It’s a familiar anecdote from the stories of Ced Mah that are told around the world. It was 1925 - in the days when wooden sidewalks lined Rupert’s streets, and the city was part of a great circle route that provided air links around the world. Mah was three years old when he heard a “strange noise in the sky.” and ran out of Sunrise Grocery to see what it was. “I saw something zoom by. waggling it wings, and then a gloved hand waved from the window. I thought, ‘One day. I want to be up there in a thing like that.’ From that time on. whenever I heard that noise in the sky. I went down to the harbour front to meet the plane. I would wonder, ‘Where do they go? I’d like to go there someday’”
The family’s return to Fei Gno in 1935 put this part of Mah’s life on hold, yet helped to arouse another key interest that he would carry with him. “Living in the village opened my eyes to the world.” Mah remembers. “It gave me a lust for travel and adventure. Al went home right away. but I was curious, and I stayed on. I stayed there until Japan attacked. and they told us. ‘You boys better get the hell out of here. The Japanese will grab you to be pack horses, and the communists will grab you to be soldiers’. We tried to leave by Shanghai. but it was October 1937 and Shanghai was being besieged, so we continued on to Yokohama.’

Sixteen years after the anonymous aviator flying over Rupert waved a gloved hand at young Ced Mah. he had achieved his dream. In 1941 he followed brother Albert’s footsteps and enrolled in the California Flyers Aviation College in Los Angeles. He followed this with an advanced instrument course in Fort Worth, Texas. By 1942 he held private and commercial licences, and had logged 300 flying hours. He returned to Canada with dreams of bush flying, but he was instead swept up in Canada’s war effort. He flew under the supervision of Wop May. who became a close friend, before joining No. 5 AOS Winnipeg as an instructor in 1942.

May, who had been about to become the 81st victim of the Red Baron when the German flier fell to Canadian ace Roy Brown, became one of Canada’s most famous bush pilots, winning the McKee Trophy and guiding the R,C.M.P. to the Mad Trapper of Rat River. and helped to found the Commonwealth Air Training Plan at the beginning of WWII. After a year in Winnipeg. Mah visited May. who urged him to fly in China. Mah protested that he had already tried for permission from the Canadian government and had been refused. May urged him to go ahead and get a job. and when Mah received an invitation from Pan American Airways. May offered to intercede or his behalf with the Canadian government. Cedric Mah. 22 year~ old, left Edmonton for China in April 1944.

In his 337 round trips Over the Burma Hump as a member of thE CNAC. Ced Mah had adventure after adventure. His very introduction t the job was terrifying. Sent out in DC-3 to learn the ropes with his brother Albert. he flew into a black night. loaded with explosive cargo, at 6,000 feet with I8,000 - foot mountain ranges on either side. A novice in the treacherous conditions of flying the Hump, Ced Mah was less than impressed by his brother’s insistence on playing saxophone during flights, or patching through on the planes radio so that he could talk to a girlfriend in Vancouver.

After one month together, from October through November 1944. Albert Mah was relieved. Ced Mah’s adventures were just beginning. One of his most famous exploits came in February 1945. when he was asked to purchase Tibetan horses for the planned October 1945 landing at Haiphong, in French Indo-China. Mah flew to a Tibetan plateau. halfway up a 20.000-foot mountain, where he met Tibetan chieftain So Long-Busong. who would act as the expeditions guide and interpreter. The chieftain, and two Texas veterinarians. were forced to lie on the floor of the plane when they ran short of oxygen.


Perhaps Mahs most notorious adventure came in August 1945. when he was hauling $866 million in Chinese currency when he built up on the wings of his C-46 Curtiss Commando. Then a hydraulic line sprung a leak. causing one undercarriage to drop and create a drag. and then one of his two engines quit. Dropping from 22.000 to 12.000 feet. Mah went back into the cargo hold. cut loose and jettisoned 48 of his 52 bundles of money. At 10.000 feet. as he was calculating his best options for a crash landing. Mah turned the fuel back on and tried his dead engine, which miraculously started. The jettisoned mpney was never found. Nor was that Ced Mahs only experience in dropping money from the sky Once, flying over his family trapped in Fei Gno. he dropped a substantial part of his payroll out the window. “Most of it was eventually given to my mother.” he says.’ People must have known that if the m oney came from this plane. it must have come from her son.

On August 8 1945. Mah received an order to carry 20 passengers to Zhongquing Chunking and was shocked to see that his passengers were wearing Japanese uniforms. Mah assumed that he was carrying captured prisoners, and it wasn’t until later that he learned that his passengers had been an entourage including Prince Haulik. Kai Hirohito. younger brother of the Japanese emperor, on his way to discuss surrender terms with China two days after the United States dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima. The Second World War was over.

NEXT ISSUE; Albert and Cedric Mah continued to fly for the China National Aviation Corporation until the fall of China to the Communists in 1949. Ced Mah flew the last flights out of both Nanjing and Shanghai. Amongst the adventures of Al Mah was the rescue of young Dawn Greenhalgh from China - helping to launch the acting legacy of Canada’s Follows family.