Ferry flight to DRC- today Atlantic Canada

Posted on by Valneufeld
Our arrival into Quebec City last evening

We debated continuing on yesterday and go on to St Johns – smoking tailwinds are hard to say no to – up to 75 knots – however the forecast was questionable and landing at 10 pm was the deciding factor and so we kept to plan and landed in Quebec City

Continuing on this morning and flying over farms of Quebec

Today we have the very good fortune of flying over Atlantic Canada. This consists of the Maritime Provinces of New Brunswick, Prince Edward Island and Nova Scotia and then Newfoundland and Labrador

Our flight path today

The Atlantic region makes up about 5 % of Canadian population.

The coast of New Brunswick and Nova Scotia in the distance
The coast of Prince Edward Island This is the smallest Canadian island province and home of the beloved Anne of Green Gables
Windmills and farmland right up against the red Atlantic Ocean – PEI is known for their red soiled beaches from its high iron content
PEI east coast
The first sighting of the coast of Newfoundland and Labrador

A few Newfoundland fun facts: they joined Canada in 1949 – they have their own time zone – one of the rare 30 minute time zones- the first known European presence was here – the first transatlantic message was received on signal hill in St. John – Amelia Earhart made 2 record setting flights from Newfoundland in 1928 and 1932

This is the easternmost part of the Canadian Shield
One of the remote communities we flew over The communities here have been coined the forgotten coast. There at one time we’re 35 such communities and now 20 remain. They are still isolated and only have ferry access to the outside world.

One of my favourite Canadian writers is Michael Crummey from Newfoundland and who writes moving stories set here and so flying over just reminded me of some great characters and gives me such curiosity of this part of the world. Known for its friendly folk and fishing.

Flying into St Johns over Signal Hill where Guglielmo Marconi in 1901 used an antenna suspended 500 feet by kite received the first transatlantic wireless signal- the letter “s” in Morse code. A fact my dad who was a radio operator in Whitehorse in the early 1960’s would have appreciated as he knew and used the Morse code often.
St. John’s – great flight today – oh and we continued to have fantastic tailwinds.
There were a number of American Hercules parked here and when I spoke with the fueler he said that the airport used to be very busy with American military planes but as technology has changed it’s mostly these “ flying breadboxes” that use this airport as a fuel stop
At one time Gander in Labrador was the busiest airport in the world for transatlantic flights.

Tomorrow- the Azores!

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