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    Exploration and development were the catalysts for flights into the West and North. Small bush planes took mere hours to travel to and from remote communities that previously had been accessible only by foot, horse, boat or sled. Pilots developed their own flying techniques to land on sandbars, Arctic ice floes and rocky Barrens. They became a vital part of everyday life and transformed the expectations of northerners in the 20th century. It was possible to charter an aircraft and fly almost anywhere. Air transport became affordable to trappers and missionaries, geologists and surveyors. The ill and the injured could be evacuated quickly for medical attention. Bush flying in support of mining operations even continued through the Great Depression of the 1930s, when more freight was being moved by air in Canada than in all the rest of the world combined. Tales of bush pilots’ fascinating adventures began growing as fast as stories about their wartime air-combat sorties.
    In August 1929, Lieutenant Colonel C.D.H. MacAlpine,the president of Toronto mining company Dominion Explorers, set out for the high Arctic with eight engineers and prospectors in two single-engine planes. The expedition members intended to stake claims in a rich copper field that was to be opened to public development by the Canadian government. They used MacAlpine’s own Fairchild FC-2 and leased a Fokker Universal from WCA. Dominion’s pilots had started venturing into the North on exploratory mineral-seeking flights.
    This time, MacAlpine planned a three-week sweep of the Northwest Territories to the Arctic Ocean, but the group ran into bad luck and challenging weather. At the start, one plane was lost at Port Churchill when a high tide in Hudson Bay swept it away. The replacement arrived a week later, but the delay proved costly. When they finally got underway, their compasses were affected by the north magnetic pole; seriously off course, they hit bad weather, ran out of fuel and made an emergency landing at Dease Point, in what is now Nunavut. Stranded over 100 miles (160 kilometres) inside the Arctic Circle, they hunkered down beside their float planes and figured out where they were.
    At this time, planes were not radio-equipped, and there were only six radio stations in operation across the territories, so no one knew of their predicament. The group decided to sit tight until freeze-up, then walk out over the ice. They figured correctly that the nearest white settlement was at Cambridge Bay, where the Hudson’s Bay Company(HBC) had a post on Victoria Island off the northern mainland. To reach Cambridge Bay, they would have to walk 60 miles (97 kilometres) west along the coast, then traverse 25 miles (40 kilometres) of still-open ocean to Cambridge Bay. But first they had to wait for the water to freeze. They settled in beside an Inuit hunting camp where they constructed a 4-foot-high by 12-foot-long (1.2 by 3.7-metre) shelter of stone, mud and moss roofed with canvas from a tent that kept blowing off in the strong winds. Food and ammunition were strictly rationed. Each person got two meals a day. Hunting parties amassed a stockpile of ptarmigan and ground squirrels, while gathering teams collected moss and willow twigs for fuel. The Inuit supplied them with 55 dried whitefish (which the stranded explorers ungraciously deemed “awful greasy”) and 2 dried salmon. On October 15, the temperature dropped well below zero, and the Inuit at the camp indicated that they could walk out soon.
    On October 21, they struck out northwest along the coast. With Inuit guides and three sled-dog teams they climbed over rough pack ice, weaving in and out of coastal ice floes in -25°C (-13°F) temperatures. The Inuit built snow igloos each night, and they dined inside on boiled trout and salmon supplemented with bacon and sugar from their dwindling emergency rations. Seven days later, they started across the frozen Victoria