Season 3 Ice Pilots finale pulls at the heartstrings
After watching him on TV for three seasons on Ice Pilots NWT, it’s easy to forget that Scott Blue is not really a TV star. Ever since the show began, the lanky, cheerfully chatty pilot has commanded a good deal of screen time. He’s a natural. But, at the end of the day, he isn’t playing a pilot on TV; he is a pilot.
In what is sure to become a story arc in Season 4, Blue is waiting for the goahead to fly an Electra to the farthest reaches of the North to pick up some recently culled muskox meat. But Mother Nature isn’t co-operating.
So, as airline head Buffalo Joe Mcbryan and chief pilot Justin Simle fret over a computer, looking for a break in the weather, he has time to talk about what has clearly become one of his favourite topics: battling wildfires in Alberta.
Last summer, not long after wildfires devastated Slave Lake, Alta., Blue set off as a newbie waterbomber in a CL-215 to battle a blaze north of Fort Mcmurray that was inching toward the oilsands.
Months later, the 33-year-old is certain he has found his true calling.
“It’s the best flying I’ve ever done in my life,” he says. “It’s part of the reason I’ve stuck it out here as long as I have. If there’s anything I could fly here, it would be more of the 215s. It’s fantastic, it’s just too much fun. I can’t tell you how much of a blast it is.”
While Blue’s adventures over Alberta provide much of the nail-biting action in Wednesday’s episode, the Season 3 finale also has plenty of material to pull at the heartstrings. Ice Pilots has never been a show to revel in sentimentality, but this episode might just qualify as a bona fide tear-jerker.
Arnie Schreder, Buffalo’s former chief pilot, returns to Yellowknife to participate in a cancer walk. Gaunt and barely recognizable, he reveals details about his illness. And viewers will get a rare glimpse into the past and personal life of Buffalo Joe himself. With his son, Rod, and granddaughter, he makes the trip back to Gordon Lake, the tiny mining camp where the 67-year-old grew up and discovered his love of aviation.