Late in January 1943, the chief instructor took me up for my final instrument flying test as well as my 60 hour check. When the final marks were posted that evening I was pleased that I had passed the first hurdle on my way to becoming another Billy Bishop.

The day after our final checks the survivors (about 80%) were on their way to # 13 S.F.T.S. at St. Hubert which was located on the south side of the St. Lawrence opposite Montreal. This was our final step. Several of the guys that were together in Moncton were still together and we were double-bunked in an "H" shaped barrack with about 50 fellows in each wing of the "H". The washrooms were in the cross section. My flying instructor was a Sergeant Smith who turned out to be a real friend, one who had lots of patience with a pretty dumb (at times) student.

At Service Flying School our time was divided between ground school and flying, with them being alternated morning and afternoon initially. From my log-book I see that I had six hours of dual instruction on the North American Harvard before I was allowed to go solo. It was almost as big a thrill as my initial solo in the Fleet Finch, mainly due to the power, speed and maneuverability of the Harvard - I think I was at about 2,000 feet before I got around to pulling up the undercarriage on that first flight.

When we arrived here the runways were ice covered with large snow banks lining each side. However, after a couple of weeks here we had an untypical winter thaw along with heavy rains with the result being the ice disappeared from the runways. This caused havoc with the flying as there were numerous ground loops by aircraft landing while drifting sideways. This drifting didn't matter when the plane was landing on ice but on concrete there isn't much give and that first day there was at least six Harvard’s that spun into the large snow banks. Luckily there were few if any personal injuries, however a number of wing-tips and propellers were badly bruised.

After the rains we had a couple of bad snow storms and I was caught up in one. Not being able to land at St. Hubert I climbed above the ceiling and waited for it to blow over. Up there it was one of the most beautiful sights I've ever seen - a blanket of white with rainbows everywhere. As I was fast running out of fuel I couldn't spend too much time admiring the view, so I worked my way down and picked up a railway line and followed it over to the airport at St. John's which was closed. However, when I flew over the tower at about 500 feet they opened one short runway and I didn't waste any time in attempting a tough cross-wind landing. After a couple of bounces I applied the brakes to get it stopped in time, but ended up scraping a wing-tip on a snow bank. 

My first thought was that I would catch it now, however Smitty flew over a little later to pick me up and didn't say anything except "to be at the flight early the next morning". Smitty never mentioned the slight accident the previous day but took me on a long navigation test to the Laurentians north of Montreal. The weather again closed in suddenly and we followed one of the rivers back to the St. Lawrence and then back safely to base. A few horses and cows were pretty frightened that afternoon as we flew at about 300 feet above that small twisty river and one of the two crew members was also a bit nervous.

In our course, which would last approximately sixteen weeks, we had about sixty students including Americans, Englishmen, Free French, Australians, New Zealanders, as well as English and French Canadians. The Aussies were swell fellows but I didn't care too much for the English. Most of the chaps were pretty clever too, as I thought I had done pretty well on our first progress test, getting an 88, but I ended up well down the list. About every week one or more of the students would be washed out and sent off to a navigation or gunnery school. The reasons for this varied -unauthorized low flying - bad landing - a taxiing accident -failure of a ground school exam.

The Harvard, although a bit noisy was really a joy to fly. They were harder to land and take off especially in a cross wind and even though I usually made three point landings, each point came down at a different time. They were great for aerobatics and for chasing your buddies around and through the clouds on a bright spring day. We went on a number of low flying cross country flights - up to Ottawa one day and down to Lake Placid another. As we were traveling at about twice the speed of the Fleet Finch it made map reading that much more difficult.