Wings over the Sahtu
The North-Wright Air Story
by Bill Braden

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Over 100 years ago, during aviation's dawn in the unforgiving Canadian Arctic, gutsy pilots and ingenious mechanics flew a pair of WWI-vintage airplanes further north than anyone before.They proved that the airplane would transform frontier life and industry forever. Wings over the Sahtu:The Northwright Air Story, chronicles how they did it, and how their exploits spurred the start of an essential part of the way the North operates. In particular, it's the story of an enterprising pilot and mechanic, Warren Wright, and over 50 years how he and his family grew their airline from lean beginnings into a reliable, safe service in a place where roads have yet to be built. NorthWright today connects five Sahtu communities with Yellowknife, the Northwest Territories capital city, and is a bedrock of the Sahtu's growing tourism industry.The story tells of Warren's bold and visionary move to bringing three enterprising Indigenous communities into majority ownership of NorthWright Air. Each community, along with two in the Mackenzie Delta, are profiled, as are the exciting adventure canoe and sports hunting attractions in the wild Sahtu. This high-quality hardcover 92 page book is heavily illustrated with iconic archival photos and present-day images of the stunning Sahtu landscape. It brings the reader inside one of Canada's most northern airlines and the people who make it work every day. It is for everyone who shares a passion for aviation, a love of the North, and the risks and rewards of growing a family business in a small, isolated community on the edge of the Arctic Circle.

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Wings over the Sahtu tells the story of pioneering aviation's earliest days in Canada's awe-inspiring Western Arctic. Gutsy bush pilots and resourceful mechanics, fearless in the face of brutal weather and challenging isolation, proved over 100 years ago that aircraft would be essential to opening the North's vast potential to Canada and the world. Warren Wright and his family are today charting a 50-year history of growing that legacy with the Sahtu's progressive indigenous communities, and the hundreds of adventurers to dare to experience the memory of the lifetime.

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Bill Braden got printer's ink in his veins as a boy reporter at the local newspaper in Yellowknife, Northwest Territories in the mid-1960s. It's been his home (along with Whitehorse, Yukon in the 1980s) ever since. In careers ranging from journalism, corporate public relations, retail art gallery ownership and territorial politics, the core skills of writing and photography followed him throughout. He's an honours graduate of the Digital Commercial Photography course at the Vancouver Institute of Media Arts (2008) and has been plying his trade as a freelance writer/photographer across the NWT since then. Wings Over The Sahtu is the sixth non-fiction book Braden has produced, relating to infrastructure projects (On Good Ice, The Air Tindi Story, Bridging the Deh Cho River), city events (The SnowKing Castle) and has published his own book (Aurora UP!) about the aurora experience in Yellowknife. He loves the risks and rewards of a good business story and the craft of strong visual story telling through photography. He counts himself fortunate to be a Northerner for over 60 years, where he and his wife Val have raised two daughters, and are now helping with their four grandchildren, all in Yellowknife.

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Contributors

Author

Bill Braden

Contribution by

Josh Ferguson