Born in India and educated in England, Canada and the USA, Peter Corley-Smith served as an RAF pilot with the Special Operations Executive in the Second World War. After the war he became in turn a miner, surveyor, cartographer, commercial helicopter pilot and college instructor before becoming a history curator. Now retired and living in Victoria, his experiences include wartime flying in the RAF (SOE) and 20 years as a helicopter bush pilot across the Canadian North. He has been a college instructor and, more recently, a history curator at the Royal British Columbia Museum, where he is now a Research Associate.

Peter Corley-Smith has received wide recognition for his books on British Columbia’s aviation history. Titles include: 10,000 Hours: Reminiscences of a Helicopter Bush Pilot; Helicopters: The British Columbia Story (with Dave Parker); and Barnstorming to Bush Flying: British Columbia’s Aviation Pioneers 1910-1930, the first book in this series. In 1990 he received the Helicopter Industry Association’s Award of Excellence in Communications at its international convention in Dallas. Peter died in November 2002.

Bush Flying To Blind Flying
British Columbia's Aviation Pioneers 1930-1940

Flying during the Depression years of the 1930s was dramatic, fascinating and sometimes tragic. In a decade of shattered dreams, certain individuals had the vision and ambition to see the future of aviation and to bring flying in British Columbia through the transition from sporadic operations to scheduled airline services. Meanwhile in remote areas, from Atlin and the Liard to the Queen Charlottes and the Rockies, bush flying continued with all its hardships and romance.

Helicopters in the High Country
40 Years of Mountain Flying
co-authored with David N. Parker

Helicopter flying in the high country, pioneering new and dramatic techniques, brought fame and endless challenge to a small group of determined and innovative pilots in British Columbia and led the way towards a world-renowned reputation in commercial helicopter operations. Beginning with Okanagan Helicopters in the late 1940s and Vancouver Island Helicopters in the early 1950s, British Columbia helicopter companies led the world in flying the high country.

Helicopters: The British Columbia Story
A Compelling History of Helicopters in British Columbia
co-authored with David N. Parker

Helicopter flying changed aviation in British Columbia forever. The early fragile-looking machines made vast areas of the province readily accessible for the first time. Soon they were being used in surveying, mining, forestry, agriculture, fire-fighting, search and rescue operations and as air ambulances.

Pilots to Presidents
British Columbia Aviation Pioneers and Leaders, 1930-1960

The long-awaited sequel to Peter Corley-Smith’s highly acclaimed aviation histories, Barnstorming to Bush Flying and Bush Flying to Blind Flying.

Before jet aircraft and radar, when the largest airliners carried just 24 people, aviation pioneers challenged the windswept heights of British Columbia to secure aviation’s future. Bush Pilots flew to every corner of British Columbia while pioneers began the first inter-city and transcontinental flights, laying the basis for modern air travel.

Legends grew around flights to the Headless Valley, the rescue of bomber crews in the “Million Dollar Valley” and other exploits. Peter Corley-Smith, with meticulous research, reveals the history and the real people as more intriguing and understandable than the improbable myths.

10,000 Hours
A Helicopter Pilot in the North

This is a first-hand account of a veteran helicopter bush pilot who flew early Bell 47 helicopters all over the Canadian Arctic in the 50s and 60s. The helicopter, able to land where fixed wing aircraft could not, brought an enormous change to surveys, mining and exploration, opening up the North and its resources. Written with insight, candour, and good humour, this is a book to read and enjoy and then read again.

Aviation/Memoir
250 pp, 6 × 9, colour and b/w photos
ISBN 1-55039-059-7, paper, $21.95

Wings Over the Alaska Highway
A Photographic History of Aviation on the Alaska Highway
with Bruce McAllister

Wings Over the Alaska Highway features colour photographs of airports and airstrips along the Alaska Highway, with major colour photography by Bruce McAllister, a U.S. freelance magazine photographer, and text by Peter Corley-Smith, a Canadian aviation writer with four books to his credit. Both authors are high time pilots, and Corley-Smith flew for the RAF (SOE) in World War II and as a helicopter pilot in the Arctic. A must for any pilot who has flown, or dreams about flying the Alaska Highway, this book uncovers unusual stories about each airport, from Dawson Creek to Fairbanks, and covers the Russian Lend-lease. There is also a chapter on the B-26 bombers that crash landed in the Million Dollar Valley in World War II, including exclusive photos of a survivor and his rebuilt bomber.

Aviation History • 208 pp • 11 x 8˝
ISBN 0-9638817-7-9 • softcover • $40.00 CAN / $34.95 US
200 colour and b&w photos