The de Havilland DHC Beaver was one of the aircraft suitable for bush pilots. Courtesy of Ontario Department of Lands and Forests

By the end of the First World War, most of southern Canada had been connected by railway. But as mining companies began to explore mineral deposits on the Canadian Shield and into the Arctic, getting food, supplies and workers through the bush proved difficult. The railway didn’t extend that far north, and the difficult terrain was tough to navigate and even more difficult to survey.