Ottawa : Features
A High-Flying Portfolio
By Brendan Howley
Mar 1, 2007

He kick-started Ottawa’s tech ascent and retired wealthy after Cognos went public. But Mike Potter’s second, perhaps greater legacy is being created today with a one-of-a-kind collection of operational vintage fighter jets as big on honouring the nation’s war veterans as it is on keeping aviation history well- oiled and ready for takeoff

 

London, England, March 1944: the distinctive thoroughbred drone of a Rolls Royce Merlin engine overhead is a daily occurrence for Londoners. The legendary aero-engines power Spitfires, Hurricanes, Mustangs, Mosquitoes, and Lancasters, among other memorable Second World War combat aircraft. And if you’re Mike Potter and you’d just entered the world, the sound might seem as familiar as your mother’s voice.

Sheer coincidence perhaps, but Potter, who co-founded and ran Cognos, the hugely successful Ottawa-based business intelligence software firm, still hears Merlins, some 62 years after his London birth. Only now he has his own fleet of former RAF and RCAF aircraft, stored in his foundation’s $3-million hangar at the Gatineau, Quebec, airport.

“I started flying just out of college—gliders, small aircraft, fun stuff,” recalls Potter, who landed the Cognos CEO job in 1975 when the outfit was little more than a tiny consulting group with a local clientele. “As Cognos grew, my working life became intense and I started flying for business travel. I’ve always been rated to fly—I’ve got an air transport license and 4,500 hours of flying time.”

His first vintage personal aircraft was a Beech Staggerwing, a funky 1930s biplane notable for having its lower wing ahead of the upper and for its luxurious cabin appointments.

Potter took Cognos public on the Toronto Stock Exchange in 1986 and then on the NASDAQ a year later, ultimately building annual revenue of some $250 million by 1995. That year, after two decades at Cognos, Potter left the company a very wealthy man. Five years into his retirement, the owner of a converted stone stable home and a growing art collection made the decision that changed his life… on a whim.

“I like old things,” he says, speaking easily and precisely, so authoritatively you can’t help but to focus on every sentence. But when he talks about his aircraft, a mellowness enters his voice. “I happened to see an ad in Trade-A-Plane, around 2001, I guess. There was no grand vision—just pure indulgence. I saw it and…” Potter leaves the rest open, but you can hear the smile in his voice.

 

“It” was the Spitfire Mark XVI once flown by Air Marshal Sir James Robb, wartime head of RAF Training Command. Used from 1946 to 1951 as Sir James’ “personal hack,” Potter says, “the Spitfire has no combat history.” Nonetheless, the beautiful aircraft, one of aviation’s all-time most elegant designs—from its propeller boss to its trademark elliptical wings—set Potter on his mission.

“I had it repainted in authentic wartime Canadian camouflage, and, in cooperation with the Aviation Museum, we had an unveiling. There was an absolutely phenomenal response.”

Potter, being of a highly evolved entrepreneurial species, didn’t hesitate to apply his business acumen to the initial spark of interest in his new toy. He created a foundation, named it Vintage Wings of Canada, and set about—as any shrewd business person does—to form alliances and brand his new product.

“We gave the concept a lot of thought very early on, paying attention to
branding, presentation, to visual detail. We want to tell a Canadian story. Hence repainting the aircraft in Canadian wartime colours.”

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The formula of a living, breathing flying museum is deceptively simple, but consumes, Potter reckons, about a third of his time; the other two-thirds he dedicates to his investments, family life, board and charity work. “There are so many elements to this project,” he says. “Fundamentally, our mission is to create programs which recognize veterans and outreach to young people, with flight-worthy aircraft that can still go out and do the job they were designed for.”

Such heritage aviation projects, as you may or may not expect, eat money: a single reclamation and restoration project, Potter says, may require more than 15,000 man-hours. Programming and resource partnerships are vital—and the most significant one is right on Potter’s doorstep. The Government of Canada’s Aviation Museum houses some 130 historically significant aircraft, an outstanding archive and image bank, but—like literally every great aviation museum on the planet—not a single operating aircraft.

Potter’s passion for vintage flying machines unearthed a not-for-profit market opportunity studded with natural partnerships in the National Capital Region—including National Defence Canada, a key player in veterans’ affairs—delighted that flying aircraft would commemorate wartime RCAF personnel and their stories.

“Canada’s Air Force owes a debt of gratitude to Mike Potter,” says Don Pearson, director of Air Force Heritage and History. And two National Research Council test pilots, Maj. (ret’d) Tim Leslie and Rob Urdoss, became VWoC’s lead flyers; Leslie’s wife Carolyn is hangar manager; the physical facility itself was designed by the Pierre Cayer Architects and Associates firm of Gatineau.

The Vintage Wings project rollout took the better part of four years, culminating last spring with the dedication of its 22,740-square foot hangar at the Gatineau-Ottawa Executive Airport. The hangar, VWoC’s headquarters, display area and maintenance facility, is underwritten by Potter’s foundation and staffed by three aviation engineers, five pilots, an aircraft refinisher and a hangar manager.

Unlike traditional aviation museums, which serve to record and present the machines’ history and preserve their airframes, VWoC also revives key technological skillsets—the very human resource database to “keep ‘em flying”—which, without the likes of Potter’s team’s innovation, can simply fade away.

“We’ve placed a top priority,” he emphasizes, “on assembling a group of highly skilled pilots and engineers fast becoming recognized as world-class experts in the flying and maintenance of these aircraft.” Those Merlin engines the infant Potter might have heard in his crib all those years ago? VWoC’s maintenance team tends to six of them, three routinely operational, two spares and one in restoration. “And our guys are pretty good,” Potter says modestly.

And what of the aircraft themselves? Vintage Wings’ collection comprises the inaugural Spitfire Mark XVI, two Hurricanes, a Mustang, with a Curtiss P-40 Kittyhawk and Fairey “Stringbag” Swordfish—the biplane torpedo-bomber that sank the Bismarck, Nazi Germany’s famed battleship—both under restoration at present, plus three period civilian aircraft.

“It’s a tremendous challenge to learn about these aircraft and maintain them, never mind understanding the market,” Potter observes. “But it makes business sense to do it.”

But what of the vintage aircraft market? Any chance of it drying up?

To the contrary, says Potter: “People are spending real money to take a ‘bucket of bolts’ to airworthiness via authentic parts. Interest is quite high and, like a lot things in this life, values have gone up significantly.”

They must have: VWoC’s new Kittyhawk, the trademark aircraft of the legendary Flying Tigers, the American volunteer group fighting the Japanese in China, had to be dragged from a swamp in Papua New Guinea. Destined for RCAFcolours too, this P-40 specimen was made airworthy by New Zealand’s Pioneer Aero Restorations.

As far as Potter’s investments go, these are his most hands-on. He’s flown all the airworthy acquisitions of course; most recently he networked with Hurricane experts in England before flying the “new” Mark IV himself this past summer. VWoC has exhaustive documentary records for all its aircraft; the Hurricane’s fat three-ring binder is a treasure trove of study material.

Plans to grow the foundation are limited physically by VWoC’s hangar capacity of 14 aircraft. “We’re pretty close to having a full complement, which we’ll roll over [as new examples appear],” Potter notes. “The real growth now is to develop the programming behind the collection. We’re beta-testing a school program, hosted by a veteran and young volunteers.”

For Potter, remembering the veterans is the beating heart of VWoC. “Dozens of times we’ve taken an 80 year-old-plus gentleman with combat history, highly decorated WWII fighter pilots, and stood with them on the wing root of the Spitfire or Hurricane, tears flowing, their families snapping pictures. Even the surliest 16 year-old sees grandfather in a different light. We get emotional and we’re just bystanders.”

In a beautiful twist, VWoC is fast becoming a vital repository for period books, photographs, posters and other memorabilia, much of it donated by RCAF and RAF widows. “We’re well on our way to having one of the largest browsing libraries of aviation materials around,” Potter says.

This past September, the VWoC Spitfire, Hurricane, Mustang and another Hurricane from the Ed Russel Group, along with the Canadian Warplane Heritage Museum’s perfectly restored Lancaster, flew together in memory of the Battle of Britain, the first battle to be won entirely in the air. “It was all carefully timed,” Potter recalls. “The fighter escort in vic [formation], eight Merlin engines going by and not a dry eye in the reviewing stands. And the thank-yous…it was really, really wonderful.”

One Lancaster pilot, awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross for heroism, spoke quietly with Potter about his extraordinary wartime experiences. “He was almost embarrassed, as many veterans are. It was such an honour.”

And there’s one response Mike Potter never expected. “These veterans, most of them, are gone now. I’ve talked to people who’ve spent their life being very quiet about their war service. Seeing these aircraft gives them an outlet, triggers a response. The families say, ‘He’s talking more about this now—telling us stories we’d never heard before.’”

Powerful and moving Canadian stories that fly: now there’s an idea.