Series S2 - William Roy Maxwell

Captain William Roy Maxwell (1892 June 14-1946 March 15) was a pilot, businessman, civil servant, photographer, and veteran. Born in Toronto, Ontario, he was an important figure in the history of early Canadian aviation. Maxwell’s career spanned two world wars and a quarter of a century of flying, fifteen of them in the public eye. His accomplishments were many, including several firsts, such as the first Medivac flight in Canada in 1920 and the first winter flight into Moose Factory on James Bay in February of 1922 with Herve St. Martin.

Maxwell attended Hamilton Central Collegiate, in Hamilton, Ontario. Between 1911 and 1917 he worked as an apprentice electrician at Westinghouse Electric Ltd. and then as an apprentice survey engineer with the Canadian Northern Railway across the James Bay region of northern Ontario. Maxwell learned to fly in 1915.

Maxwell was a veteran pilot instruction in the Royal Flying Corp, which he joined in 1917, and Royal Air Force in the Great War. In Canada, he was based at Camp Borden, then to the Armour Heights School of Special Flying in North Toronto. He was also posted to Camp Everman in Texas, USA to assist in the training of pilots for the United States Army Air Force as well as the Royal Flying Corp. In 1918, he was transferred overseas to the Royal Air Force Staff College. He returned to Canada in February 1919 and qualified for a Civilian Pilot License No. 34.
He then launched his 20-year civilian flying career commencing with a yearlong stint as a “Barnstormer” follow by work with a newly formed company based in Burlington named Canadian Aero Film Company, which intended to use aircraft as a film platform to document the interesting news items of the day. The Government of Ontario hired the firm in the summer of 1920, to fly into the sub-arctic and film this remote region, and at the same time support the efforts of a young forester, E.T. Ireson, to carry out a survey of the region on the behalf of the Ontario Department of Lands and Forests.

Under his leadership (1921-1924), Laurentide Air Services established the first scheduled passenger service in Canada between Angiers, Quebec and Rouyn/Noranda. The first airmail service soon followed, in which Laurentide Air Services printed their own stamps.

Maxwell was the founding Director and Chief Pilot of Ontario Provincial Air Service (OPAS), 1924-1934, developing the new organization that continues to this day. The pilots under his supervision comprise a list of pioneering Canadian bush pilots including Harold Oaks, Fred Stevenson, Romeo Vachon, and Frank MacDougall among others.

Maxwell was exposed to the work of famous photographers such as his employer, Roy Tash, which provided him with grounding in the principles of photography as well as the lifelong skill in handling camera equipment. He extensively photo documented the remote places and people he encountered during his travels in the north as the director of the OPAS. However, Maxwell's photos from the 1929 treaty flights were the only ones that have survived.

In 1929 Maxwell served as the pilot for the 1929 portion of the 1929-1930 “Adhesion” signings, by which the James Bay Treaty (Treaty No 9) ceded more than two-thirds of the province to the Ontario government and permitted the development of its timber, mineral, and hydroelectric resources. His passengers were Herbert Nathaniel Awrey from the Canadian Indian Affairs Department and Ontario’s Deputy Minister of Lands and Forests, Walter Cain who served as the treaty commissioners. For the first time, aircraft were used to transport the treaty commissioners to specific destinations.

After Maxwell resigned from OPAS in 1935, he was a consultant to E.P. Taylor, Frank Common et al, Directors of British North American Aviation Company. Subsequently, he became engaged in commercial Fishery operations for several years as partner in Baillie/Maxwell Air Services. Maxwell received a monopoly to trade for Sturgeon & Caviar in the Albany River Basin. The Air Service was based in Nakina, Ontario but the operations centered around Ogoki Post and the upper Albany River.

Maxwell enlisted in the Royal Canadian Air Force as an Administrative Officer on December 4, 1939. He was posted to Western Air Command on 1940 December 2, 1940. As of May 1, 1941he was a Squadron Leader; and was promoted Wing Commander on January 15, 1942. Maxwell was posted to Station Tofino, British Columbia on December 3, 1942. He reverted to Squadron Leader on January 15, 1943 and resigned his commission on April 26, 1943. Maxwell died in Toronto, Ontario of Cerebral Vascular Disease in the Red Chevron Hospital on March 15, 1946 at age 54.