Far North Rambles #3: It Is OK To Lie
It Is OK To Lie. Perhaps I should say, there may be times when it is OK to “withhold some information”. Not to maliciously deceive, but for the good of a person who does not need all the details at that time. Perhaps you have contemplated that ethical question.
I am not a happy flier. On the back of an envelope, I calculate that I have flown a minimum of 830,000 km (about 515,000 miles) over 15 years traveling from Sudbury to Ontario’s far north to visit, and work with, First Nation community members and their political leadership. That calculation does not include flights to destinations across Canada to address other business or flights I took while working as a practicing geologist earlier in my career.
I have flown with the best pilots, who I have praised in the past, and for whom I have the utmost respect. I have flown in the finest weather and I have flown in weather that should have grounded all aircraft. I have refused to board an aircraft because of my “non-expert” and uninformed view of the weather. I recall landing in Toronto after a very stormy evening flight from Thunder Bay and announced to my colleague “that is it. I am renting a car and will drive the 5 hours to Sudbury. My flying tolerance for today is exhausted”. My colleague joined me and drove to Sudbury.
But I have been graced, or blessed as some have said, because I have never been in an aircraft accident.
The Ontario Geological Survey colleagues I traveled with had a critical role on our relationship-building and technical community visits. One of their unwritten roles was to keep me calm or to talk me out of moments during flights when I decided I would rather be on the ground - now! I recall vividly one summer evening flight from the far north, after a stormy day, watching the isolated columns of residual cumulus cloud. The next thing I recall was about 5 seconds of moderate turbulence because we flew through one of those columns. Five seconds - that was it. But I wanted out - now! My colleague shifted into their role to bring tranquility back. Quickly the tactic changed from “it is OK, we are through it” to “we are starting to land”, hoping to calm me down. Now, that was a lie, of sorts. The aircraft we flew in were small. Passengers had an unobstructed view of the instruments. I was in the middle of a panic attack, working through my anti-panic routines, but I did have a spare eye that watched the altimeter. We were not in the process of landing. We were not even close to landing. The “we are landing” argument was an “incomplete disclosure of information” intended to give me some psychological hope that we would soon be on terra firma.
In retrospect, I was amused that a colleague would try to lie, for the right reason. I still wanted out of the plane, but I was amused. I became a firm believer that there are times when it is OK to “incompletely disclose information” for the good of the subject. But the ethical debates continues.
As an aside, the photo shows the windshield of an aircraft covered with ice - the result of flying in icing conditions. I have never since seen a pilot scrape ice off the windshield of an aircraft while flying at 1000 feet above the treetops. And yes, I do smile about that experience.
Flying between First Nation communities in Ontario’s Far North, we encountered icing conditions. That tiny clear space at the bottom of the windshield was scraped free of ice by the pilot, using his credit card. Image source: Andy Fyon, May 18, 2007.
Andy Fyon, Aug 16, 2020 (Facebook, February 7/20).