It worked out really well because we were able to get home, and I went to work the next day and got another helicopter and went back out.

The Soviets towards the end of the Cold War, nineteen eighty-nine, were going broke.

What they decided to do was start marketing their MiG-29s to the rest of the world.

Towards accomplishing that mission, they decided that they would do the, uh, air show in North America, and Abbotsford is one of the bigger shows in North America, especially for military equipment.

And so they decided that they'd demo the airplane in Abbotsford.

And the Soviets deployed through Alaska to, uh, come down to Abbotsford.

Now, I was the alert force commander at COMOPs at that time, and, uh, NORAD told me that I was not to go any closer than a thousand feet to these, uh, MiG-29s and make no attempt to communicate with them.

And the help is very good from people that really care.

It was way better than I thought it would be.

When I was 15, I was out in this field trying to catch a horse.

All of a sudden, this huge noise came over top of my head, and, and who it was was the Golden Hawk Aerobatic Team.

They were waiting to go on stage in Edmonton, and there, the town that I grew up in, was about 60 miles, 100 kilometers west of Edmonton on the Jasper Highway.

That had such a inspirational effect on me that, uh, I just wanted to be a fighter pilot.

You know, I wanted to do what those boys were doing.

I just kinda decided right then, God, I want to do that.

Life was good for Claude, and then all of a sudden, bam, it was over.