Flyin’ Jimmy Barber

The first time I flew with Jimmy Barber was in 1954, when he was working for Saskatchewan Government Airways in Lac la Ronge. We were prospecting north of there and Barber was kind enough to give us a lift.

In the fall of that year, I met Keith Deibel, the resident geologist in Saskatchewan for Inco, and he hired me in the following year. In late 1955, we did ground geophysics as a follow-up to the airborne geophysical operation. During our search for nickel deposits, we located conductive zones and performed the magnetic measurements that coincided with them.

Barber was hired by Deibel to fly the ground crew to the various locations we surveyed. He also operated the transmitting coil while we traversed the grids with the search coils looking for conductive zones.

Anytime we happened to be in the vicinity of a mining town, Barber would spend his evenings in the beer parlour. But no matter how much he drank, the son of a gun was always ready to fly the next morning. Chris Olson, who owned a fishing lodge on Lac la Ronge, referred to Barber as the “great liquor fighter.”

I flew with a lot of ex-Second World War pilots, but Barber was one of a kind. On one occasion, during a flight to Lac la Ronge, he spotted a bear making its way up a long, sweeping hill. He decided he would have some fun and chased it back down the hill, then chased it back up again. He repeated the torment several times before letting up. At times he flew so close to the ground, a crash seemed inevitable, but each time he skillfully manoeuvred the plane back into the sky.

I never saw him use a map — he had a compass in his head. Anytime he flew you to a remote northern location, you could be certain he would be there to pick you up at the scheduled time, even if you moved your camp.

He wore a felt hat, and if we happened to be flying beyond the range of an airport where gas was available, he’d land at a pre-arranged area where barrels had been dropped off. He would pump the gas into the plane using his hat as the filter and then place the dampened garment back on his head.

One time we were flying into a small lake in a floatplane when a pilot who was still wet behind the ears asked Barber about the best approach to landing on water. “There isn’t one,” he replied. “Either you make it or you don’t.”

Olson, Barber and I were in northern Saskatchewan in the spring of 1955 as the ice on the Churchill River started to break up. We were loaded and ready to go, but there was little room to get airborne.

“I’m scared to take off,” Barber said.

“But we can’t stay here,” I responded, and so we tied the plane down with a slip knot and Barber revved the engine. Olson released the knot and the plane bolted forward. We held our breath as Barber pulled hard on the yoke. We clipped the trees but made it out OK.

“Did you pray?” asked Barber.

I did not see him much after that as I was transferred to the airborne division in Sudbury. But I did see him briefly after crash-landing in the Northwest Territories during an airborne survey in foggy conditions.

I later heard he was bunking in a trailer with fellow bush pilot Kelly Gibbs in Thompson, Man.

Sadly, he died at a hospital in Saskatoon in the early 1980s after complications from ulcer surgery. As he was an aboriginal, he is buried at the Indian Cemetery in Lac la Ronge.

I later learned he had been a squadron leader in the Royal Air Force during the Second World War. Perhaps this was the reason he spent so much time in the beer parlours.

— The author worked for Inco for more than 30 years and is now a consultant with Tek Scan in Fergus, Ont.