Tumpline NEWS | TRIPS | HERITAGE | CANOES | PROFILE
I’M YOUR CAPTAIN, YEAH, YEAH, YEAH, YEAH.
I’M YOUR CAPTAIN, YEAH, YEAH, YEAH, YEAH.
PHOTOS: COURTESY OF MARINA DROOGERS
PROFILE Sky High YOUNG, BOLD AND BEAUTIFUL, THIS ISN’T YOUR AVERAGE BUSH PILOT
An open sky over vast wilderness is what Marina Droogers calls her office. Only 26 years old, Droogers flies canoeists, fishermen and hunters—and their seemingly endless piles of over-packed gear—in a 60-year-old airplane to pristine northern lakes, wild riv- ers and isolated camps. She navigates with the same compass and finger-on-the-map technique used in the 1920s, dropping clients off at lakes she’s never visited before—and she makes it look easy. On any given day, a ride in this bush pilot’s red, five-seater
Beaver aircraft, a plane renowned for being the workhorse of the North, can be a thrilling passage through calm skies or a white- knuckle ride through turbulence and low cloud that leaves the common man trembling. Working for Mattice Lake Outfitters near Armstrong, Ontario,
a three-hour drive north of Thunder Bay, she flies from May to November and clocked 420 hours in the air last season. The work is intensely physical and the loads she carries are
rarely of the walk-on, walk-off variety. “Physically, I can’t last at this forever,” she says. From bloody, squirmy moose quarters that tip the scales at 100
pounds, to fuel drums and propane cylinders, outboard motors and strapping canoes to floats, everything involves lifting. “The reaction I get from many clients tells me they don’t think I should be here—‘So, where’s the pilot?’ they ask me after I’ve pumped out the floats, refueled the plane and loaded their gear.”
32 SPRING 2013 Droogers’ sky-high dreams began as an eight-year-old watching
a tiny speck trailing a jet contrail across a summer blue sky. “I was fascinated by the idea that there were people flying so high above me,” she says. Though she’s flown in somewhat more civilized places, guid-
ing more sophisticated, modern machines with turbine engines, fancy electronics and GPS navigation, that hasn’t been able to compete with the ache for bush flying that comes with ice-out. “I keep coming back here because it’s where I’m most comfort- able,” she says. The North quickly became a place for her to feel meaningful,
not just a number in a vast airline industry. She’s fallen in love with paddling and fishing in the evenings. On endless weather days, when the clouds sit thick in the hills, she knits by the fire and performs the bush pilot’s other main job: waiting, followed by more waiting. Bush flying demands constant good judgment and the con-
sequences of a mistake are high, but Droogers is up to the task. “There’s nothing stressful at all about this job—as long as you’re doing the driving yourself,” she says. After 33 years of piloting everything from Beavers to Boeings, Brian
Shields says he’s well aware that there are old pilots and bold pilots, but no old, bold pilots. He’ll stick to his canoe, thanks.
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