Field Notes : Two Hours at 30,000 Feet

Sometimes the richest part of a journey isn’t where you’re going. It’s the person sitting beside you.

On my flight home yesterday, I met Michel.

We were seated over the wing. As the aircraft lifted off the runway and began its steady climb through the clouds, I found myself saying something I’ve thought every time I’ve flown. “I still can’t get over the fact that something this big actually stays in the air.”

A plane is an enormous piece of machinery, carrying hundreds of people, luggage, fuel, memories, worries, dreams, and somehow it simply rises into the sky. Every time I fly, it feels just a little miraculous. Michel smiled. If anyone could explain why airplanes fly, it was the man sitting beside me.

He had spent twenty years as a military pilot before beginning another twenty-year career with Bombardier, testing aircraft, delivering them around the world, and teaching pilots how to fly them. He pointed toward the wing beneath us. Most people, he explained, think it’s the air pushing underneath the wing that keeps the airplane aloft. Then, with his hands, he began tracing invisible currents through the air, describing how the airflow over the top of the wing creates the lift.

I didn’t understand every technical detail. What I understood was Michel. He loved explaining how the world worked.

Somehow that brought us to Leonardo da Vinci. I talked about Leonardo da Vinci and wondered how he might have felt to see some of his drawings brought to life. I told Michel about a film on Leonardo’s life that I thought he would enjoy. I had the feeling he would appreciate another man whose curiosity always stretched beyond the limits of his own time.

It was the first of many unexpected turns. Early in the conversation, Michel mentioned his wife. It wasn’t an announcement. It wasn’t awkward. She simply entered the story because she belonged there. They had been married for nearly fifty years. I remember noticing that.

There was something quietly respectful about the way he spoke of her. It immediately brought clarity to the conversation. We weren’t trying to figure each other out or wondering about intentions. We were simply two people talking, and because he had shared a small piece of his life, another door opened naturally.

How long had they been married? Did they have children? Grandchildren? Before long, we were talking about family. I asked him about his favourite trip. After a lifetime of travelling the world, I expected some incredible story about a distant country or an unforgettable landing strip.

His favourite journey had been bringing his entire family to the French Alps at Christmas. It had been a lifelong dream. Everyone had contributed to making it happen, but seeing the people he loved gathered together in one place was the memory that stayed with him.

He laughed when he admitted that he hadn’t skied very much. “I used to ski all the time,” he said. “But now, if I break something…” At his age, he simply didn’t want to deal with the consequences. It wasn’t fear. It was perspective. For the next two hours, we followed our curiosity wherever it led.

We talked about Canada, about education, about climate, about artificial intelligence, about literature, about mythology, about community, about aviation, about history, and about the strange moment in history we happen to be living through.

Michel told me he had voted conservative for most of his life. This was the first election in which he had voted Liberal. It wasn’t because he had abandoned his principles. It was because, in his judgment, those principles led him somewhere different this time.

That fascinated me. His loyalty wasn’t to a political party. It was to the values underneath it. Whenever the conversation wandered toward politics, it always seemed to come back to the same place: his grandchildren. What kind of country would they inherit? What kind of world were we leaving them? Those questions shaped almost everything else we talked about.

He had travelled extensively for Bombardier and shared stories from countries all over the world. One experience in China had left a lasting impression on him. For three weeks he had worked without a single day off before finally contacting his office in Canada to ask whether this was really expected. It wasn’t a political debate for him. It was simply an experience that had shaped the way he understood different cultures and different ways of working.

Eventually we found ourselves talking about religion.

Michel spoke openly about his Catholic upbringing and a conversation that had stayed with him for decades. When his children were young, a priest questioned whether they should even be baptized because Michel wasn’t attending church regularly. They had a conversation where Michel questioned the priest’s assumptions using his own knowledge of the Bible. He was sharp. He eventually convinced the priest of his own way of seeing values. After all, what he wanted was to respect his mother’s wishes for his children to be baptised.

I didn’t entirely share all of his conclusions about religion, but I understood why he had arrived there.

Instead of debating religion itself, we drifted into mythology. Human beings have always created stories to explain themselves to themselves. Every civilization has searched for meaning. Looking at our tiny place in the universe, it seemed almost inevitable that we would.

Then the conversation widened again. Perhaps one of our deepest needs isn’t certainty. Perhaps it’s belonging. Religion has often provided that through ritual and community. I found myself wondering aloud whether healthier neighbourhoods, places with walkable streets, trees, good schools, meaningful work, healthcare, and people who know one another might satisfy some of those same human needs in different ways.

Michel listened. He didn’t rush to answer. He simply thought. Later, he told me something that made me smile.

“I’ve never liked school.”

Here was a man who had mastered military aviation, tested aircraft, taught pilots around the world, embraced new technology, experimented with ChatGPT, travelled internationally, and remained endlessly curious.

“You don’t dislike learning,” I said. “You disliked school.”

We both laughed because suddenly it made perfect sense. How many people spend their lives believing they don’t like learning when, in reality, they simply never found a way of learning that spoke to who they were? As a teacher, I carried that question with me.

Somewhere during those two hours, I realized I wasn’t just enjoying the conversation. I was admiring the man. Not because we agreed on everything—we didn’t. Not because he had all the answers—he didn’t pretend to. I admired him because his opinions had been earned. They had been tested against experience. He listened. He reflected. He changed his mind when he believed the evidence called for it. He cared deeply about the people he loved and about the country his grandchildren would inherit.

By the time the captain announced our descent into Québec City, it felt as though we had travelled much farther than the distance between Newfoundland and home. We folded our tray tables, gathered our bags, and prepared to go our separate ways. I thanked Michel for the conversation.

As I walked through the terminal, I realized I wasn’t carrying home a new opinion. I was carrying home a reminder.

In a world that often encourages us to reduce one another to labels—former pilot, conservative, teacher, liberal voter, grandfather—we miss the invisible currents that hold a life together.

Just as the wing beside us was lifted by forces we couldn’t see, people are held aloft by quieter things: curiosity, integrity, love, experience, humility, and the willingness to keep learning.

Perhaps that’s what I’ll remember most about Michel. Not the politics. Not the airplanes. Not even the stories.

I’ll remember the feeling of meeting someone whose life had been shaped by thoughtfulness, and being reminded that the richest conversations rarely begin with certainty.

They begin with a simple hello to the stranger sitting beside you.