Rick Matthews: No Complaints
We should all have it as good as Captain Rick Matthews. “I’ve never done a day of work in my life,” he declares, when Coastlines reaches him for a brief chat. “And who can say that?”
The veteran Harbour Air pilot has actually done more than a few days of work—30 years of them in total, after a friend took him for a brief spin in his private plane when Rick was a tender 20 years old. It was 1979, and he was a carpenter at the time. Rick showed no interest in climbing into the cockpit up until that point.
“When I was a kid I didn’t pore through flying magazines or lay on the roof watching airplanes go by, or anything like that,” he says. “I was basically destined for the trades until my buddy took me flying. That was it from there. I thought, ‘Hey, this is better than working for a living...’”
It was love at first flight for Rick Matthews
(Photo by Harbour Air Seaplanes)Sounds like love at first flight. “Pretty much,” he says. “I went out that same summer and got my pilot’s license. And here we are 17,000 hours later and I wouldn’t change a thing.”
Along with Blondie, Hazzard County’s Duke cousins and the U.S. Voyager space probe, 1979 was a pretty good year for Rick Matthews. “My wife and I got married in seventy-nine as well, and she’s been hanging around the whole time,” he chuckles. “I’ve dragged her all over the place. We’ve had a riot. It’s been an absolute blast.”
The Victoria native has apparently led a largely turbulence-free life ever since, with two kids under his belt, both now in their early twenties, and a home in Qualicum.
And like so many of his colleagues, Rick has seen the world, with a stint in the Maldives and a three-month run for Harbour Air’s start-up service in Malta—something he chalks up to “payback for all the days at Alert Bay and Port Hardy.”
“The key to having a good time in this industry is going through all the open doors and seeing what’s out there,” he says. “Life isn’t a trial run, right? You figure that out when you’re about forty.”
“I was basically destined for the trades until my buddy took me flying. That was it from there. I thought, ‘Hey, this is better than working for a living...’”
In his spare time, Rick does a little fly-fishing but mostly tends to his old first love—carpentry. He’s in the middle of building a new kitchen island for his daughter when he picks up the phone for his Coastlines interview.
“It’s the money-in hobby rather than a money-out hobby,” he laughs. “I mean, I could buy a Corvette and drive around like Mid-Life Crisis Man, but I’d rather just hang around my garage and build something for somebody. It’s better for all of us.”
All in all, it sounds like Rick has things nailed, so to speak. Perfect job, beautiful wife, and two kids, one of whom has a custom-built kitchen unit in her future. “It’s an enviable situation,” he admits. “I have absolutely nothing to complain about at all.”
