It was Saturday morning and after a second coffee, I opened my email and there as usual was Canadian Aviator Magazine’s weekly email that included an article about Buttonville airport (CYKZ). I remember that airport. A check of an old logbook shows that, sure enough, 40 years ago I had been there and used it as a base for a family visit in the Toronto area.
Why is this in any way remarkable? In those days, Buttonville recorded upwards of 84,000 movements annually and while I was clearly just one of many, I had to fly from Vancouver to do it.
Darcy rode in the right seat and helped with the maps and watching for traffic. Imagine flying through Chicago Center! Extra eyes were in much demand. Babes in the woods. Karen stayed home and Stacy was in the back seat with her mom, Joyce.
This would be my first significant cross country, one where in the beginning I had a grand total of 155 hours and would add 49 more on this trip, thus increasing the total by 31 percent and covering some 5,000 miles in the process. All of this in a rental Cherokee with a wife and two of three daughters. In addition to Buttonville, we got to go to London, Brantford, Waterloo-Wellington, and Calgary and such exotic places as Havre, Marquette, Kankakee, Cedar Rapids, Minot, and even Jasper/Hinton – though not necessarily in that order. The trip through Chicago was made memorable by the helpful controller in the center who I’m sure knew he had a rookie on his hands. He found us a place for lunch and fuel and then later discussed baseball all the way to Detroit.
Many trips have been logged since, including two to OSH and one to the Northwest Territories but none sticks in the mind like this first one.
Back to Buttonville, it seems that time waits for no man, property values will only increase, and the airport has more value for development than as an airfield, so by November 30 YKZ will only be a memory.