A Manitoba waterbomber has put his experience of fighting forest fires in northern Manitoba into a children’s book to help kids get a better understanding of what waterbombers do and why they do it. Shawn Cowan has had an extensive career in wildfire aviation and was recently up in northern Manitoba last summer to help fight one of the province’s worst forest fires on record.
“I grew up on a farm near Langbank, Saskatchewan — the kind of place where you learn to work hard, fix what’s broken, and keep an eye on the sky,” said Cowan. “These days I live in the Gimli / Winnipeg Beach area with my wife Julie and our girls.
“I’m a CL-415 water bomber captain with Manitoba Wildfire. I’ve been in wildfire aviation for a little over a decade. I started flying bird-dog aircraft in the Northwest Territories. A bird-dog is the small lead plane that gets over the fire first, sizes it up, and talks the water bombers onto the drop so they hit the right spot. After that, I moved on to the CL-415 Super Scooper as first officer and now fly it as captain. In summer, the Scoopers work out of Gimli, Thompson, The Pas and Flin Flon, and after that we go whe