Adventurous lovebirds took to the skies

Moose Jaw - "Come Josephine in my flying machine," ran the words of a decades-old song, and after the First World War, when aviation offered new and bold adventures, Josephine didn't have to be asked twice to go for a spin in the clouds.
One of those adventuresome women was Florence MacKenzie, a schoolteacher from Dodsland, just north of Kindersley. Florence was engaged to Charles Henderson, a prominent farmer and businessman of the Dodsland district and a friend of Stan McClelland, a First World War flying ace.
McClelland was also the owner of a Curtiss JN-4 biplane known as a Canuck. This group was responsible for the first recorded honeymoon flight in Canada.
On Dodsland's sports day, June 20, 1920, someone saw the engaged couple, all dressed up and accompanied by two friends, heading for the home of the local preacher.
It didn't take long to put two and two together and by the time the just-married pair reappeared, a mob of Dodslanders with bags of rice was in hot pursuit.
The newlyweds and pilot Stan McClelland, who was best man, jumped into a waiting automobile and raced to McClelland's plane waiting in a field about a mile from town.
With the bride and groom crammed into the open front cockpit and pilot McClelland in the rear cockpit, the plane left the ground after a short run, and the historic aerial honeymoon began.
The plane headed for Saskatoon, and was scheduled to take the couple on to Winnipeg the following day, but heavy rains and thunderstorms intervened, forcing the newlyweds to continue their trip by train.
Four years later, Stan McClelland sold his honeymoon plane to fellow pilot Oren Clearwater, who planned to establish a commercial aviation business in Shaunavon.
At the time, Clearwater was engaged to a Davidson schoolteacher, and on May 14, 1925, they were married at Young, near Watrous. Following the wedding, the couple travelled by train to Moose Jaw where Clearwater picked up another Curtiss JN-4, whose previous owner, Roland Groome, found commercial aviation around Moose Jaw unprofitable.
Clearwater's new acquisition had already made aviation history: it was Canada's first commercially-registered airplane, and Roland Groome held the first commercial air pilot's certificate in Canada.
The newlywed Clearwaters took off from Moose Jaw's flying field, then located where Heritage Inn and Hillcrest Church were later built, for their home in Shaunavon.
Near Aneroid, a rainstorm forced the plane down in a farmer's pasture where the only shelter in sight was a grain shed. Fortunately, the farmer who owned the shed noticed the couple's plight and came to the rescue.
In 1929, two lovebirds, Muriel James of Chaplin and Howard Layton Robinson of Regina, went one better and were actually married in an air-borne aircraft - the first such wedding in Canada.
In early evening of May 23, the bride, groom, bridesmaid, parson, and pilot who doubled as best man took off from the old Regina aerodrome on Albert Street South.
The sky-chapel was a brand new Stinson Detroiter, a five-place, high-winged monoplane which had arrived from the Detroit factory the day before.
The Regina Morning Leader gave the wedding front-page coverage: "The plane took off at 7:35 o'clock, and when it was at a height of 2,400 feet, the ceremony which started when the machine was over the parliament building and concluded when over the RCMP barracks, was performed by Rev. J.D. Wilkie . . . It was the first time the minister had been up in a plane."
"In keeping with the occasion," the Leader continued, "the bride wore a gunmetal leather coat opening over a light tan ensemble suit with a hat to match. The bridesmaid wore a brown leather coat over a flat crepe dress in bonny-blue tone with harmonizing hat."
After their history-making nuptials, the Robinsons took up residence in the Maybee Apartments in Moose Jaw.
A year later, their first anniversary was celebrated with a flight over Moose Jaw in one of the large single-engine Fokker monoplanes then used in the prairie airmail service.
The Stinson Detroiter plane flew around Saskatchewan for 18 years after that romantic episode until it was wrecked in a crash at Conquest in 1948.
And Oren Clearwater's two wood-and-fabric Curtiss JN-4 Canucks vanished without a trace decades ago.