Russ Baker (pilot)

Russ Baker (1910 to 1958) was a Canadian bush pilot and founder of Pacific Western Airlines.

Francis Russell Baker was born in St. James, Manitoba (now part of Winnipeg) on January 31, 1910.

The boy attended Isaac Brock Elementary School and finished his public education at age 14. He then took up shorthand, typing, penmanship, English, spelling and bookkeeping at Success Commercial College in 1924/5. He worked in the offices of Western Canada Airways. In 1928 he began flight training with that company at Kirkfield Park. He obtained his commercial pilot licence on October 29, 1929. However, from 1931 to 1933 he worked for his father’s company, Western Gypsum Products.

Baker got his start as an entrepreneur in aviation by restoring a De Havilland Fox Moth for Ginger Coote at Gun Lake (British Columbia) in the winter of 1936/7. Later Baker made Fort St. James his base as he freighted supplies to mining operators in the North. He worked for Grant McConachie’s company United Air Transport. Later Punch Dickins offered him a job with Canadian Airways in the same region.

In January 1942 Russ Baker rescued the crews of three B-26 bombers that had made an emergency landing between Fort Nelson, British Columbia and Watson Lake, Yukon where there was a refueling station. The mishap occurred the 16th of January, and Russ eventually located the planes and crews. To an improvised runway he flew a dozen missions over several days to extract 24 crewmen and two officers. The Norden bombsights were recovered from the downed aircraft. He was recommended by Lt. Robert O. Cork for the Air Medal which Russ was awarded March 22, 1948, in Vancouver by the U.S. consul George D. Andrews.

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