for northern exploration work. When he returned to explorations flying, he personally flew the furthest-ranging and most difficult flights, some into the Arctic islands where no aircraft had previously ventured. These flights resulted in the development of such mines as Echo Bay, Con, Box, Thompson Lundmark, Ptarmigan and Pine Point.

In these hitherto unexplored and unmapped regions, he pioneered new methods of aerial prospecting, utilizing aircraft to transport men, equipment and supplies. During his extended civil aviation career, which ended in 1954, he carried out a number of emergency air ambulance flights, often through difficult weather conditions.

His resourcefulness as a bush pilot was proven in 1930 on Prosperous Lake, an uninhabited area near what is now Yellowknife, Northwest Territories. A hole blew through a piston of his Curtiss Robin's engine on take-off, reducing the power below what was required to fly. Using only hand tools, he and his mechanic, Jim Fox, disassembled the engine, then repaired the damage with sheet metal cut from the gas filter, and flew the aircraft to Yellowknife Bay where another pilot located them. Another trip later in 1930 was to the north side of Victoria Island to investigate a reported occurrence of native copper. It was believed to be the furthest north an aircraft had been flown in Canada at that time.

As a result of his aerial prospecting ventures, many new flight techniques were discovered, to be eventually incorporated as standard civilian procedures. All northern-flying pilots had to learn, mostly by experience or unpleasant incidents, that various precautions had to be taken in order to keep flying. For example, frost on the wings virtually destroyed their lift, ice accumulating on leading edges in flight had the same effect, ski-equipped aircraft had to be taxied onto cross poles to prevent the skis from freezing to the snow or ice. They learned the desirability of carrying as light a load as possible, but to include adequate survival supplies.

A second result of these pioneer flights was the mapping of vast stretches of terrain, information which was disseminated among aviation personnel, both civil and military. Over a period of 30 years, Jewitt's airborne teams established hundreds of cache sites and aerial bases as far north as the Arctic Ocean that have proven valuable to commercial aviation.

Pilots flying aircraft on skis learned to avoid taking in narrow channels of rivers, where the ice would often not thicken sufficiently to bear the load. On one trip, Jewitt's Fairchild dropped through the ice at Fort Rae even though the temperature was -40 degrees. No long timbers were available and they had to build an A-frame on a mat of poles frozen together with water poured over them to lift the aircraft and effect repairs.

In 1953 Jewitt was awarded an Honorary Doctor of Laws degree by the University of Alberta for his contributions to northern exploration. He died in Victoria, British Columbia, on June 20, 1978.

In 2021, William Jewitt was posthumously inducted into the Canadian Mining Hall of Fame.

William Gladstone Jewitt was inducted as a Member of Canada's Aviation Hall of Fame in 1978 at a ceremony held in Edmonton, Alberta.