David Harold Newman

Dave Newman, c. 2023

David Harold "Dave" Newman ((1937-06-05)5 June 1937) is a retired commercial pilot and businessman from Terrace, British Columbia. A son of Harold Newman and Marie (Sloan) Newman, and a brother of Loraine (Houston) and John Newman, he flew helicopters and fixed-wing aircraft in northwestern British Columbia for more than three decades. He is a first cousin of Bruce Newman, Jack Newman, and Gene Newman.

Not to be confused with David Edward Newman, the son of his cousin Jack Newman.

Early life

David was born in Windsor, Ontario, on 5 June 1937, the eldest child of Harold Newman and Marie (Sloane) Newman. He lived in Essex County until he was about four, when his father took up railway work with the Canadian National Railways that brought the family to Port Arthur (now part of Thunder Bay), Ontario, in 1940; the Newmans' home there was at the end of Hutton Park Drive. The family later moved to Winnipeg in 1944 and to Biggar, Saskatchewan, in 1951.

Before entering aviation, Dave worked for about nine years as a firefighter with the Winnipeg Fire Department.

Aviation career

From 1973 to 2004, Dave worked for Okanagan Helicopters — later Canadian Helicopters Ltd. — in northwestern British Columbia, ending his career there as Zone Operations Manager. He was based in Terrace, where he managed the company's base for some 31 years, and over his career logged roughly 23,000 flying hours. A commercial pilot rated on fixed-wing aircraft (single- and multi-engine, Class 1 IFR) and on a range of helicopter types, including the Hiller 12E, Bell 47, Hughes 500, Bell 206 JetRanger and LongRanger, and Eurocopter AS350, he specialised in mountain and coastal flying in support of mining exploration, pipeline and powerline work, forestry, communications, avalanche control, and search and rescue, as well as carrying survey and exploration crews into remote country. The Helicopter Association International recognised him with pilot-safety awards at 5,000, 10,000, and 15,000 flight hours.

One such flight was recorded after a January 1974 avalanche on the mail route between Kitimat, Terrace, and Prince Rupert:

Volmar Werner "Bill" Zobel, a 30 year old Mail truck driver, from Prince Rupert, was found alive, buried under 5-10 ft of snow. Dave Newman, Okanagan Helicopters Pilot, flew him to Mills Memorial Hospital in Terrace. His Mail truck was found split in half. He delivered mail from Kitimat, Terrace to Prince Rupert. He was buried for over 5 hours.

Sunrise Enterprises

Dave founded and ran Sunrise Enterprises, a transportation-logistics business in British Columbia, serving as its principal chief executive from 1987 to 2018 and then as retired CEO until 2020. The firm worked across aviation, trucking and rail, and firefighting, and provided logistical support to pipeline, hydro-transmission, communications, mining-exploration, aerial-survey, avalanche-control, and forestry operations. Since 2006 he has also described himself as a self-employed chief executive based in northern British Columbia.

Community involvement

Dave has been a director of Community Futures 16/37 since 2011, a body that assists small-business entrepreneurs across the northwest of the province with advice and financing. As of 2023 he was also a director of "1637.ca", a community board for his area.

From 2004 to 2018 he served as a director of the Heritage Park Museum in Terrace, helping to procure and preserve artifacts and to build and equip a blacksmith shop and repair the foundations of the old museum building. Among the pieces he helped acquire were antique mining and blacksmith tools, including a horse-powered winch (or "whim") more than a century old, an ore bucket, and a head-frame pulley. He later recalled that the grandson of the mine's former manager discovered the museum; after Dave showed the visitor the mine artifacts and the remote mine site itself, the couple made a sizeable donation.

Personal life

David Harold Newman's family, c. 2009

Dave met Lois Jean Spratt in 1960 at a young-adult convention hosted by her church, and the two married on 14 September 1963. Their 46th wedding anniversary in 2009 drew local press notice during Terrace's Kraft Hockeyville win:

The passion for hockey in Terrace was never more evident than when Lois and David Newman decided to celebrate their 46th wedding anniversary at the NHL game rather than going for a romantic dinner. They were lucky enough to win two tickets and celebrated their day in style with the Vancouver Canucks, New York Islanders and of course the man of style, Don Cherry.

They lived in Terrace at 4702 Gair Avenue until Lois's death in 2023. They had three children: Kenneth "Ken" Newman (born 24 August 1964), a community planner with the City of Terrace; Heather (born 13 July 1968); and Melody (born 5 April 1971), a high-school science teacher. They had seven grandchildren as of 2009 and nine as of 2023.

His cousin Lynn Newman recalled an early meeting:

I met David in the summer of 1969 when I was interning in Saskatoon and went to visit Uncle Harold for a weekend. I don't know if he would remember me, I think he was quite young.

On 20 September 2018, Dave and Lois flew to Red Deer to visit his sister Loraine and her husband Bob Houston. Michael Currie, a more distant Newman cousin then based in Asia and visiting from Calgary, also attended, and recorded the evening. Over a chicken dinner the family shared old photographs and films — among them a 1912 portrait of the Newman family and footage of Dave's son's helicopter work — and telephoned Dave's cousin Lynn Newman in Kelowna. The conversation ranged over family genealogy, careers, and pioneer stories. A photograph taken that day shows Lois with Michael Currie in the Houstons' Red Deer home.

Family history trip (2016)

In 2016 David travelled with his son Ken to southwestern Ontario and Thunder Bay to see the places connected with the family's history — a trip David had long wanted to make. In Essex County they located the site of the farm of David's great-grandfather James Newman on the north side of Mersea Road 5 at its intersection with Mersea Road 12, north of Leamington, and visited the Newman graves at Lakeview Cemetery in Leamington. Ken afterwards wrote an account of the journey for the Essex County Branch of the Ontario Genealogical Society.