Ernie Boffa
Canadian aviator
Ernest Joseph Boffa (April 16, 1904 – March 8, 2004) was a pioneering Canadian bush pilot.
Biography
Born on April 16, 1904, in Piedmont, Italy, Ernest Joseph Boffa relocated as a young child to Canada with his family, living first in Calgary and then in Thunder Bay (Fort William), Ontario. He left school in 1918 to go full-time at his job in a bicycle shop. He moved on the Canadian Car and Foundry, working as an apprentice while training in mechanical engineering and drafting through correspondence courses and night school. He took up automobile racing after his employer closed, using his mechanical skills to help him produce and maintain winning cars.
In 1927, Boffa moved to Great Falls, Montana taking up flying and aircraft repair. He earned a license to fly in the United States in 1928 and refurbished a damaged Waco 10 plane before returning to Lethbridge, Alberta. There, in 1931, he received a commercial pilots license and Canadian Engineers license, working such aviation jobs as he could find before taking a series of jobs with airlines beginning in 1937, M&C Airways, Canadian Airway and McNeal Air Services. During World War II, he was a flight instructor until 1943, when he began flying for Canadian Pacific Airways on the Yellowknife Airways, which he co-owned on a 20/80 split with Matt Berry. In 1954, he became involved with the Distant Early Warning (DEW) Line as a technical advisor.
The public source identifies “Ernie Boffa” as canadian aviator. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Ernie, Boffa and Canadian.
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Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Mar 17, 2025. The linked authority identifier is Q5393364. VIAF identifies the subject as 104723353. The Library of Congress control number is n82269602. 3 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1904, 2004, 1918 and 1927.
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This entry incorporates text from “Ernie Boffa” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.