My Cessna of 50 Years!

By Alan Farrell, Truro, Nova Scotia

A 73-year-old vintage Cessna and 1,500 feet of green grass. You turn on your lights and make all the calls, and, so far, no one answers. Is this perhaps freedom of flight?

Thought I would show readers this as it is, 50 years ago this February, that I brought this aircraft home from CYPQ, Peterborough, Ontario. (He was two years old when it was built! – Ed.)

The author landing at C-GOCY

It has been a journey; won the international long-distance award at the Cessna 170 Convention in 1976, landed at more than 60 different fields in Nova Scotia, found a lost hunter at 3:00 in the morning June 1983, taken countless people on free flights (many being first flights), free tailwheel checkouts (four of which moved on to the cockpits of airliners), and displayed it at three International Atlantic Airshows with enthusiastic viewers from diverse backgrounds and ethnicities that were thrilled just to sit in an old Black Bunny!!

The Cessna tied down and taking a well-earned break

Travelled as far west as Toronto and east to France (St. Pierre and Miquelon). HA HA!!

Continuation of the story. In 2019, I organized a fly-past of light aircraft (six), and the old 170 led the way as we flew by the Ottawa House here in my hometown of Parrsboro, Nova Scotia, to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the arrival of the Handley Page 1500 (Atlantic).

I think the airplane was born in 1952, although it is a 1953 model, so not quite as old as me. I was born in 1950. I should have said the video was taken by Peter Ripley, a retired air traffic controller. He started in Moncton Centre in 1973, the same time I was hired by EPA, and we are still flying together in the Black Bunny.

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