One man’s dream to fly high in the sky is now creating opportunities for other Indigenous people to become professional pilots.
The Atik Mason Indigenous Pilot Pathway is a flight training program that offers First Nations, Metis, and Inuit a fully-funded opportunity to become private or commercial pilots and serve their communities.
“The idea was to put this training together to knock down those walls so that somebody could succeed, do what I have done or better than me … and give back to the communities,” says Atik Mason, the program’s namesake.
Mason is a first officer at Perimeter Aviation, also known simply as Perimeter, an airline that serves remote communities in northern Manitoba and northwestern Ontario.
He started flight training in 2016, and two years later received $40,000 from Perimeter Aviation to continue his training full-time through their Bill Wehrle Scholarship – named after the airline’s founder.
Mason soon became Perimeter’s first Indigenous pilot from a First Nation they serve.
His story gave their parent company, Exchange Income Corporation (EIC), the idea to start the program that could create more pilots from the northern communities they serve.
With support and guidance from Manitoba Keewatinowi Okimakanak, a not for profit political advocacy organization, the Atik Mason Indigenous Pilot Pathway was formed in 2022. It’s now in its third year and recently saw its first two graduates.
“A lot of these people that are coming into this program are maybe potentially one or two of the only people from their community that’s ever tried to [become pilots],” says Mason.
Learning to be a pilot isn’t cheap. According to one of Canada’s largest flight schools, Moncton Flight College, tuition can cost around $17,000 to train for a private pilot license which is the first step to becoming a commercial pilot. This allows someone to fly for personal or non-commercial purposes.
You can add another almost $20,000 to your tuition to then train for a commercial pilot license, meaning you can fly for hire.
Students can choose to train in Thompson, Man., or Rankin Inlet in Nunavut – two locations Mason says were picked in an effort to keep most students close to their home communities, though students can be from anywhere in Canada.
Housing and food are all provided along with a monthly stipend throughout the four-month training period.
Graduates from the Atik Mason Indigenous Pilot Pathway program are guaranteed job offers at the end of their training through EIC’s local air operators, which also include Calm Air and Keewatin Air.
“In the type of flying you do at perimeter or any of these northern airlines, it’s like fricken the maverick of flying,” says Mason,” You’re dealing with bad weather, small airports, … the weather is different every day.
“Every situation you do, every approach is going to be different so there’s no mundaneness. You’re not sitting in a cubicle and staring at a screen all day,” says Mason, who is also an instructor and mentor for the program.
Who is Atik Mason?
Though you wouldn’t know it due to his confidence and enthusiasm for flight, the road to Mason’s dream career as a pilot was not always clear.
“When I was a kid, that’s when aviation kind of really got the bug with me,” says Mason.
As a passenger, a young Madon flew in and out of his home community of St. Theresa Point First Nation several times a year – a place only accessible by plane or winter ice roads in northern Manitoba.
Mason says a trip to the cockpit during one flight as a child got him interested in aviation – but music and art soon took over.
He became a Juno Award winning musician with his band Burnt Project 1.
Despite the success, he says the rockstar life wasn’t healthy – especially as a child of a residential school survivor due to intergenerational trauma.
“The music was great, we were having success and everything but you know, there came a point in my life where I really had to decide to do things better and to be [healthier],” says Mason, “That’s when aviation started to come back into my life.”
At first, he had to juggle learning to fly with other life commitments but the Bill Wehrle Scholarship, a scholarship only for Indigenous people, made all the difference.
“It was the scholarship that finally kicked it forward for me where I had the resources where I could commit to training full-time. That changed everything,” says Mason.
He had to move to Moncton, New Brunswick to attend Moncton Flight College, a long distance away from his family and community.
He says that difficult decision is something he didn’t want other students to make, and is what influenced the program to operate in its northern locations.
Though Mason is surely not the first Indigenous or First Nations pilot, he wants to ensure that he also isn’t the last, pointing out that he is one of only a few Indigenous commercial pilots in Manitoba.
As the program grows and more Indigenous pilots are trained, Mason says flying will always be part of the north.
