 
Story by Jack Meadow
Originally published March 1997 in Aeroplane Monthly
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History Main Page
"There were
patients to
look after,
and I
couldn't afford
to waste
any time",
he says.
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M uch is known about those enterprising doctors who, in the 1930s, used aircraft, originally a variety of de Havilland Moths, to provide a medical service to the vast Australian outback. However, hardly know outside British Columbia, Canada, is the story of a more recent Canadian flying doctor. Unusually his work was done flying floatplanes, notably his famous Waco AQC-6, CF-CCW.
Jack Pickup never really thought of himself as a flying doctor, just as a doctor who used his aeroplane to get to patients in areas very difficult to reach by surface transport. Some would certainly have died but for his initiative and extraordinary flying abilities.
As a boy, Jack Pickup had to decide whether to be a doctor or a musician. He had chosen the former, but nonetheless he is also a pianist of professional standard. He qualified as a surgeon and general practitioner, at Queen's University, Kingston, Ontario, in 1942. After some time in hospitals and then in practice at Dryden, Ontario, in 1949 he decided to move west. Hearing of a job in Alert Bay, he accepted without even knowing where Alert Bay was.
 Twenty miles across the Georgia Strait from the mainland is Vancouver Island. Alert Bay is near its northern tip, on the east side in the Queen Charlotte Strait and 300 miles from Victoria, the provincial capital. With a population of 1,000, Alert Bay is situated on little Cormorant Island, two miles of the coast and six miles from Port McNeill. Named after the first vessel ever to put in there, Alert Bay was from the late 1800s an important fuelling stop for shipping.
In 1947 the people of Alert Bay managed to raise the money to purchase the redundant RCAF hospital at Port Hardy, 30 miles up the coast (the area had been important for coastal defense during the Pacific War). In the prairies it was common for ex-RCAF British Commonwealth Air Training Plan buildings to be moved elsewhere - many can still be recognized at their new sites. But, this move was rather more difficult. The 72 bed hospital was reduced to 16 sections, put on barges and towed to its new location at Alert Bay.
The original doctor soon moved elsewhere, and this is when Jack Pickup came on the scene. His practice did not only include the island residents and people nearby on Vancouver Island, but a much larger scattered population on other islands and on the mainland across the strait. It covered an area of 10,000 square miles. Many were fishermen, loggers, miners and native Indians, scattered in more than a thousand small camps in the steeply sheltered inlets and inland lakes deep in the mountains, almost all involved in dangerous work. They could be reache4d only by water, and then perhaps along rough logging roads. Often long journeys were involved, sometimes in dangerous seas, for the strait is only partially protected by the north end of Vancouver Island from storms raging in the North Pacific.
For many years Jack Pickup was the only available doctor in the whole area; mainland and Vancouver Island, between Kelsey Bay 60 miles south, and Bella Bella 100 miles north. He soon realized that to get quickly to men injured in accidents and if need be get them to hospital, the trip by sea took far too long, as well as wasting his own valuable time. Aviation was the answer. There was no charter service nearby, even if it could be afforded. The solution was obvious; he would learn to fly.
Jack was thus also a pioneer in recognizing the potential of the aeroplane. In fact, in the next 15 years it was to put the coastal shipping lines out of business. Three ships a week served Alert Bay when he arrived; none at all when he retired.
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So he took three week's leave to go down to Vancovuer, took flying lessons, sat his exams, and in September 1950 won his licence on a Luscombe 8A (80 h.p. Continental), flying from the grass between the runways of the international airport. Then he looked round for an aeroplane. "There were patients to look after, and I couldn't afford to waste any time", he says.
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