Now here is a real prairie boy. Growin’ up on the farm 30 miles (yes – he said MILES) northwest of Winnipeg, Darrell Myskiw is a lifelong Manitoban.
He spent 7 yrs in 402 Air Reserve Sqn (‘85-’92). A couple trips to Bagotville, either on course or with the Daks hauling gear up to Frobe (Frobisher Bay). Most of the time however, he was on-base in Winnipeg doing Herc & Dak servicing, transient servicing with and a summer or 2 in maintenance either rigging cables in the tail of daks or loading or unloading training modules in Hercs
Darrell augmented to 408 Sqn in Edmonton for a 6 month deployment to Sinai on a summer peace keeping tour (Roto V) and left the reserves in ‘92. That was a choice he second guesses from time to time….. but hey – no regrets.
His last 20 years have been spent with Bristol Aerospace starting on the F-5 program cranking wrenches, aircraft inspection and into his current role in Quality Assurance. A great career – although sometimes, he claims, he’d rather be trickling JP4 into the leading edge of a T-bird in the middle of January.
Now he’s a family man with 4 children, 2 dogs and a fishing addiction. He’s not sure where he got the bug from – one of mom’s brothers he offers, but he got it good. Darrell grew up fishing brown bullheads on the Assiniboine River backwaters. Darrell says about fly fishing, “Picked up a fly rod from Woolco and flung it whenever I felt like impaling myself. Then – enter the internet, I found a local fly fishing board (Rob Burton’s Fly Fishing Manitoba), that got me going, and going, and going… Thing about this addiction is – I don’t think it stops.”
Now he supports his angling spirit through Fly fishing, fly tying, rod building, and now rod making – working on a bamboo 6wt (Garrison 212E taper). We’ll see how that goes – but as Darrell says: “as long as it has a fin – I’m o.k. with chasing it“.
When he found Kerry Pitt’s post on a Canadian forum looking for potential regional directors, he jumped at the opportunity.
“Can’t easily explain my quick decision but it’s the right thing to do… payback and paying it forward… I’m not sure. Just know it’s right.”
