Congratulations to my wonderful husband on being awarded the Order of Polaris and inducted into the Yukon Transportation Hall of Fame!

LOCAL PILOT HONOURED FOR 27 YEARS OF SERVICE

By Max Leighton, What’s Up Yukon
Photo by Michael Collins

Local flight instructor Kelly Collins has spent nearly three decades helping Yukoners earn their wings.

This month he was given the Order of Polaris, one of the Yukon Government’s top honours, awarded to Yukon aviators (and the odd Outsider) for service to the territory, its people and its unique culture.

Collins, who is retiring this year, has spent 27-years training more than 300 pilots from various schools in Whitehorse as well as satellite programs in Atlin, Ross River, Faro and Dawson City.

Until recently he had trained the majority of all private and commercial fixed wing pilots in the territory.

Collins has spent the last twelve years as chief flight instructor with Whitehorse Air Services — the last flight-training school in Canada’s North.

He’s taught everyone from the young to the retired the secrets of flight.

“It’s a pretty wide spectrum,” he says. “For some people it’s just a personal challenge, it’s a goal that’s not that easy to do. A lot of our students are folks who have always had a dream to fly.”

Collins is known for his hands-on approach to training, sitting fearlessly alongside would-be pilots attempting everything from basic aircraft control to emergency maneuvers, falls, spins, takeoffs and landings.

“I call it ‘knowledge through a fire hose,’” he says. “It comes fast and furious… and it’s hands-on from day one.”

After a while the training becomes reflexive — and marginally less terrifying.

“The better you get at the machinery, the farther out your awareness goes from all around you, to in the aircraft and outside,” he says.

Collins doesn’t just teach his students to fly, he teaches them to think like pilots.

“Learning how to fly is one thing — learning when to fly and when not to fly and what not to do and how to stay out of trouble, that all comes under the heading of pilot decision making and that’s probably the big variable in keeping people safe,” he says.

Getting a pilot’s license is hard work, and it’s not cheap —about $9,500 for a recreational pilot, $14,000 for a private license — but it’s probably more likely to lead to a job than your undergrad degree, and you’re guaranteed a good office view.

Sixty-one year-old Neal Letang became a licensed pilot this year. Letang had a lifelong ambition to fly, but says it was Collins’ mentorship and focus on safety that gave him the confidence to finally become a pilot.

“It does do something for your confidence,” he says. “You’re doing something that, for me anyway, was a little extraordinary and [Collins] helped me do it.

“At times when I was discouraged, or dissatisfied with my performance, or whatever I was doing and he’d work me through it,” he says.

As a recipient of the Order of Polaris, Collins joins the ranks of Canadian icons like WWII fighter pilot Ian Willoughby Bazalgette, and pioneering Canadian engineers Ronald John Baker and Alexander Graham Bell.

“Every student is different, every day is different, it’s all a challenge, it’s all rewarding,” Collins says. “Helping people reach that goal of flight for whatever reason they started out on, every day is its own reward. So to be awarded the Order of Polaris is a huge, thick layer of frosting on an already rich and delicious cake. I feel very humbled.”

This year John Van Every, a Dawson City trucker and transportation company owner, was also honoured as the Transportation Person of the Year award, and the late Frank Steele, an early Alaska Highway lodge operator, was named Transportation Pioneer of the Year.

This is a piece called Habibity that I choreographed for my dance troupe, Saba Middle Eastern Dance Ensemble a couple of years ago. Here it is in it’s debut performance, March 11th, 2011. Enjoy!

Yesterday I sorted through my clothes into summer-clothes-to-wear-now, summer clothes-that-are-too-small-but-will-fit-next-year, fall/winter-clothes to send South and fall/winter-clothes- to-wear-this-fall.

Clothes going South in the U-Haul in three weeks got packed into boxes and stacked in the family room with the rest of the packed boxes.

Everything I am keeping here has to fit into two rubber maid trunks. Clothes staying with me got packed into a big rubbermaid trunk. Hats, shoes and my handcraft projects go into the other rubbermaid trunk.

I am keeping about 1/4 of my clothes and the rest are going South where they will wait in storage for me to join them.

It makes me think about why I have so much stuff if I can so easily live without it for the next 6 months.

I packed up my sewing nook, too. Now everything is gone except for a few projects to finish over the summer, my sister’s big quilt that I’m hand quilting and some knitting. It’s going to be a long six months without my sewing room.

Here’s Misty, checking everything out for size.

Kelly and Michael drive the U-Haul out in only 20 days from today. Wow!

So….my quilt knowledgeable friends… is it better to buy four $10 charm packs or is it better to buy one $40 layer cake?

And question number 2…What quilt patterns would you recommend for charm packs and/or layer cakes? Especially colour-dense ones that would suit her fabulous colour-dense fabrics?

Aren’t they yummy?!

I’m leaning towards Terrain.

♥ Which is YOUR favourite? ♥

I so enjoyed my hour with these two bright and talented girls. Both got to take home a hipscarf, and Jade is keeping the purple veil (though her mom will have to cut off a good 18″ from the bottom).

And here is Halia showing us a little summer top that I knit for her (notice that she chose to dress appropriately for accompanying her big sister to a dance class!)

Such a cutie-pie, and looks an awful lot like her beautiful mom.

So that takes care of Dancing and Knitting! Now how about a little quilting? I finally finished the last of the three because-you-matter little boy boy quilts!

And here they are all together:

Tested and approved by Samuel J. Collins

I even got out into the garden and cleaned out my flower beds. The sun is out, the leaves are out, green things are starting to peek out of the ground.

I hope your Sunday was as lovely as mine was!