Cold, Solitude, Precision: Three Female Helicopter Pilots in Canada

Cassandra is a young pilot who has settled in Sept-Îles in the province of Quebec. She describes the region as remote. There aren't many roads leading to the individual communities, she says, and with fishermen, hunters and industrial operations, there is enormous demand for helicopters. She spent three years training at a flight school in Quebec. She originally wanted to become an airline pilot, until she "fell in love" with helicopters. That lit a fire in her to pursue her dreams all the way. For her, the job fulfills almost everything she had wanted from life.

At the same time, she speaks openly about the downside. She mostly flies alone, with no one sitting beside her telling her what to do or what to learn. That gives her a sense of vulnerability. In very remote areas, help in an emergency can be far away. It makes her feel "very small in a very big world."

According to the film, Sept-Îles lies at roughly the 50th parallel and marks the transition between the densely populated south and the remote north. The town is strongly shaped by the sea. At its mouth, the St. Lawrence River widens to almost 130 kilometers, and a bay sheltered by seven islands forms a major natural harbor opening onto the Atlantic. Two railway lines run north from here, one mainly for freight, the other also for passengers.

Cassandra takes on numerous contracts for the railway company. In the mission shown, she picks up two passengers at the ArcelorMittal facilities in Port-Cartier and flies them to Mont-Wright. There, the two men are to recover a damaged locomotive and bring it back to Port-Cartier. Cassandra estimates that this will take two to three days, "if all goes well." Before takeoff, she explains to the passengers how the harnesses work and how the luggage is secured.

Mont-Wright lies on the border with Labrador, at the latitude of southern Greenland. According to the film, one of the world's largest iron ore operations is located there, at the heart of a huge open-pit mine. It runs all year round, including in winter, and produces about 30 million tonnes of iron concentrate annually. François Morin and his colleague from the railway company stay on site to repair the locomotive. The ore trains can be several kilometers long and comprise around 240 cars. They carry the ore to Sept-Îles, from where it is exported worldwide. The film places this in a broader context: Canada is one of the most resource-rich countries in the world, and the business is handled in major cities such as Edmonton, more than 3,000 kilometers away as the crow flies.

In Edmonton, the film shows an operation by the Canadian Helicopters teams. Four large signs are to be installed on the roof of a major bank. James Molloy organizes the operation and explains to the team that the signs will be lifted by a heavy Sikorsky S-61 on a 150-foot line. At the controls are Steve Thorn and Darren Walsh. The film calls them two legends among helicopter pilots; both also work as flight instructors. The narrator compares lifting the huge panels between the wind-buffeted high-rises to a gigantic ballet.

According to the film, such heavy-lift missions are no longer reserved for men. Some women are also rated for these machines, including Leslie, an experienced pilot with more than 4,000 flight hours who lives in Canmore and flies every type of helicopter. She describes such responsibility as challenging but also very rewarding. She once had 35 men on a mountain and was responsible for getting them there and back. Those men trusted her to keep them all safe.

In the hangars of the Edmonton base, pilots undergo training every year on various helicopter types, such as the AStar. Each type requires specific knowledge. Mariam El Jundi is 26 years old and has more than 1,000 flight hours. For three days, she trains for extreme flight situations. Her instructor is Steve, who has just finished the downtown operation. Eric Krone handles the theory and simulator training.

Mariam admits that she finds the situation somewhat intimidating, even though she knows she is there to learn, to expand her skills and to become familiar with the emergency procedures. But it is hard to be "put under a microscope" every year, she says, especially since emergencies are only practiced once a year. In the simulator, an engine failure is triggered. Krone sets a landing target, a small strip on the far side of a river, and guides the autorotation all the way to the ground with callouts on rotor speed and the flare. In the debrief, Mariam says self-critically that she didn't change her decision quickly enough in the moment. After three hours in the simulator with numerous emergency drills, including engine failures and onboard fires, she has passed the first phase of training.

Mariam grew up in Calgary, east of the Rocky Mountains, and attended flight school in Springbank, west of the city. Her mother is from El Salvador. That side of the family grew up rather poor, and aviation was not an option there. Her father's family comes from Lebanon and, because of the civil war, also had few opportunities in this field.

She describes the industry as one where you have to show up in person and shake hands. So she undertook what she calls her "little tour of rejection": in her Honda Civic, she drove through British Columbia and Alberta, handing out résumés and introducing herself in person. She stopped at about 30 places. Two months later, she packed her things and moved to northern British Columbia. She also stresses that, as a woman, she was entering a male-dominated environment.

In the evening, she prepares the next day's flights and tries to assess the weather as accurately as possible to reduce uncertainty during the check ride. The practical test takes place at Edmonton Airport, again with Steve as examiner. According to the film, taking off there is considered demanding even for experienced pilots, since in the morning there is a departure every three minutes. That requires constant vigilance and communication with the tower. The program includes simulated engine failures with emergency landings, repeated until every phase of the approach is precise. After almost eight hours, Mariam earns her AStar rating. This means she can be deployed across the country on a wider range of missions.

From Edmonton, the journey continues almost 2,000 kilometers north, according to the film almost ten hours by plane, over farmland, boreal forest and the first mountain ranges to Inuvik, in the heart of the Mackenzie Delta in the Northwest Territories. Inuvik is the last sizable settlement before the Arctic, far beyond the Arctic Circle. The town has just over 3,000 inhabitants, mostly Inuvialuit, along with workers and scientists from the south. At minus 35 degrees, every movement has to be precise and quick.

Leslie has crossed much of the country to work here. A large part of a pilot's daily routine consists of ground tests. In the case shown, after the rotor blades have been replaced, they are checked to make sure they work properly. The film explains that in flight, it is mainly their pitch angle that makes maneuvering possible. Chief mechanic Joshua May describes how they deal with the cold: a machine that hasn't been plugged in and preheated risks damaged seals. That is why covers are used for the rotor blades and fuselage, to keep snow out and retain heat. A few days earlier, it had been minus 42 degrees. Nothing flew at all; they didn't even push the machine outside.

Then there are the so-called whiteout days, when sky and ground merge and navigation becomes impossible. On those days, the pilots stay on the ground, plan flights, take care of paperwork and help the mechanics in the hangar so that everything is ready to go as soon as flying is possible again.

Leslie recounts that her father had a very serious helicopter crash when she was nine years old and was badly injured. When she told her parents she wanted to go into this profession, both had misgivings. She paid for her training herself. She worked the night shift from 11 p.m. to 7 a.m. and was in ground school at 8:30 a.m. She did not grow up privileged, she says. If she wanted something, she had to earn it. She applied for three years before anyone gave her a job at all. After that, she worked on the ground for years, answering phones and sweeping hangar floors.

In town, Leslie meets a biologist named Mike, who has spent his life in the Arctic regions studying wolves and caribou. According to the film, he looks at the development of species holistically and in connection with the local populations. Leslie first checks the weather. The cloud ceiling is too low for the high-elevation targets, so they postpone the flight until the next day. Together, they set priorities on the iPad, such as areas around the Bell River and Little Fish. Mike explains that temperatures around minus 50 degrees are not unusual in these places. This winter, it was like that for almost a month. That is why helicopters are used for this work; in this part of the world, there's hardly any other way.

The next morning, the sky is clear and the temperature is below minus 40 degrees. At least four missions are planned. Meanwhile, the mechanics bring out a large Bell, a type that, according to the narrator, gained sad notoriety through the Vietnam War. This machine is to supply radar stations in the Arctic on behalf of the military. According to the film, about ten installations there are permanently in operation to fend off a possible attack on Canada.

Leslie's helicopter is equipped with UHF antennas to receive signals from GPS collars on selected animals. Her job is to fly the biologist to each identified location. She highlights the versatility of the machine. Because a helicopter can do so much, she flies very different people, such as geologists or PhDs in environmental science, depending on the job. She gets a great deal out of that.

On the way, they fly over the Mackenzie Delta, according to the film one of the largest in North America, where large caribou herds can be observed. At each GPS point, Leslie has to find a landing spot in completely untouched terrain. On the ground, the snow makes progress difficult. Mike finds the tracks of a pack and suspects there is a kill somewhere in the brush. But a longer search from a hover isn't worth the energy; the tracks are telling enough. At minus 35 degrees, the two joke, a hot lunch is nice. Mike describes wolves as animals with a lot of personality, a symbol of wilderness and freedom, that never stop surprising him. From a scientific point of view, that makes it especially interesting to understand what they do and how.

One signal particularly catches Mike's attention. For several days, it has been reporting an isolated animal, which, according to the film, is unusual. Mike explains that this wolf was rarely found with its pack, only from the fall onward. That suggests it was a less dominant animal that sometimes joined the pack and sometimes didn't. It was never a big wolf and never developed well. When Leslie asks whether, as an outsider, it simply couldn't thrive, Mike answers "probably." Food is scarce, even though this pack's territory is fairly good in summer, with sheep. Sometimes it simply comes down to dominance structures. It's never nice to have to collect an animal after following it for a long time.

For the extra distances, they have fuel drums on board. According to Mike, each of these "kegs" provides about 20 additional minutes of flight. Leslie describes having to manage the weight of the machine, the distance per tank and the available resources on her own. But she wants to be in the bush, not just fly over it. Before they head back, the wolves answer Mike's howl. According to the film, the necropsy of the wolf and the planned analyses, particularly DNA testing, are meant to complement the data collected over the years and help better understand the current changes in northwestern Canada. On the flight back, Leslie asks what she did to deserve this. She has even flown over whales in the Arctic Ocean, and being so close to nature and seeing almost all of Western Canada from a bird's-eye view is a privilege.

Leslie often calls her son during deployments, and the film shows a short phone call. She says this is part of what she signed up for. The job means two or three weeks away from home at a stretch. At home, in return, she can give her son her undivided attention, enjoy her community and have a lot of free time. But at work she misses holidays, special occasions and birthdays. Over her career, she has "flown through two divorces," through the deaths of both her parents, and has raised a child on her own. She has learned to compartmentalize these things in order to process them. Sometimes these challenges weigh heavily. She also tries to build connections with the local community because she spends so much time away from her own.

To combat loneliness and isolation, the team meets for bowling at the only pub in town. For Leslie, it's a farewell evening; the next morning she heads home. She says, laughing, that she first wants to hug her son and then go from the warm pool to the steam room and back.

After Leslie's departure, a storm with gusts of over 60 km/h moves in over Inuvik. Her colleague Ryan Longaker flies about an hour from the base to a remote telecommunications station on Storm Hill. Turbulence is unavoidable. The landing pad is only a few square meters in size and completely snowed over. According to the film, the snowpack is too unstable to land directly on the ground, and the strong wind makes the approach even harder. The wind chill is minus 45 degrees.

On site, Eric services the generators that enable communication with even more remote villages such as Tuktoyaktuk. He recalls his first job with Canadian Helicopters as ground crew for fuel delivery. While the pilot was ferrying fuel back and forth, fog rolled in and stayed for three days and three nights. He and another fuel helper slept in a small building and ate canned food. The crew hurries to get back to base before nightfall. According to the film, the next visit isn't scheduled until summer.

At the other end of the country, in Sept-Îles, about 3,700 kilometers from Inuvik as the crow flies, Cassandra is flying photographer Jean-Phillip Grenier. He photographs large ice floes on the St. Lawrence River and asks whether he can open the window or shoot through the small door. According to the film, the teamwork between photographer and pilot is crucial. Cassandra tries to anticipate his shots and position the machine accordingly.

She says she likes having people on board, enjoys chatting and enjoys looking after her clients. As a woman in her field, she is incredibly lucky today to be able to do this job. Extraordinary women paved the way before her. About 20 years ago, it may not have been easy, because there were so few. But today she considers herself very fortunate. At the same time, she doesn't feel special just because she is a woman.

The last stop is Terrace, on the Pacific side. According to the film, the town has a much milder climate due to the influence of the ocean. The local base carries out industrial work but also works in mountain rescue, for example in controlled avalanche triggering or rescuing skiers and climbers. Leslie travels from Canmore, more than 1,000 kilometers away, to take part in a training session. Mariam comes too and is picked up at the airport by Leslie. Both call Terrace their favorite base, and Mariam says it feels like coming home.

While cooking together in their vacation rental, the two talk about their relationship. Leslie says she never asked to be Mariam's mentor. But when Mariam first called her that, she felt very flattered. Mariam says it wasn't planned. Leslie simply offered to be there and listen, and a friendship grew out of it. She remembers a long message in which Leslie explained where to go, where to eat and, basically, how to sleep.

Mariam stresses that the two have experienced different generations of aviation. Leslie started in 2001; Mariam got her license in 2018. Being a woman in aviation back then was completely different from 2026. Women like Leslie paved the way for an easier entry. Leslie says she feels privileged if she has contributed a small part to making things easier for the next generation. Mariam talks about the progress you can see with every season. From 4 percent women in aviation to 5 percent, and eventually it will level off at 50/50. Laughing, the two add: or the women will take over.

Base manager Matt Sheffer regularly involves both of them in complex operations. He describes Leslie as a real character who entertains everyone. Mariam is assigned to pick up two workers and fly along a line as low as possible. Meanwhile, Leslie is training with Steve again, this time focusing on approach angles for landing. A few minutes apart, both take off.

In closing, one of the pilots describes her relationship with the profession. There are moments over terrain, glaciers and waterfalls when you feel as if you're standing on the roof of the world, especially in the terrain along the northwest coast. When she flies, she feels she is exactly where she belongs. Some moments are truly magical. In others, you're flying in fog, don't know where the power lines are, and wonder why you ever chose this. But because she gave it everything and didn't give up, it now feels as though every step was worth it. She hopes people will recognize themselves in her story and feel less alone on their own path.