Archie was born in a small town called Jabbeke, in West Flanders about ten kilometres to the West of Bruges. When he was about one year old the family moved to Schore, another Flanders town on the banks of the Yser River, near where some of the bloodiest battles of World War I were fought. He saw his first airplane when he was about five, a strange and wonderful object racing through the air that he has never forgotten.
In the summer of 1914 his mother was again pregnant and Archie was sent back to Jabbeke to stay with his grandmother. And when the war broke out and the German army took Belgium he saw his second airplane. It was a monoplane, probably a Taube, flying over the streams of refugees that were passing through Jabbeke in their struggle to reach the safety of France. It flew so low they could see the pilot's head.
The fighting front stabilized along the Yser on a line from Nieuport, through Schore, Dixmude, Ypres, and on into France. Jabbeke was about twenty kilometres behind the lines, safe but near, and became a garrison town. Among the many military installations built there was an aerodrome at Varsanere, about three kilometres from his home. This was the base of II Marinefeldjagstaffel, a unit commanded by Lieutenant Theo Osterkamp, who was a famous German ace, and a man who eventually became one of Hitler's generals.
For a small boy, untouched by the serious problems his parents must have been having, the war was exciting. Archie and his friends loved to watch the aerobatics of the pilots over Varsanere, their loops, rolls and dives. A manoeuvre he particularly liked was when
the aircraft came down like a falling leaf, and he could never understand why they never saw it again after it disappeared below the trees. A long time later Archie learned about spins. One special day his aunt took him to the airfield and they watched the airplanes
move about, and land and take-off. He was fascinated.
As the war grew older there were many more airplanes, and they were not always German. The bombers came over, met by German fighters and anti aircraft guns, and there were air battles. They learned to fear the bombers and to take cover, for they were not very accurate and did more damage to the civilian houses than to the military targets they were aiming for. Once Archie's younger brother, too young to know danger, would have been killed had not Archie pulled him to safety in the nick of time.
Suddenly in 1918, when Archie was nine years old, the war was over. All who had lived under the occupation were euphoric, tremendously grateful for freedom from Germans and danger, an emotional release that even simmered down to Archie. But really, for
him, life did not change much -he still had to go to school.
In 1924 a cousin who had moved to Canada paid them a visit. He was a vegetable farmer from St. Laurent near Montreal, and his stories about Canada so fired Archie's imagination that he begged to go back with him when he returned. He must have been
pretty persuasive, because not only did the cousin agree to take him, he helped overcome the parental objections. Archie arrived at Windsor in Montreal on February 3, 1925, fifteen going on sixteen years Old.
Archie was not cut out to be a farmer, and after a few months he and his cousin parted company with Archie going back to school at the College Saint Laurent in Ville St. Laurent. He was self-supporting, sweeping floors and making beds to earn his keep and
tuition. While often homesick he was enjoying a freedom he could never have had in Belgium. He was able to indulge in bicycle racing and was pretty good at it, a sport his father would not have authorized, and he developed a soaring interest in aviation. In the
late 20's aviation was in the news often. In 1926 the Spaniard Major Ramon Franco flew a Dornier across the South Atlantic to Brazil. In May of that year Richard Byrd flew to the North Pole in a three engine Fokker, and a few days later the Norge, a dirigible, took
Roald Amundsen along the same route - over the Pole and on to Alaska. Also in 1926 Rene Fonck died trying to fly from New York to Paris.
At the time becoming a pilot was beyond Archie's wildest dreams. One had to be in the military, and specially selected. But he discovered Aero Digest, which he read avidly, getting help from an American friend with the English, and in it he learned there were
civilian schools that would teach anyone who could pay. There were also ads for correspondence courses, stressing the value of learning the theory of aviation before actually taking flying lessons. Archie enrolled into one offered by the Aviators Preparatory Institute of New York, mainly because its President was Walter Hinton, who had been one of the U.S. Navy pilots who had crossed the Atlantic in 1919. All through 1927 Archie pored over the books to learn as much about flying as he could and avidly followed the adventures of the many from many nations who were trying to fly across the Atlantic Ocean. By the end of the year seven of them, including Lindbergh, had succeeded, and seven more had lost their lives trying. Aviation was big news, and glamorized by Hollywood in such films as Dawn Patrol, and Wings.
Early in 1928 two men from Montreal acquired a Curtis Jenny with the intention of forming a flying club, and sold shares on the airplane at $250 as membership fees. Archie had a motorcycle, which he sold, and a few savings, and he bought in, having no idea of how he would get additional money for flying training and his share of expenses. Ultimately nine people became members, and the organization became the Montreal Flying Club. The instructor was Herve Simoneau, a man who had 600 hours but no pilot license, a piece of paper he had to acquire before he could offer legal instruction. Initially they worked out of Cartierville. Archie had his first flight on May 6, 1928, and first instruction the following day.
Not long after they started the Elliott Air Service from Hamilton also moved into Cartierville with two Jennies and the intention of operating a flying school. One of their students who soloed that summer was Gath Edward, the same age as Archie, and who
became a good friend. The Montreal Flying Club was forced out of Cartierville and moved to a farm at Ville St. Michel. Archie was really getting very little flying in, but when the "Pere Econome" of the college found out what he was doing with his spare time he gave him a choice--a college, or aviation. So Archie moved out, and lived at the field in a tent borrowed from a friend. Now he was really involved. He helped Simoneau with the maintenance--they became friends, and Simoneau often took him along on test flights and gave him free dual.
Soon a new school, Commercial Air Transport, came to share the field at Ville St. Michel, and acquired Simoneau's services as flying instructor and air engineer. As this was an additional aircraft the maintenance load became too heavy for one person and Simoneau talked the brass into hiring Archie as full time junior mechanic and assistant. His salary was $10.00 a week, paid jointly by the Montreal Flying Club and Commercial Air Transport. In addition he was allowed five hours flying time per month, a valuable perk. On October 28, 1928, after one hour and five minutes dual, he went solo, landing successfully on his third attempt. He was on his way.
The arrangement with the Montreal Flying Club and Commercial Air Transport worked out until CAT went bankrupt early in 1929 and MFC dwindled away to nothing. Early in the year Simoneau had been hired by the Continental Aero Corporation, which company
operated a flying school at St. Hubert and had the distributorship for TravelAir airplanes. During the summer Simoneau was transferred to Quebec City to take charge of the Company’s flying operations and school there with four airplanes. Once more he had too much work and asked that Archie be sent down as junior mechanic. The summer and fall of 1929 were busy, with flying training and barnstorming tours, and Archie learned a lot. And late in the year he and Simoneau flew to Montreal where they were wined and dined by the chiefs of Continental Air Corporation. At dinner these gentlemen discussed the recent stock market crash. It did not seem important until a few months later when Archie lost his job.
The end of 1929 Canadian Airways began an airmail route from Montreal to Moncton and hired Simoneau. Archie stayed on at Continental at $25.00 a week, with the understanding that he would be checked out on the TravelAir 2000 and allowed to accumulate
the fifty hours needed for a commercial license. At the time he had but four hours fifty minutes solo. The end of the year he was able to get his Air Engineers license, and, as engineers were in short supply, immediately became Continental’s chief of maintenance.
The Great Depression was now building, and it was rumoured Continental would soon fold. By June of 1930 Archie still lacked one hour and twenty-five minutes to qualify for his commercial pilot license, which he got in, and took his test. All he needed to become a licensed pilot was a cross country - but the next day the receivers walked in and all flying stopped. A short hiatus occurred during which Archie did some unlicensed flying for a friend who owned a TravelAir, and considerable rebuilding after some mishaps; then he was employed as a pilot by La Societe d'Aviation du Quebec who undertook to get him the cross-country that stood between him and an honest pilot livelihood Finally, he started to build time, working for a variety of small outfits, once being part owner of an airplane, active in his chosen profession, but not making much more than bacon and beans. In 1935 he joined Central Airways of Amos, P.Q., and started to learn about seaplanes. In 1937 he left Quebec for Edmonton and the MacKenzie Air Service. Nowhe was one of the elite Canadian bush pilots.
As soon as World War II started Archie enlisted in the RCAF. In 1941 he came to 13 O.T.S. at Patrica Bay where he instructed on flying boats. In 1942 he was transferred to the East Coast, and in 1943 became O.C. of No. 160 Squadron, a PBY Coastal unit. In 1944 he was transferred to No.45 Group at Montreal where he ferried flying boats across the Atlantic, and later in the year became the Director of Instrument Flying Training in the Aircrew Assessment Board.
Archie resigned from the Air Force, a Wing Commander, and, as MacKenzie Air Service was one of the founding companies in CP Air, became one of that airline’s senior pilots. When CP Air started its overseas routes he was one of the first to fly them and actually
did the inauguration flight to Australia. For a number of years he was based in Mexico City on the Lima, Peru run, and he was to have been one of the original crews on the Comet 1.
He left CP Air in 1959 and for a time instructed with the BC Aero Club with whom he stayed, with two breaks for charter flying, until late in the sixties. Then he moved east to Hamilton, and was soon active with White River Air Service as Chief Pilot on the Norontair routes, flying twin Otters. In 1973 he left that for a CIDA contact, training pilots in Senegal and Mali on the twin Otter. This job took two years, and when it was ended he returned to Canada and Austin Airways, who had taken over White River.
For the next seven years he worked for them as a simulator instructor and occasional pilot, taking leave each year to return to Africa where he did follow up training and checking on the native pilots of Air Senegal, Air Volta, and Lina Congo. He retired in 1981, after fifty-three years of flying covering the period from barnstorming to the supersonic. If he did nothing else in his lifetime his longevity as a pilot flying for hire should earn him his place in the Aviation Hall of Fame.
Archie and his wife Joan live in a fine family home in Hamilton and have a place in Florida for the bad seasons. Archie is on CALPA(R)'s Honour Roll, and he and Joan regularly attended RAPCAN annual meetings.