Yukon who is who

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George Henry Milne (1914 - 1954)
	
George Milne was born in Red Deer to parents William and May Milne. He and his brothers Leonard and Arthur were all pilots. George and Helen Trainor were married in Whitehorse in 1950.((“George Henry Milne.” Find A Grave, 2024 website: George Henry Milne (1914-1954) - Find a Grave Memorial))

George Milne was a Canadian Pacific Airlines pilot before he started the Yukon’s first flight school in 1947. His Whitehorse Flying School had a new Fleet Canuck to begin with, and Milne added a Stinson 108-2 in 1948 to meet a growing demand for charter flights. The company name changed to Whitehorse Flying Service and air engineer Gordon Cameron was employed. In 1949, Yukon Airways and the Whitehorse Flying Service merged under the latter name and in the spring of 1950 added a larger airplane, an old Fairchild 71, from George Simmons’ Northern Airways, and an all-metal Beaver, the first one to operate in the Yukon. The company had a contract with the Topographical Survey of Canada, mapping the northern Yukon.((R.B. Cameron, //Yukon Wings.// Frontenac House, 2012: 292-319.))

Bud Harbottle, Norm Hartnell, and George Milne were the pilots for the company. Hartnell had an accident with the Fairchild, and it was destroyed, and then a new cable installed on the Pelly River destroyed the Stinson. George Milne used the Beaver to finish the job that Hartnell had started. A lot of bad luck was squeezed into that one week but the next four years were trouble free. The Fairchild was replaced by first a used Mark V Norseman and then a new Beaver. In 1953, Whitehorse Flying Service leased a new Cessna 170B and then added a Cessna 180.((R.B. Cameron, //Yukon Wings.// Frontenac House, 2012: 292-319.))

On October 2nd, 1954, George Milne and three passengers went missing on the last floatplane charter of the year. Eleven days later, after a massive search, the burnt-out remains of the Beaver were found on Fox Mountain, between Whitehorse and Ross River. Milne had been trying to avoid a series of snowstorms and the plane was caught in a downdraft at the edge of a cirque. All of the passengers and George Milne were killed instantly in the crash. The remaining partners of the Whitehorse Flying Service sold the company to Pacific Western Airlines in January 1955.((R.B. Cameron, //Yukon Wings.// Frontenac House, 2012: 292-319.)) George’s wife Helen moved back to Saskatchewan after his death.((“George Henry Milne.” Find A Grave, 2024 website: George Henry Milne (1914-1954) - Find a Grave Memorial))