There was no outward signs that the quiet, amiable gentleman living in a home at 2627 Ottawa Avenue in West Vancouver had led a life full of violence and danger, sustained over such periods of time and at such a peak of intensity, that one wonders equally: first, how he fit it all in; secondly, how he managed to survive into his retirement.

This was the extraordinary Ray Collishaw, officially known as Air Vice-Marshal Raymond Collishaw, CB, DSO, OBE, DSC, DFC (Companion of the Order of the Bath, Distinguished Service Order, Officer of the Order of the British Empire, the Distinguished Service Cross, the Distinguished Flying Cross) and many other medals. I would have said “the famous Ray Collishaw” except that he never seems to me to have attracted the fame he so richly deserved. That was largely his own fault. He was a modest man who often refused to take credit for his own exploits.

Early Life
Ray Collishaw was born in Nanaimo, B.C. on November 22, 1893, the son of an Englishman who was drawn to B.C. by the Barkerville Gold Rush. Collishaw Senior was so attracted to goldfields (California, the Klondike and Australia’s Ballarat gold fields were on his itinerary) that pure chance made Ray a Canadian rather than an American or an Australian. Ray went to school briefly in Oakland, California, but mostly in B.C. In the summer of 1908, at age 15, Ray signed on as a cabin boy with the Canadian Fisheries Protection Service. He was a serious-minded boy, studied at the navigation school in his spare time and got his papers as a seaman and then as First Officer...