WE’RE celebrating the works of Canada’s very own Harold F. Cruickshank this month. One of the most successful series of animal wilderness stories Cruickshank produced was the “White Phantom” series which primarily ran in the pages of Thrilling Adventures and West magazines.

Olak, the White Phantom, is an extraordinary wolf. He is large, handsome and is an albino. Because of his unusual coloring, the superstitious natives, Indians, think of him as allied with the spirit world and as such influences their hunting, the weather elements, famine conditions and so forth.

In the January 1940 issue of Thrilling Adventures, Tuc Cramer’s brother-in-law Tan goes searching for his lost friend Sa, son of Olak, the great White Phantom wolf king of Nahanni. Along the way he finds himself in the next valley over where the strange tribe there worships Olak-Achak—and about to be sacrificed to the spirit of the White Phantom!

Tan, the Indian Youth, Follows the Trail of the Son of the White Phantom!

• Download “Wolf Worship” (January 1940, Thrilling Adventures)

As a bonus, here’s an article Cruickshank wrote about writing his animal stories that ran in the pages of the October 1944 issue of Writer’s Digest!

• Download “Writing the Animal Story” (October 1944, Writer’s Digest)

This week we bring you the thirty-sixth installment of Alden McWilliams’ illustrated tribute to the pioneer fliers of the early days of aviation which he called “They Had What it Takes”. We’re up to the January 1940 issue of Flying Aces where McWilliams featured Canada’s Greatest WWI Ace—Billy Bishop!

William Avery “Billy” Bishop, V.C. has been credited with 72 victories making him the fourth greatest Ace of the First World War. He was made an honorary Air Marshall of the Royal Canadian Air Force and placed in charge of recruitment in 1938 and developed a training program for pilots across Canada during the Second World War. Stress would eventually see him resign his post in the RCAF in 1944, but remained active in aviation, even offering to return to his recruitment role with the RCAF with the outbreak of the Korean War (he was politely refused by the RCAF due to poor health).

Billy passed in his sleep in 1956 while wintering in Palm Beach, Florida and was buried in Greenwood Cemetery in Owen Sound, Ontario where he was born 62 years earlier.

• Download “They Had What It Takes – Part 36: Billy Bishop” (January 1940, Flying Aces)

A Bancroft and Leadbeater Adventure.
It wasn’t that anything untoward had happened that made Todd Bancroft and Larry Leadbeater cringe. Practically nothing had happened, and you can‟t take a punch at nothing…

• Download “Savoias Out of Sapporo” (January 1940, Sky Fighters)