Patriotic Ontario pilot creates massive maple leaf in the sky to send message to U.S.
'We don't like to be pushed around,' says Michael Jones, who created symbol over 426-km flight path
In a bit of fancy flying that was in equal measures patriotic, precise and polite, an Ontario pilot showed Donald Trump exactly what he thinks of the U.S. president's recent moves to challenge Canadian sovereignty.
Skilfully piloting his two-seater Grob G 115 in a two-hour trip around southwestern Ontario on Wednesday morning, Michael Jones used his flight path to draw out a massive maple leaf and, in the process, send a subtle but pointed message to his U.S. neighbours.
"I'm not really happy with what's happening across the border right now — it's kind of sad," said the 70-year-old. "I just wanted to show that we don't like to be pushed around and we're all proud Canadians."
The path of the 426-kilometre flight, which began and ended at London International Airport, draws the stem and three points of a perfect maple leaf. The perimeter of his path covers a wide swath of land between lakes Huron and Erie.
Jones, a semi-retired business owner who's now a part-time flight instructor and flight tester, decided to do the flight in response to Trump's moves to hit Canada with punishing tariffs, which were put on hold as Canada and the U.S. work together. The president's suggestion that Canada should become the 51st state also doesn't sit right with Jones.
On a regular day, Jones, a humble man who began flying in 1977, spends more time flying planes than the Canadian flag. But recent events spurred him into action.
"I don't really have a flag in front of my house or in a car or anything like that, but I sort of feel a little patriotic with what's going on lately," he said.
How he did it
Once he had the idea, Jones got out a paper map of southwestern Ontario and plotted out a rough path that would draw a maple leaf.
From there, he used GPS software to plot out a more precise path with co-ordinates. Like a lot of grand plans, it looked great on paper, but the challenge had only begun. He knew that once up in the wild blue yonder, he'd have to follow those points perfectly or would end up with a mangled maple leaf.
"There's no autopilot, so I was hand flying the whole time," he said.
Jones used the intersection of Highways 401 and 402 as an anchor point for his design. He then followed his carefully charted path in a trip that took him almost as far north as Lake Huron, as far west as the St. Clair River and south over Lake Erie.
Jones owns the plane but leases it to the Diamond Flight Centre, which in turn rents it out for flight training.
Although Jones told few people of his intentions, flight watchers immediately began to see what he was up to when his flight path began to take shape on flight tracking websites such as FlightRadar24 and FlightAware.
"I was surprised when I got down," said Jones. "People came out of Diamond Flight Centre and said they liked my maple leaf. I didn't really know that they were able to follow it, but they saw it happening."
Jones didn't share the image of his flight on social media, but it soon started showing up there anyway.
"I'm really surprised by the amount of interest it's gained," he said. "I thought I'd share it on Facebook and maybe 50 people would look at it, but it's sort of taken me by surprise."
Since his flight, more than 17,000 people have viewed it on FlightRadar24.com
"I've been thinking about doing this for a little while, a week or so," said Jones."And yesterday [Wednesday] was a nice, bright sunny day, so I went up and flew the maple leaf."
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