Story and Photos by Sandrine Murray
With his sparkling eyes and cool, collected demeanor, Joe Sparling looks and acts like a prototypical pilot.
But when he applied to Carleton University in 1969— a decision that would ultimately lead him to start flying and launch Yukon airline Air North — a career in aviation wasn’t on Sparling’s radar.
This past summer, as the Whitehorse-based airline celebrates its 40th year of serving Canada’s northern territories with a community-oriented mindset and freshly-made meals, Sparling sat down with students participating in the Carleton journalism program’s Stories North project and reflected on the route that led to his four decades of entrepreneurship.
Including his somewhat serendipitous start.
Moving to the Other Side of the Continent
When he finished high school, Sparling was living with his family in Vancouver, close to the University of British Columbia (UBC) campus. Wanting to go to university far from home, he applied to Carleton, McGill, Stanford, the University of Alaska and the University of Hawaii. He was accepted everywhere except for Stanford, didn’t like the dress code at McGill, and chose the school on the other side of the continent.
“I drove across the country, never having been to Ottawa, and had a great time there,” he says.
Sparling remembers negotiating free rent for a month in exchange for clearing the driveway at a house in the Glebe during his third and final year. That winter, Ottawa had a record snowfall. “It was a lot of work for a month’s free rent,” he says.
Sparling (BSc/72) started in physics, but the labs were driving him nuts, so he switched to math, which was his strongest subject in high school. Math was straightforward for Sparling – when he was finished an exam, he knew exactly how well he did. “I could put an unlimited amount of work into an English course and have no idea what I was going to get.”
He wasn’t sure how he was going to use his degree, but when he entered UBC’s Master of Business Administration program, he realized his math studies had taught him how to approach problems in an analytical manner and how to think logically.
Heading to the Yukon
After earning his MBA in 1974, Sparling made his way to the Yukon to work with his grandfather, who had gone north during the gold rush of 1898 and bought a hotel.
Sparling’s original plan was to stay in the Yukon for a year. But while there, he seized an opportunity to learn how to fly a Cessna 150 and Cessna 172 at a flying school called Globe Air. When he discovered the school was going out of business, Sparling and maintenance engineer Tom Wood purchased Globe Air’s assets for $50,000 and launched Air North.
“I’m not sure we could have done in the south what we did here,” says Sparling. “To start a business for $50,000, I just don’t think you could do that in a place like Toronto and be successful with it.”
In their first year with Air North, which still had a flying school, Sparling and Wood made a small profit, though neither man took home much of a paycheck. The seasonality of the operation was a challenge, both for paying off the assets and for staffing.
In the late 1970s, a boom cycle in the Yukon’s mining sector gave Air North an opening, and the company purchased new aircraft for mining support work. By the mid-1980s, it had its first scheduled service flights between Whitehorse and Fairbanks, Alaska. In 1999, Wood left to pursue other interests.
Today, Air North employs almost 600 people, many of whom come from the North. About one in 15 Yukoners holds an equity stake in the airline, and more than 200,000 passengers fly with Air North every year.
Flying in the North
Flying in the North is not as challenging as people think, says Sparling. Aside from colder weather, there’s little difference compared with flying in other geographical locations.
Competing with the bigger airlines, Air Canada and WestJet, has proved difficult for Air North. Rather than take an “it’s just business” attitude like larger companies, Sparling figured they should engage the local community – with special deals on flights for Yukoners and with customer service that leaves people raving about the airline. Their headquarters has remained in Whitehorse; it’s where they conduct their business and prepare the in-flight meals.
Another distinguishing feature is Air North’s unique business relationship with a northern Yukon First Nation. The Vuntut Gwitchin First Nation was among the first to achieve a land claims settlement in Yukon and is an important shareholder, with a 49 per cent stake in the airline.
Looking back at all his time in the air, Sparling has fond memories of all the planes he’s flown, from the small Cessna 150 to the Douglas DC-4.
That doesn’t mean he would go back to any of the older planes. He loves Air North’s current Boeing 737: it’s reliable, fast and flies easily above the weather.
And when it comes to the homemade food served aboard flights, Sparling’s favourite is the meat loaf — a classic comfort dish served on the trip from Whitehorse to Ottawa.
Tuesday, November 7, 2017 in Feature Stories
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