‘In Harbour City, Vancouver’s rusty town
No-hoper Angels they got the place locked down
Nobody can be certain if it ain’t just that floatplane
that went down, down, down...’
Dean Whitfield, Three Feet Off Gabriola
The sunrise down Newcastle Channel scattered its first frail photons into a landscape of smoked glass, chasing grey mists off the green and blue conifer-coated sandstone archipelago. The sheer mercurial beauty of the place would smack you silly.
On the Harbour City side of the water, seagulls flew sorties through the rigging of the fishing boats, screaming at the new dawn.
The young pilot pushed his twin-engine silver floatplane from the dock, climbed the left ladder and left wing and fuselage, and dropped into his cockpit. His company’s Beech 18 logo splashed onto the twin tail rudders. Rainbow Air.
The eight charter passengers were quiet with the weight of the early hour and the anticipation of becoming airborne. They were flying to new jobs in the small mainland logging community of Port Mellon in Howe Sound, and the withdrawal of tobacco and alcohol and sleep was a further impediment to casual conversation.
The pilot pumped the two central throttles back and forth for effect, set the flaps, flicked switches and fired up the two 450 HP Pratt and Whitney engines on each wing. Blue smoke blew out from under him and curved scimitars whirled into an eliche perforante resonant reverberation that rumbled rudely through the numbness. RrrRRRrRRRRR...
The aviator pushed on the glass of his flight instruments to read them more accurately through the vibration. He pushed harder on the two central throttles and the seaplane began to move forward, leaving a triangular turbulent wake of ripples on the Salish saltwater below.
The young flier knew that if you pulled the bow tie pasta stick of the Beechcraft back, the rocks and trees would get smaller. If you pushed the stick forward (or if you pulled the stick all the way back too fast), they would get bigger again. He pulled the control stick back gently, and five tons of metal and men and avgas and baggage and other cargo rose into where the wind lived. Had the passengers been more fortunate, they would soon be falling logs in Howe Sound, instead of just falling.
The last thing that went through the pilot’s mind was the Strait of Georgia, as the Air Rainbow plane exploded in a fireball across the sky, into as many colors again, before the black smoke extinguished the sunrise.
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