The year was 1972 and 15-year-old Dennis Stoesz was filled with a mix of naivety and cockiness that only a teenager could possibly possess as he slid into the pilot’s seat for the first time.
“Fearless. That’s exactly what I felt,” said Stoesz, as he recalled his early days learning how to fly.
“When you’re that young you almost have to be taught how to be afraid. It’s that very sense of fear that keeps pilots alive.”
The 60-year-old doesn’t remember consciously deciding to become a pilot—it just kind of happened.
Stoesz grew up on a farm in Manitoba, helping his family with all the daily labours that come with that lifestyle. For awhile that’s how he thought he would spend most of his life, but one day his older brother came home and declared he was going to be a pilot. Like you would expect from any younger sibling, Stoesz announced he would do exactly the same thing.
“Well, my brother started teaching me and from that first day it was like I caught this bug. Then before I knew it, my dad and my sister caught the bug. Almost everyone in my family winded up being pilots,” said Stoesz, adding that two of his kids also have their licenses.
By the time Stoesz was 18 he had completed flight school and was starting his career as an instructor. He didn’t know it at the time, but he would go on to teach dozens of students all over the country for the next four decades.
“I’ve done all different types of flying—crop dusting, working in the bush, working with rescue teams and scheduled airline flights, but I guess some pilots have to stay back and teach other pilots,” Stoesz said. “I guess you could say it was my destiny or something like that.”
After 40 years of hopping from province to province, teaching students young and old, Stoesz and his wife Ila Gamblin decided to quit their troubadour ways and put down roots in Hinton.
In September Stoesz opened Hinton Flight Adventures at the Jasper-Hinton Airport—the closest flight school to Jasper and the only one in Yellowhead County.
“Very few people get to see what a pilot sees. You literally get to see things from a completely different perspective. After my first flight I knew this was what I wanted to do,” said Jasperite Madeline Ungurain, one of Stoesz’s first students at his new school.
“What really hooked me is the freedom flying brings and as a woman it’s very empowering to be a part of such a male-dominated industry.”
The Air Line Pilots Association, which represents Canada and the U.S. reported in 2015 that only 5.4 per cent of its members are women. Air Canada, which is considered a leader in hiring women, still only has about 160 female pilots out of 3,100. That’s 5.1 per cent—a figure close to the North American average. 
During the summer, Ungurain was living in Whistler, taking flight lessons in Squamish, B.C.
“I used to be really afraid of heights so I didn’t really know if I would like it, but from the second I got in the plane everything just felt right,” she said.
However, due to employment opportunities, Ungurain had to move back to Jasper.
“I was really disappointed because I was pretty sure there were no flight schools near Jasper,” she said. “I had checked before and there was nothing in the area.”
Hoping something had changed, Ungurain began calling around the province until one of the voices on the receiver informed her about Stoesz and Hinton Flight Adventures.
She called him right away.
Despite starting lessons in September, Ungurain said she didn’t get behind the yoke until mid-November—but that’s just Stoesz’s style. He makes all his students take part in groundwork and textbook studies before taking to the air.
“Flying an airplane is actually easy, but the academics of it all are not,” Stoesz said. “You have to know how to predict the weather and aerodynamics and you have to be a bit of a mechanic.
“We still navigate things the old-fashioned way with maps—it’s just practical.”
At her previous school, Ungurain said she didn’t get that kind of classroom experience.
“They would try to explain things to me while we were in the plane. Nothing was sticking, but this time around everything just came a lot easier,” she said.
Under Stoesz’s watchful eye, students can acquire their private or commercial license.
He’ll soon be offering Rocky Mountain flight training for flatland pilots, teaching them how to handle the mountains’ unpredictable weather, harsh turbulence and all sorts of other tricks of the trade.
“The Rocky Mountains are one of the most challenging places to learn to fly even for experienced pilots, and that’s terrifying for some people, but it’s an experience like no other,” Stoesz said. “I hope others will come out and try it with me.”
Kayla Byrne
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