Joe Henderson: From classroom to cockpit
“The joke is, if you get a degree in psychology, then you’ll be able to counsel yourself when you’re unemployed.”
Joe Henderson is sitting in a sushi bar with his colleague Mick Egan when he unleashes that little zinger. The Harbour Air pilot is clearly in no need for any auto-counselling, although he does credit the psychology degree he earned from the University of Alberta for “helping me to get along in the world.”
He also readily describes his seemingly unlikely path from the halls of academe to the cockpit of a Twin Otter as “crooked”, but when it comes to flying, Joe was already a lifelong hobbyist. His first plane was an elegant masterpiece of design and craft known as the Heinz Alphaghetti Glider.
“We sent away so many labels and two dollars,” he says. “I still remember it. It was this foam glider; we assembled it and it flew really nicely. Then I graduated into little wind-up airplanes.”
Joe credits both his mother and father for instilling an early interest in aviation, compelling him ultimately to earn his private licence while still at university. And the first thing he did, after driving off the ferry at Swartz Bay upon moving West in 1996, pointed to the future—even if Joe didn’t know it at the time.
Henderson is a natural at seaplane flying
(Randy Wright)“Before I even unpacked my car,” he says. “I came down to the harbour and I watched the seaplanes come and go. I didn’t really think that I’d ever be doing that. I did think it was really cool though.”
A chance opportunity to undertake a little floatplane training with Cooper Air provided what Joe describes as “an interesting vector into the market.”
“I did a couple of lessons with them and it really put the hooks into me,” he states. “I remember bombing around in a Cessna 185 and thinking I’d learned more about flying in 15 minutes than I had in the previous 100 and some hours. It felt so natural. I remember being out there bobbing on the water and thinking, ‘why does this feel familiar?’”
It’s no surprise where the story goes from there. Seven thousand seaplane hours later, with a few months cruising around the Mediterranean for Harbour Air Malta for good measure and three years of marriage under his belt, it’s no wonder that Joe can now characterize that crooked career path—using technical jargon familiar only to those educated in the science of the mind—as a “no-brainer”. Aside from starting a family, he doesn’t see any big changes on the horizon, either.
“Maybe this is the psychology speaking,” he offers, “but a fault with humanity is that we’re never quite satisfied with what we’ve got, and sometimes it has to be taken away before we realize that it’s good. And unfortunately that’s what happens with airline guys. It’s always the next machine, or the next run, or whatever comes next; but sometimes you do have to stop and smell the roses, and say, ‘Hey, this is a good thing!’”
