Larry Ashley’s first night flight was nearly his last.

It was 1960 in Nova Scotia, and the future lieutenant-general was then a rookie helicopter pilot ordered to patrol the skies around the Royal Canadian Navy base near Halifax Harbour.

It would be Ashley’s maiden nighttime flight without an instructor in the cockpit.

“Which is a big event,” Ashley, 87, recalled during an interview with The Spectator.

“I had a whole head full of instructions — don’t do this, don’t do that,” he continued.

“‘Now you go out there and make sure you don’t get tangled up in those high-tension wires across the Narrows.’”

Despite focusing on the task at hand, the young naval aviator soon became lost in the sparkling scene below.

“I took off and I was in total awe of being alone out there, in control, at ni

See Full Page