FERGUS – Born in 1946, Peter Gendron grew up in the remote town of Maniwaki, Quebec, north of Ottawa.
As the self-described “black sheep” of the family, he struggled with schoolwork and elected not to follow in the family business.
For a time, Gendron tried working at his father’s car dealership in the claims department, but he found the position wasn’t something he’d be happy with.
He was the kind of person who, if told not to do something because it was too dangerous, would do it anyway.
His heroes growing up were Dick Tracy, Tarzan, Zorro and of course, Superman.
Gendron was afflicted with attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and failed to acquire more than a ninth grade education. He attended a Jesuit boarding school as a child, but because of his inability to concentrate, his grades suffered.
In 1966, Gendron met a bush pilot named Peter Goodwin. Bush flying refers to flying over rough terrain where there are often no prepared landing strips or runways. It is the only viable way of delivering people and supplies into otherwise inaccessible, remote locations.
“He started telling me his story and I was infatuated with it. Where I lived there were a lot of these beaver airplanes. I used to see them flying over every day,” said Gendron.
The “beaver” Gendron refers to was his first favourite aircraft. It’s a single-engine, fixed-wing propeller-driven STOL (short takeoff and landing) aircraft developed and manufactured by De Havilland, called the Canada DHC-2 Beaver. Essentially, it’s a sea plane by summer and ski plane by winter.
Gendron’s father (left) stands on the float of a DHC-2 Beaver. Photo by Peter Gendron
Taking flight
Gendron still clearly remembers his first flight over 31 Mile Lake.
“A neighbour of mine had a small airplane and offered to take me for a short flight,” Gendron recalled. “We just went up for maybe 20 minutes over the lake, but that’s when I said, ‘Ok, this is what I want to do.’”
Through conversation with Goodwin, he became enamored with the idea of flying and decided to focus his efforts on becoming a pilot. That summer, he and a friend drove to Ottawa to inquire about flying lessons. By October 1966 he was training to be a pilot.
On Canada’s 100th anniversary, in 1967, Gendron was on his way to becoming a pilot. Unfortunately, it was around the same time that his mother passed away as the result of a house fire.
“I wanted to see the world. I told my mother that after receiving my pilot’s license, no matter where I was in the world, she could come visit me, but of course that didn’t happen,” he said.
Most of his first flying lesson was spent on the ground doing safety drills, but on Oct. 15, with 13 hours of flying under his belt, he piloted his first solo flight.
Gendron got his start working as a fire spotter, which required him to fly around the Ottawa area and southern Quebec.
By 1974, Gendron began to realize his dream of travelling after landing a job as an aerial surveyor for a geological survey company called Geoterrex. This work took him to places like Moosonee, Timmons, Sudbury, and even to several U.S. states, including Wyoming, Utah, Colorado, Alabama and Missouri.
Later that year he was contracted by the World Health Organization to fly in Nairobi, Africa, taking aerial photographs of rivers with high densities of mosquitoes to combat river blindness disease.
The disease was so named because of blackflies that live and breed near fast-flowing streams and rivers, mostly near remote villages. The flies transmit infection, resulting in visual impairment and in some cases, blindness.
In 1982, Gendron applied to be a commercial pilot for Worldways Canada, where he’d fly DC-8s, which are four engine jets designed to carry approximately 200 passengers.
Gendron began flying an L-1011 for Worldways Canada in 1982. Submitted Photo
“When I first started with the courses, we were booked in a hotel in Toronto. While all the other pilots would go out drinking, I’d be in bed with three or four manuals, trying to study. I did that night after night, and managed to pass all the exams, but I had to work really, really hard,” Gendron said.
A change of scenery
Gendron met his wife Joanne in Newfoundland after taking a position as a water bomber in 1980. He purchased his first home there in 1981 and they were married in 1983 when he was 37 years old.
He has a lifetime of experience working as a transport pilot with licences in Canada, the U.S., Ireland and Bahrain. He has also flown in Jordan and Saudi Arabia.
Today, Gendron is 77 years “young” and enjoying clearer skies in Fergus with his wife Joanne. To keep healthy and stay sharp, he enjoys taking walks along nature trails.
“I really enjoyed flying at the start of my career, but after everything that happened with 9/11, aviation changed and I just wanted to get out. It just didn’t interest me anymore,” he said.
To this day Gendron is a firm believer of overcoming disabilities through hard work. His philosophy aligns with the well-known lyrics written by Keith Richards and Mick Jagger: You can’t always get what you want, but if you try sometimes, you just might find, you get what you need.
“I didn’t have much education, but I managed to make it work,” he said.
“That’s the message I’d like to pass on. I was probably the least educated person I met in aviation, but they didn’t know that, and I wasn’t going to tell them.”
Earlier this year, Gendron published his book, Born Fearless, which is based on entries from his logbook going back to 1966.
Included at the end of the book is an adapted poem he wrote for his wife Joanne.
Wait for me, and I’ll return.
Only wait very hard.
Wait when you are filled with sorrow,
Wait in the sweltering heat.
Wait while others have stopped waiting,
Forgetting their yesterdays.
Wait even when from afar no letters come to you.
Wait even when others are tired of waiting…
And when friends sit around the fire,
Drinking to my memory.
Wait and do not hurry to drink to my memory too.
Wait, for I’ll return, defying the odds.
And let those who do not wait say that I was lucky.
They never will understand that in the midst of misery,
You with your waiting saved me.
Only you and I know how we survived.
It’s because you waited, as no else could have.
Copies of Gendron’s book can be found online by searching Born Fearless on Amazon.ca or at Cordial Clove Books in Elora.
