Retired Second World War veteran and Royal Canadian Air Force pilot Jack Milburn was born in Clinton, B.C., in 1921, the youngest of the five children of George and Amy (Grist) Milburn. Here is his story in a nutshell:
When Jack Milburn was a baby, his family moved to Prince George. His father George worked as a magistrate and the government agent. It was a point in time when the magistrate or the government agent did everything in the office including having the legal authority to administer an oath and perform as a notary public, a registrar, a judge and a justice of the peace, just to name a few of his duties. He was a hard working and highly respected man in the city.
George met Amy in 1914 when she was working as a nurse at the tuberculosis (TB) hospital in Hazelton. They first lived in a house in Lheidli T'enneh Memorial Park and later they built a forty-by-forty square foot home on Tofield Street where they raised their family.
Jack no sooner graduated from high school when he was called to serve in the Second World War, which took him overseas in 1941 at the young age of 19.
Jack said, "As a kid I always wanted to be in the Royal Canadian Air Force - it was my dream. I had always been adventuresome and I was keen to join the RCAF. I remember wearing breeches so I would look like the pilots. There were five of us siblings and we were all pilots at one time or another. My twin brother Phil was an RCAF pilot and was killed in action during the war, my sister Betty was trained as a pilot instructor and my brother Frank was a Trans Canada Airlines pilot (TCA is now Air Canada). My brother Colin went over to England and joined the Royal Air Force and was killed in a training incident just before the war."
Jack was in the RCAF for nearly five years; he worked as a Canadian pilot doing submarine patrols and convoy escorts for ships going into and coming out of the Persian Gulf. Among other duties he was a transport pilot and dropped supplies to the British forces that were fighting the Japanese trying to come into India.
After he was discharged at the age of 23, Jack went on to university and graduated as a forester; studies that included math, biology and statistics. While he was in school, local District Forester Lawrence Swannel hired Jack every summer and gave him a job as a timber cruiser.
When Jack graduated from university, he returned to Prince George and the managers at Prince George Sawmills immediately hired him because he was a "local boy." Jack said, "I worked there for the next five years and everything was fine until I saw my first helicopter on a job site. I immediately knew that I wanted to - and that I had to - fly a helicopter so I changed jobs and joined up with Okanagan Helicopters. That was the start of my lifetime career as a helicopter pilot."
In 1961, Okanagan Helicopters stationed Jack in Prince George with instructions to start a base and expand their company. Jack explained, "It was a good move for both my company and for Prince George. Previously no one used helicopters very much but before long we hired out to clients in industries such as the pulp mills, oil and gas pipe lines and forest management. We could do what float planes could not do. We could land alongside a river or on a sand bar and almost any clearing including a moose meadow making it easy to check out lumber stands or anything else these companies needed to do.
"The business was booming and we had six helicopters in operation which was huge for those days. Soon the competition moved in and we stopped expanding."
Jack worked for the company for 27 years and retired at the age of 62. During those 27 years, he took on some very interesting overseas jobs.
On his first overseas job, Jack was sent to East Pakistan, which is now Bangladesh, for eight months. The government of the day was building a dam on one of their rivers and his job was to fly in the agriculturalists to do their work as the land was being flooded.
Over the years, Jack worked in 60 different countries transporting relief workers out into the ocean to work on the oil rigs also known as offshore oil and gas platforms. Then he would transport the other workers back to shore for their hard-earned time off.
After each overseas tour, Jack would return to Prince George for two or three months until his next adventure of going overseas to fly a helicopter came along.
Jack was on a tour in the Philippines in 1980 when he met and married his wife Pacita (Paz) Milburn. They had three children; Michelle who currently teaches English in Japan, Veronica who is now back in Prince George after teaching special needs children in Scotland for seven years and Alexander who is studying geology at the Simon Fraser University.
Jack told me all about his active participation in the Manitoba Follow-up Study (MFUS). He said that shortly after the war, nearly 4,000 Canadian pilots, of which 2,500 continued on as pilots, joined the program. Regular electrocardiograms were an annual requirement for pilots so this group was perfect for this study.
I had never heard of the MFUS program so I Googled it so that I could describe it properly and here is what I learned as taken from their website: "The MFUS, now in its 69th year, is Canada's largest and longest running investigation of cardiovascular disease.
Housed at the University of Manitoba since its inception on July 1, 1948, MFUS has followed a cohort of 3,983 healthy young men with annual contact and routine medical examinations amassing a database with which to study the natural history of cardiovascular disease... In the fall of 2016 ... (of the) 163 men who complete our surveys without assistance 11 are under the age of 90; 88 are between 90 and 94 years of age; 61 are between 95 and 99 and only three men are 100 and older."
Jack just turned 95 and continues to be in amazing condition for any machine that is nearly a century old.
Jack was active in downhill skiing until he was 85 and hiked and played tennis until he was 90. These days he enjoys people, reading and going for his daily walk.
Jack concluded by saying, "Over the years my work took me over the Williston Lake Dam and up and down the power lines across the north. I watched the lay out of Mackenzie take shape even before there was the town of Mackenzie. I watched the northern part of B.C. grow and prosper from a great viewpoint in the air above it all and from a seat in a helicopter. We have come a long way here in Prince George, we have been successful and I see no sign of any of this stopping any time soon.
"It has all been a fantastic experience and a great life that I can only share a small part of here in this story that is being written 'in a nutshell.'"
Bazaar and bake sale
The Prince George and District Senior Citizens Activity Centre at 425 Brunswick Street is having a bazaar and bake sale on Sunday from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m.; a light lunch will be available plus there are still a few tables to rent at $15 each. For more information please phone Trianda at 250-563-1915.
Birthdays
November birthdays that I know about: Shirley Bond, Noreen Rustad, Mary Kordyban, Amelia Peterson, Ginny Jenkins, Diane Reynolds, Lorraine Anderson, Wilf Howlett, Ann O'Shea, Glen Callieou, Karen Loehndorf, Eva Switzer, Maurice Mingay, Victoria Nudds, Ken Royston, Geraldine Bailey, Bev Kelly, Darrell Rutledge, Jan Rivers, Carron Dunn, Sharon Husberg, Robin Wright, Wendy Schmidt, Christena Benwell, Unice Caron, Fred Schaefer, Maureen Braun, Bob D'auray, Helen Eberherr, Maureen Keibel, Ed Parent, Gale Russell, Randy Sokolowski, Jean Staniland, Maureen Suter, Rita Svatos, Jack Paul, Sharon Paul, Leonard Ouellette, Annette Kennedy, Lindsay Hick, Sylvia Fetterly, Edith White, Neil Hunter, Sharon Halvorson, Bernice Henning, Shirley Ankerstein, John Lovett, Wilma Davison, Sheila Wilson, Georgina Ward, Donna Nichols, Hilda Eshlelman and Ralph Balcom.
Anniversaries
November anniversaries that I know about: 64 years for Roy and Ivy Whitfield, 63 years for John and Iva Lovett, 51 years for Walter and Betty Wessner, 50 years for Vern and Verna Wright and 34 years for Ralph and Kathy Balcom.
