ODDS’N’SODS — Overdue salute to Ernie Boffa

I have fond recollections of Ernie Boffa. He was born in northern Italy in 1904 and came to Canada with his parents and three sisters in 1907, settling in Alberta.

In 1915, the family was in Fort William where Ernie went to school and worked part-time in a bicycle shop. Later, at age 14 and working full-time, he became a mechanic at an automobile agency and drove racing cars at local fairs.

In 1926, he went to Great Falls, Mont., to visit a sister and got a job as a mechanic at Vance Field. There his fate was sealed. He had an opportunity to fly, and if ever a man was “born to fly” it is Ernie Boffa.

He and some pilot friends formed the “Flying Frolics,” putting on air shows at local fairs, including parachute jumps and wing walking. Later, he piloted for M&C Airways, servicing oil rigs on the prairies. In 1940-43, he was an Air Force instructor.

In 1943, Ernie was asked by Grant McConachie to fly the Yellowknife-Port Radium run, then a high-priority war effort. From then until 1970, he was mostly based out of Yellowknife, servicing the mining camps, native settlements and Hudson’s Bay posts. He was largely responsible for locating the Dew Line stations across the Territories.

In October, 1944, I was in Port Radium when the American Metal Company was urgently cabling via the R.C. Signals office there to get its men out of the Coppermine River area before freeze-up.

A plane had been sent up from Yellowknife to do that, but a storm erupted and the plane was tied up at Radium, the pilot telling me he was not about to try a takeoff from Bear Lake in those 5-ft. waves. Finally, Boffa flew up, ferried the men out and flew back to Yellowknife while the first pilot was still waiting for the wind to die down.

Later I saw Boffa take off from Yellowknife with two 32-ft. tripod legs lashed to his pontoons, bound for a diamond drill job in the Barrens, awaiting his arrival. I also saw him take off with a large tank slung under the nose of his Norseman, bound for the Salmita mine which required this piece of equipment to get into production.

These sorts of assignments were “all in a day’s work” for Ernie, now living in retirement in Los Angeles, Calif. Ernie Boffa was inducted into Canada’s Aviation Hall of Fame on June 3 of this year and Yellowknifers of the 1940s, ’50s and ’60s will agree that it is an honor long overdue.

— Philip Eckman resides in Paradise Valley, Ariz.