Bush Pilot with a Briefcase

One of the best-selling Canadian biographies of all time, Bush Pilot with a Briefcase is a captivating portrait of the prairie boy who became an aviation legend.

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.

Ronald A. Keith was editor for many years of Canadian Aviation magazine. Also a pilot with over 2,000 hours logged at the controls, he served as Grant McConachie's personal assistant for twelve years. Ronald Keith died in 1985.