Canada has lost an aviation legend.Max Ward, who founded Wardair in the 1950s and turned it into one of Canada’s largest airlines, has died at age 98.

Ward was born in Edmonton in 1921 and served as a flight instructor in World War II with the Royal Canadian Air Force. He later became a bush pilot.

Those were his favourite times; the early days in the north, his son, Kim, told TravelPulse Canada for a story on Ward’s induction into the Canadian Travel Hall of Fame. “It was toughest of times physically but probably his most fun and most adventurous time.”

“In the early days, if you were going to overnight somewhere the first thing you had to do was drain all the oil out of the engine and bring the oil into the building you were staying in overnight to keep it warm,” Kim Ward said. “You couldn’t start the engine in the 1950s or 40s without doing that when it was minus 30 or minus 40. The navigation was very, very dangerous.

“Because you didn’t really have any navigation aids. It was all pretty much visual. You had to learn the terrain. You had to be able to recognize it in the cold of winter when it’s cloudy and also in the summer kind of thing. It was a dangerous time.”

Ward founded Wardair in Yellowknife in 1953. It would go on to become the third-largest airline in Canada, flying millions of passengers in style; with silverware and champagne on board.

The CBC reports Ward started with flights in Western Canada and to the U.K. He later expanded to the Caribbean and Hawaii.

He sold Wardair to Canadian Airlines in 1989.

In a press release, his family called him “a true Alberta maverick.”

In a post on Twitter, former Wardair employee Wayne David Atherholt wrote that Wardair “was the best airlines, and I am so honoured to have worked for Max and Wardair. The best service. The best aircraft. Fly high Max. Fly high. So many former employees love you.”

In their story, the CBC quotes longtime friend and Ward lawyer Fred von Veh as saying that Ward cared about everyone in the company.

“He cared about pilots. He cared about flight attendants. He cared about maintenance people. That was Max’s gift.”

Von Veh said Ward “did more for aviation in Northern Canada than any person ever did and any person ever will do.”

“The word ‘legend’ gets thrown around a little too much in some circles, but no one could dispute that Max Ward is a legendary figure in the Canadian travel business,” said John Kirk, Editor in Chief of TravelPulse Canada.

Asked what his father would be most proud of, Kim Ward said it would probably be how he enabled people to travel.

“When you go back to the 1960s when he got into the international side of things, he was flying war brides who had married Canadians and come to Canada. Many of them were going home for the first time since they had moved away from England. He always talks about that. It was so rewarding to send people home who hadn’t been home in years. I think probably it would be just that he was able to treat people really well.”