True Patriot Love - August 18, 2026


Why Canada Needs Its Own Water Bomber Simulator ft. Ian White & Terry Hart


Episode Stats


Length

19 minutes

Words per minute

173.08

Word count

3,446

Sentence count

198


Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
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00:00:33.900 The East Coast Tour continues.
00:00:35.780 We got Ian White from Edis Air Flight Training.
00:00:40.100 So nice to see you, Ian.
00:00:41.700 And, of course, Terry's back, Terry Hart.
00:00:43.580 We just did a session, which is great to see you.
00:00:45.900 You know, I was lucky enough.
00:00:47.620 I came in this morning, met a friend of mine, Blair,
00:00:50.240 and he said, you've got to do a session with Terry.
00:00:52.800 So I did a great podcast with Terry.
00:00:55.360 And when we were finishing up, he says, we've got a guy.
00:00:58.460 He's a water bomber.
00:00:59.500 He has a great company.
00:01:00.940 I want you to meet Ian.
00:01:02.120 So welcome, Ian, and welcome, Terry.
00:01:03.860 Thank you.
00:01:04.600 So, Ian, tell us, because, you know, your business right now is top of mind for all of Canada.
00:01:11.460 You know, we're continually hearing about wildfires and about our shortages on, you know, bombers and people and training.
00:01:19.980 You know, so you're doing that here.
00:01:22.220 Yeah.
00:01:22.420 So, as my day job, I guess, or as an employee, I work for the Newfoundland government, we fly the CL-415 wide around.
00:01:32.220 My company, Evis Air, is not in that space currently.
00:01:35.520 We do look at some opportunities down the road because, like you said, the businesses, the industry or the sector is getting a lot of attention.
00:01:43.620 It's too bad that it only gets the attention when things are on fire.
00:01:46.900 But we're actively investigating and exploring opportunities to get into that space in the future.
00:01:54.400 Because, you know, flooding wildfires has got to be a whole society approach.
00:01:57.980 It's got to be government.
00:01:58.680 It's got to be, you know, education for citizens.
00:02:03.500 And it also needs private sector involvement in order for it to be effective.
00:02:07.840 So, yeah, it is getting a lot of attention.
00:02:10.240 It is an issue across the country, around the world, really.
00:02:15.240 Yeah.
00:02:15.420 And I guess climate change is real and wildfire activity is changing.
00:02:22.460 Yeah.
00:02:22.900 Well, you know, we just did a show.
00:02:24.380 I think it was telling Terry before the show.
00:02:26.240 We did a show on Friday before I left Toronto.
00:02:29.380 And it was interesting.
00:02:31.320 We think this is an anomaly.
00:02:33.260 So because we're seeing more people impacted, so we're seeing the human impacts of it.
00:02:38.160 But when we dug into the numbers, this is now the average for the last 10 years.
00:02:43.960 So it's this many million hectares being burnt up in Canada on an annual basis now.
00:02:50.820 And now we're seeing it coming closer to the B.C. population, as you're telling me.
00:02:55.560 That's the scary part.
00:02:56.740 You know, for years, we just kind of ignored it.
00:02:58.900 You know, there's smoke in the air and it burned in the north.
00:03:01.420 We just let it kind of go off.
00:03:03.520 And, you know, when the rains came and when the weather changed, it dissipated.
00:03:07.460 But unfortunately, it's actually moving further and further and now it's impacting people.
00:03:12.260 So, Terry was telling me you're doing some really cool stuff with training and simulators.
00:03:17.500 And do you want to talk a little bit about kind of that?
00:03:20.600 Because that sounded really neat.
00:03:21.960 Yeah.
00:03:22.860 I want to go back to your comment about, you know, we think it's an anomaly, though.
00:03:27.180 You know, one year may be a blip, but it's not an anomaly.
00:03:31.460 This is now a trend.
00:03:32.780 Oh, yeah.
00:03:33.280 You know, the fires are moving into areas that have never had fires before.
00:03:40.020 The fires are going further and further north into the permafrost.
00:03:43.820 The permafrost is retracting north.
00:03:45.920 So when those fires get up and get into that peak, the peak mass of the north,
00:03:51.700 and release that carbon, it is then an accelerator, right?
00:03:54.920 Because these fires release more carbon gas into the atmosphere,
00:03:58.840 which accelerates climate change, et cetera.
00:04:01.940 So it's not a blip. It's a trend.
00:04:04.100 And, you know, we need to remember that this year was warmer than last year.
00:04:11.120 Next year, it will be warmer than this year.
00:04:13.600 You know, you can think of it as this is the warmest season or warmest year we've ever experienced.
00:04:20.860 Or you can think of it as if this is the coolest year we will ever experience again.
00:04:26.620 Oh, yeah.
00:04:27.260 Well, it's a good way to look at it, right?
00:04:28.920 Yeah.
00:04:29.440 Wow.
00:04:29.920 And, yeah, so on the simulation piece, from a wildfire perspective, the CL-415, which is pretty well the pinnacle of the firefighting aircraft, there's about 100 of them in the world.
00:04:45.460 The CL-415, now there's some 215s, which are piston-powered aircraft of the same general design.
00:04:52.280 But there's about 100 415s in the world, and there's one simulator in the world.
00:04:56.580 It's in Milan, I believe.
00:04:57.580 But de Havilland has now, I think everybody is pretty well, anyone who's paying attention to the space knows de Havilland has restarted the assembly line and is going to build the 515, which is basically a 415 with some tweaks and mods on the avionics side of things.
00:05:15.740 So, you know, the history was in the 60s, they built 120 or so, 215s.
00:05:22.220 In the 90s and early 2000s, they built about 120 415s.
00:05:25.580 four fifties. So now, again, 20 years later, they've started and they're going to build
00:05:30.340 probably 120 or 150, five fifties. But there's one simulator in the world.
00:05:36.720 That's it.
00:05:37.640 One simulator in the world.
00:05:38.780 So everyone has to go to Italy to train?
00:05:40.580 If you decide to do full flight simulation, which is the trend, again, of operators, you
00:05:48.780 have to go to Milan Italy for that simulator.
00:05:51.080 Wow.
00:05:51.320 So, you know, what we've been talking about with various stakeholders is that we think North America needs a simulator.
00:05:59.620 Canada needs a simulator.
00:06:01.380 It's a Canadian aircraft, Canadian design, Canadian built, Canadian manufacturer.
00:06:06.140 We should have one in Canada, and I think it should be a new one.
00:06:08.760 Yeah, I agree.
00:06:09.940 It's the perfect place, right?
00:06:11.180 It's the perfect place.
00:06:12.940 We can be a world leader.
00:06:14.580 We can be leaving the country and leaving North America.
00:06:18.200 The other thing is, I think Canada needs to not only staff up and educate up and equip to meet our demands as a country.
00:06:30.320 We need to be a national and a world leader in this space.
00:06:33.860 And we can be, because when Canada is on fire, everybody else is on fire.
00:06:40.380 Right.
00:06:41.200 So nobody's coming to help.
00:06:42.760 However, when we're under snowpack, everybody else is still on fire.
00:06:46.840 So we can go home.
00:06:48.200 So we're in a good position as a country, and we should take it as a responsibility to be the world leader in firefighting, and we are, in certain aspects, you know, the aircraft that is the top aircraft, top firefighting aircraft in the world is built here, it's designed here, but I think there's other things we can do in the training space.
00:07:10.260 Oh, yeah, I definitely think so. You know, it's interesting. We were, we were looking at, you know, for example, controlled burns on Friday, and we were, I was talking to Terry about it. You know, we've actually decreased our controlled burns to like by almost like 100%. It's like 98% decrease in controlled burns in Canada since the 1990s.
00:07:36.920 like just we're not active right we just for some reason we said okay we don't need to be active in
00:07:42.120 this and i don't know why because you know we do this drive so when we leave uh you know uh ontario
00:07:47.720 and we drive here you know you're you're all you're seeing is woods and forests and land and
00:07:54.020 that's all you're you know forest management is definitely uh and and control burns part of
00:08:00.440 forest management i believe now i'm not going to profess to being an expert in forest management
00:08:06.020 But there are a lot of other things we can do to prevent fires and mitigate damage.
00:08:14.980 But we can't just focus on mitigation.
00:08:17.180 We've got to equip ourselves to fight the fires, but I think you're right.
00:08:21.620 What you're hinting at there is we need to put more emphasis on education and prevention,
00:08:27.960 as well as fighting the fires that will inevitably occur.
00:08:35.380 And there's lots of things we can do.
00:08:37.340 We can, you know, train up our indigenous peoples as real trained firefighters,
00:08:44.420 not volunteers, but, you know, we could have a reserve force of indigenous peoples
00:08:48.880 across the country and across the north and have them ready on the ready.
00:08:55.580 We should.
00:08:55.760 Go to fight fires when they do occur or deploy out of country across provincial lines.
00:09:01.440 Yeah.
00:09:02.560 Because we need to remember, when a fire breaks out, yes, it's getting a lot of attention now because it's happening in, you know, in residential, more, not, I'm not going to say urban areas, but, you know, the Halifax Fire 2023 is pretty urban.
00:09:16.140 You know, Tim Tallon, you're dumping, you're dropping on homes that are ablaze.
00:09:21.220 That is what's really bringing the attention.
00:09:23.880 But these fires have been replacing, displacing Aboriginal communities for as long as we can remember, as long as there was forest fires.
00:09:31.020 Yeah.
00:09:31.640 Hey, you know, and I always, you probably get this question a million times, but I'm going to ask it again.
00:09:37.860 What is it like to be a fire bomber?
00:09:39.840 Because quite frankly, it must be quite a rush, right?
00:09:41.860 Because you're basically really, you're flying into that fire.
00:09:46.920 Yeah.
00:09:47.600 And you're fully loaded, right?
00:09:50.020 So you're fully, like you're, how many gallons are you taking into that?
00:09:53.380 You're carrying in 14,000 pounds of excess weight.
00:09:56.700 Right.
00:09:57.260 And then releasing it on your target.
00:09:59.400 and uh you know some fires are are very calm and mild and they're just a lot of uh honestly they're
00:10:08.340 a lot of fun sometimes yeah uh but occasionally uh those fires you know you're talking extreme
00:10:15.100 heat uh they create their own weather they're definitely create your own turbulence um that
00:10:22.000 you're you're 100 100 or 50 or 100 feet off the trees so you're getting all of the the ground
00:10:28.420 to our plugs as well with the winds and etc so you really need to be on your toes with the aircraft
00:10:33.200 uh you need to preserve the energy of the aircraft so that your maneuverability is is not uh it is
00:10:39.480 not hindered and yeah it it can get a little a little rough sometimes but it's exciting yeah it
00:10:45.040 is exciting what do you do you lose like when you're you know you're a fit guy so when you're
00:10:49.380 up do you lose like like you do you sweat it out like when you come down like are you five pounds
00:10:54.060 later? Well we do have some air conditioning in these airplanes now but absolutely it you know
00:11:02.520 when you're fighting the fire and it's the ambient temperature it's always 30 degrees the airplane
00:11:06.360 is probably 40 degrees yeah and it is it can be a working sometimes. How do new people so say you
00:11:14.520 know I'm I'm a young guy and or a gal and I want to get into this how do I get into it you know if
00:11:19.780 If I, you know, no terrier, how do I sort of start?
00:11:23.680 You know, like, do you just, where do I go?
00:11:26.980 So, you obviously, you go get a product license.
00:11:30.880 You know, you try to get some seaplane, some float experience.
00:11:34.840 It's very hard to get these days.
00:11:36.880 There aren't as many float opportunities, float plane opportunities out there.
00:11:42.280 But you try to get orientated towards, like, we've found that the best people,
00:11:49.780 that are a climate-class water bombing are more bush-type operations or rural-type operations.
00:11:57.700 When we fly these airplanes, we're pretty much on our own from a pilot's perspective.
00:12:03.340 You're not flying from airport to airport.
00:12:05.700 You're not flying from prepared runway to prepared runway.
00:12:10.140 Every lake we inspect, it's 100% on the crew to follow the whole pilot
00:12:14.680 to assess the lake, decide if it's long enough, deep enough,
00:12:19.780 If the winds are in the right direction and the right speed, you don't have those safeguards behind you.
00:12:29.800 You're not dealing with air traffic control.
00:12:32.600 You're on your own.
00:12:34.100 You're outside radar coverage most of the time.
00:12:36.780 So it's a lot more pilot decision-making.
00:12:42.400 I'm not going to say more pilot decision-making.
00:12:44.280 It's different pilot decision-making than you would experience in the airline world.
00:12:48.680 we've hired people in the past that came with a lot of airline experience and it doesn't always
00:12:56.360 translate to water bombing experience yeah i can imagine i can imagine just interject um paul
00:13:01.960 ian's father pat was also a water bomber pilot extensive flying newfoundland labrador coast for
00:13:09.960 many many years and quite a lot of experience as well yeah so it's a family thing it's a family
00:13:15.560 fair and in Newfoundland it's been a bit of a history as well like the
00:13:21.460 generation that I'm flying with now three or four of my co-workers their
00:13:26.660 fathers did the same thing so and and they're really good water
00:13:31.660 arm products as well so you know maybe it's just not it's definitely not
00:13:35.720 hereditary but we grew up in that world so we understand the expectations yeah
00:13:41.600 and what we're getting into well and to your point it's a skill right by what you're telling
00:13:47.080 me you know it's a skill that you have to develop over a long period of time and you have you know
00:13:52.060 even understanding where you are you know like where you are which lake you're going into i
00:13:57.240 never even knew that right and i've never even thought about it i just thought naturally that
00:14:00.840 and all you know from a layman's perspective right i thought that had been scoped out for you
00:14:05.440 you've been told where to go no you're you're intuitively figuring that out and there's just
00:14:10.520 two of you yeah really so you pick up 14 000 pounds of water two of you figure it out you go
00:14:17.300 in there and get it and then you wow and you think about you know an airline pilot a typical uh
00:14:23.460 typical day in the airline world you may do let's stretch it let's say six takeoffs and landings
00:14:29.200 yeah right well when we're on a fire we could do 120 yeah because you're in yeah you know we'll do
00:14:36.200 120 takeoffs
00:14:37.420 and landings
00:14:38.000 in a day.
00:14:39.420 Wow.
00:14:40.020 So the workload
00:14:41.200 is different.
00:14:44.180 What's the
00:14:44.980 hairiest landing
00:14:45.700 story?
00:14:46.160 I need it
00:14:46.580 before I
00:14:47.200 want to
00:14:48.140 my God
00:14:52.320 I don't know.
00:14:53.300 No.
00:14:54.500 Well if you're
00:14:55.600 doing 120
00:14:56.080 like see
00:14:57.220 it's funny
00:14:57.760 because I just
00:14:58.280 moved in
00:14:58.960 I mentioned
00:14:59.920 I'm from
00:15:00.560 Toronto.
00:15:01.380 I just moved
00:15:02.180 on Lake Ontario
00:15:02.920 and I got to
00:15:04.560 tell you
00:15:04.880 I think the
00:15:05.680 The wildest thing we've figured out is...
00:15:08.060 I've walked away from every one of them, let's put it that way.
00:15:10.220 Yeah, yeah, yeah.
00:15:11.820 I think the wildest thing we learned was how aggressive that lake is.
00:15:15.420 Yeah.
00:15:15.800 Oh.
00:15:16.360 Like, you know, like, we don't...
00:15:17.620 You guys live on the Atlantic, so you get it.
00:15:20.100 But, you know, we moved even on Lake Ontario, and I was like, wow, I grew up on Lake Ontario,
00:15:24.440 like, living in Toronto, but I never realized how aggressive all year long that lake.
00:15:28.580 Like, lakes are, you know...
00:15:30.680 Yeah.
00:15:31.060 Yeah, they're a challenge.
00:15:32.080 And we scoop in the ocean here sometimes.
00:15:34.940 it can get pretty rough
00:15:36.560 but you know
00:15:39.120 you always protect your aircraft and your crew
00:15:41.400 we've had to abort
00:15:43.280 you can always abort a landing
00:15:45.260 if something doesn't feel right
00:15:47.160 hopefully
00:15:47.560 but we've had to abort
00:15:51.280 landings because of whales
00:15:53.080 don't hit a whale
00:15:54.600 and that's something that
00:15:57.200 a lot of pilots in this
00:15:58.700 even waterborne pilots around the world don't have to contend with
00:16:01.340 they don't have to contend with whales
00:16:03.320 I'm contend with icebergs
00:16:04.920 obviously we can usually see icebergs unless they're the little birdy bits so you know you
00:16:09.820 do your good inspection um you know sometimes the wind can get up to uh like 40 knots and in a wind
00:16:18.340 like that usually you have to pick a smaller lake which is you wouldn't think you'd go to a smaller
00:16:23.540 lake but on a smaller lake the waves will be lower and you can actually get the water because if
00:16:28.540 you're on a big lake and the waves are too high you're just you can't let the aircraft settle
00:16:33.060 completely into the waves it's just too raw so then you're just skimming the waves and you're
00:16:36.880 getting like 200 pounds 200 pounds 200 pounds and then it'll take you forever to get a load of water
00:16:41.620 right so sometimes with a heavy wind like that you have to go to a smaller lake i couldn't you
00:16:46.180 know one of the things i couldn't uh believe you know the first again we just moved down here but
00:16:51.440 literally the number of trees that washed up the number the amount of debris and i'm talking 500
00:16:56.200 pound trees floating up on my beach from this lake and i'm like wow that's crazy so you that's
00:17:01.860 something you have to contest with all the time you're watching for debris
00:17:04.980 trees everything floating around that lake you're kind of avoiding as your
00:17:09.200 well the lake you know we can go out and you can scoop in the lake
00:17:12.660 today and it's perfectly safe that doesn't mean you can go here tomorrow
00:17:17.260 and blind and just go straight back into where you were you still have to look
00:17:21.180 because like you said uh you know someone could
00:17:24.520 fell a tree into the lake and it could float or or the lake level could change
00:17:28.160 and pick up debris on the on the shore and it can drift into your path
00:17:31.520 levels of lakes can change
00:17:35.140 by several feet in a rock that wasn't a threat
00:17:37.240 yesterday, it could be a threat next week
00:17:39.120 and the winds change
00:17:41.380 so your run
00:17:42.640 you always have to pick up, scoop into the wind
00:17:45.400 so that lake
00:17:47.340 with the wind is good today but it's
00:17:49.280 no good tomorrow because the wind is a different direction
00:17:51.140 Yeah, I notice wind's entire
00:17:53.160 Another aspect too, tying into
00:17:55.420 the conversation is that
00:17:57.560 Ian also owns
00:17:58.660 and family at the Gander Flight Training,
00:18:02.260 and they bring people from all over the world
00:18:04.340 training pilots in Gander
00:18:06.120 and from Indonesia.
00:18:09.520 Well, Ian can answer it better than me.
00:18:11.500 Yeah, yeah.
00:18:12.380 So from Gander Flight Training's perspective,
00:18:14.300 we train, we have contracts with schools
00:18:16.720 and universities in Thailand.
00:18:18.900 We train a lot of people from India.
00:18:20.880 We're looking at markets now in Vietnam
00:18:22.660 and those sorts of things.
00:18:24.840 But we also train domestically, of course.
00:18:27.240 How long is your training leave when if I said, I said, Ian, you know, I'm interested.
00:18:31.240 I'm not a little old, but I'd love to try.
00:18:33.200 How long do I have to come and spend with you?
00:18:36.720 The course is mostly self-paced.
00:18:40.220 We tell students when you're coming in, if you're doing a commercial orientated program,
00:18:46.080 then pretty well bank on two years.
00:18:48.500 That's a comfortable time frame when we can bring you in with no experience,
00:18:53.600 put you out the door, ready to go to work.
00:18:55.000 We do some programs that are very accelerated for student, for private pilots, like we do the Air Cadet
00:19:03.880 for the Department of Defense.
00:19:06.720 Oh, nice.
00:19:07.180 We've been doing it since 1992.
00:19:09.160 Those kids get a little bit of pressure before they arrive, and then they go into a high-focus,
00:19:16.660 fast-paced program where they do their private pilot license in six weeks.
00:19:21.720 Wow.
00:19:22.020 But, again, they're semi-military, so they get a pilot's license in the summer season and go home again.
00:19:34.000 So you can do a pilot's license in the third or six weeks.
00:19:36.900 Yeah.
00:19:37.360 Oh, that's great.
00:19:38.340 Well, Ian, thank you, man.
00:19:39.460 I really appreciate it, man.
00:19:40.620 Thank you for taking the time.
00:19:41.820 I know we caught you coming through the JAG Hotel.
00:19:44.660 You never know who you're going to meet.
00:19:46.000 We met, of course, Terry, which we had a great talk with.
00:19:48.800 And, Ian, thanks very much.
00:19:49.960 And thank you for everything you're doing.
00:19:51.520 and Terry, same. Thank you, brother. My pleasure. All the best.