The front page of the Morning Bulletin September 16, 1919 featured a remarkable image. “First aerial photograph taken in Edmonton,” it read. The photograph, which shows crowds lining the street and the entrance to the south side’s Military Hospital for the visit of the Prince of Wales, was taken by Captain Wilfrid (Wop) May.

It was just another in a series of firsts for the legendary bush and fighter pilot. He was chased by Manfred von Richtofen, the Red Baron, and lived to tell about it. He flew a mercy flight into the North that helped stop a typhoid epidemic.

Wop May was one of Canada’s most famous airmen and he did more to put Edmonton on the world aviation map than perhaps any other. He established the municipal airport, the first city-owned airport in the country.

He also founded the Edmonton Flying Club, the largest flying school in the country. His story is full of adventure; a great tale of a life lived on the edge in service of his country, in service of others.

Wilfrid Reid May was born in Carberry, Manitoba in 1896 and came to Edmonton in 1902. His nickname Wop was coined when a young cousin couldn’t pronounce Wilfrid and May’s brother Court made the mispronunciation stick.

In 1916, May enlisted in the 202nd Battalion and joined the Royal Air Force. The story behind his encounter with the German flying ace the Red Baron is one of the great tales of air-to-air combat from World War I. On his very first flight out one morning in 1918, his machine gun jammed and he was ambushed by Baron Von Richtofen.

“I wore the skin off the back of my neck twisting my head to see where he was,” said May, describing his 15-mile dash across No Man’s Land. May led him across Allied lines, where the Red Baron was shot down and killed.

For his service in the Corps, May was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross in 1918. After the war, he returned to Edmonton and he and brother Court and George Gorman started May Airplanes Limited.

In 1920, May made the first aeroplane flight into the Peace River country. He often said he made several attempts to acquire a university education but when spring rolled around each year the lure of the airdrome just proved too strong.

Towards the end of the decade, May was involved in a number of significant flights, including the first nonstop between Edmonton and Winnipeg and the first air mail service down the Mackenzie River to the Arctic Ocean. But nothing earned him the notoriety of the mercy flight in 1929.

He and Vic Horner flew a courageous flight in an Avro Avian open cockpit biplane through a minus 34-degree blizzard to deliver vaccine to two northern Alberta communities threatened by a diphtheria epidemic. The pair set off for Fort Vermilion from Edmonton with the 30-pound blanket wrapped precious serum warmed by a charcoal heater.

The Edmonton Journal, in its January 3, 1929-edition, called May and Horner “two Knights of the Air, throwing their lives in a desperate hazard with death, riding a slender and fragile thing of wood and silk and steel.” It helps all these years later to understand the emotional impact of the event.

In a 1979 interview with Journal, Vic Horner’s son Bob said the heater caught fire and they were forced to land and put it out with snow.”Of course, they had to do something to keep the antitoxin warm,” Bob explained. “They put the vials under their armpits and next to their groins for the rest of the trip.”

After 960 kilometres, the pair arrived in Fort Vermilion. The outbreak turned out to be a false alarm, but history didn’t mind. When May and Horner returned to Edmonton January 6, more than 10,000 Edmontonians turned out to give them a hero’s welcome.

That year, May was judged the Canadian who had contributed most to aviation and received the McKee Trophy. Six years later, he was awarded the Order of the British Empire.

May also received notoriety for his part in the 1932 capture of Albert Johnson, famed Mad Trapper. Johnson, a lonely northern trapper, went insane and embarked upon a one-man campaign to slaughter the Royal Canadian Mounted Police.

The Mounties called in May who followed the mad trapper as he retreated into the northern wilderness. When the police finally shot Johnson, May transported the body to Aklavik for burial. John Melady, author of the 1997 book “Heartbreak and Heroism” called May the father of Canadian search and rescue. During the Second World War, May helped establish Canada’s vast British Commonwealth Air Training Plan. He sent his recruits to train with the famous smoke jumpers of Montana, where the U.S. Forest Service taught students to parachute into the bush to fight forest fires.

Wop May died in 1952 at the age of 56. In 1953, a little body of water near the northwest corner of the province was named “May Lake.” There have been many other tributes as well and in 1991 the Edmonton Historical Board awarded him its Recognition Award for his contribution to our city’s place in history.

As Culture Minister Horst Schmidt said at the unveiling of a plaque at the Edmonton Municipal Airport in 1978: “He opened up frontiers – not just of our vast unexplored northland, but frontiers of the imagination and heart.” His continued association with aviation made his name and reputation known around the world and helped to establish Edmonton as Gateway to the North.

Information for this article sourced with the kind assistance of the staff at the City of Edmonton Archives.