Pioneering bush pilot Yvonne Quick, a key figure in Northwest Territories aviation for decades, has turned 95 amid tributes to her enduring contributions to northern aviation.
"Yvonne is an aviation icon and Yellowknife legend, she flew bush planes all over the north in the 1960s and 1970s and ran a flight school here up north," said Mikey McBryan, a prominent figure in northern Canadian aviation, serving as general manager for Buffalo Airways, a family-run aviation business based in Yellowknife founded by "Buffalo" Joe McBryan.
"She is also one of the hardest working people I have ever met."
Quick, who relocated to Yellowknife in 1968 from Swift Current, Sask., where she co-owned the Mel Air flight school with Bob Jensen, revived the city's struggling Fliers Club after a 1968 collision grounded its aircraft.
She demanded at least 15 students for a summer training program; organizers secured 18, including Roger Zarudzki and Wally Firth, the latter becoming the N.W.T.'s first Indigenous commercial pilot and member of Parliament.
By 1970, Quick had moved north permanently, offering private pilot licences for $685 — with a $100 federal rebate for successful candidates — and instruction on wheels, skis and floats across the territory's remote terrain.
Her career spanned bush flights in de Havilland Beavers and Twin Otters, ferrying miners, hunters and explorers to roadless sites during aviation's "golden age," as she described it in a 2015 Up Here magazine interview.
"Aviation is a love industry," Quick said. "It's gotta be your first love — even above your spouse. I get in an airplane and I just love it ... There's just something about the freedom of being able to go wherever you want."
Quick founded the biennial Midnight Sun Floatplane Fly-In in 1983, drawing pilots and exotic aircraft from North America until its final edition July 6-9, 2023.
She received the 2010 Yellowknife Heritage Award for her community service and the King Charles III Coronation Medal in February 2025 for her aviation and tourism legacy.
Now a Yellowknife resident, Quick continues mentoring and delivering vintage logbooks to collectors. She noted the industry's shift in the same 2015 interview: "It’s more cutthroat now," with "ever-mounting reams of paperwork."
"It was fun, it was a great way to spend your life," she added.
Quick's peers, including the late Max Ward — founder of Wardair, whom she called a top charter operator — credit her with helping establish Yellowknife as an aviation hub.