Bush Pilot With a Briefcase: The Incredible Story of Aviation Pioneer Grant McConachie
by Ronald Keith
Category: Biography & Autobiography

At the age of twenty-two, Grant McConachie was a bush pilot running his own crazy airline in the Canadian North, flying trappers, gold miners, huskies and fish all over the wilderness. Only sixteen years later, he was appointed president of CPR’S fledgling airline, Canadian Pacific. In Bush Pilot with a Briefcase author Ronald A. Keith tells the incredible story of this country’s most colourful aviation pioneer. On McConachie's first official commercial flight, his passengers were one university professor and two hundred yellow-tailed crows. His first business partners were a Maltese princess and a carnival barker. He kept his early bush planes—and his subsequent career—aloft with equal parts luck and sheer seat-of-the-pants skill. As chief of Canadian Pacific from 1947 until his death in 1965, McConachie expanded his airline across the globe. Everywhere he went, his freewheeling high spirits, flamboyant style and what one journalist called “supersonic salesmanship” made him an irresistible force.