“I just competed in my first airplane drag race. It was one of the most intense experiences of my life”

I’ve been travelling from a young age. My family immigrated from Poland to Mississauga shortly before I was born and we would travel to Europe often to visit relatives. The experience of being on a plane at a young age didn’t ignite any innate passion for flying, but I was hooked by the excitement of travel.

In my 20s, I chased that feeling across the world. When I finished my bachelor of arts and a certificate in business management, I wasn’t ready to choose a serious career. So, in 2013, I got a job as a zip line guide and moved to New Zealand. A year later, I started looking for a job near a beach so I could dive on the weekends and ended up in the remote tourist town of Coral Bay, Australia, where I landed a gig as an au pair. I split my time between watching two little boys, working at the family’s trailer park and gas station, and flipping burgers on the weekends at the hostel.

Coral Bay is right next to the Ningaloo Reef, one of Australia’s longest near-shore reefs. Manta rays, humpbacks, sea turtles and whale sharks flock there to feed, and tourists pile onto boat tours to see them. To get the best sightings, tour operators would send up small planes to scout out the animals and direct the boats. My house was located by the red-dirt strip that the aircraft used as a runway, so every day I would see the planes come and go, soaring up over the reef. At the same time, I discovered Bush Pilots, a show about rookie pilots flying into remote areas of Botswana, and binged season 1. I had been searching for a job that could sustain my need for adventure, and flying seemed like the perfect fit.

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I dove head first into research, trying to learn everything I could about becoming a pilot. I had been in Australia for a few months by this point, but my dad had recently found out he had ALS, and I needed to go home to be closer to him. I wanted to hit the ground running on my new goal, so I started bugging friends of friends who were pilots to hear about their careers and researching flight schools in the GTA. In 2014, I booked a discovery flight, the first step for any wannabe pilot, where you go up in the air with an experienced flyer and figure out if it’s even something you like doing.

I ended up crammed in a tiny plane with an instructor in the dead of winter, the cockpit feeling even smaller with our massive parkas. My door popped open of its own accord before we’d even left the ground, which is unfortunately not that abnormal. I slammed it shut, and up we went. We soared over the GTA—I spotted the house where I was living with my parents—and experimented with making it dip. I was hooked before we’d even landed. My parents co-signed on a loan to help me pay for flight school. Four months and $17,000 later, I had my private pilot licence.

Backcountry flying has always been my favourite because it’s true to the spirit of adventure, getting into and out of places most people could never dream of going. My obsession with flying has never been about planes—it’s about how planes open up the world. River beds, beaches and mountain meadows can all be your runway if you’re skilled enough to land there. Ontario may not be on the same level as other parts of Canada when it comes to remote wilderness, but there are some amazing hidden gems. One of my favourite spots to visit is a remote island with a perfect grassy strip for landing and a sheltered bay that’s great for swimming—I’ve been sworn to secrecy about its exact location.

I had to put my dreams of becoming a bush pilot on hold, though. My dad’s condition was getting worse, and I needed something that would keep me closer to home. My bank loan was coming due, so I got a desk job as an underwriting assistant for an insurance company. I could feel my soul being crushed the whole time and only lasted a year. Soon, I met my husband and relocated to Collingwood so we could be together. I worked in hospitality for a while and did events coordination for a brewery. We bought our first airplane and I spent much of my free time flying that airplane.

I was also volunteering with Girls Take Flight, an organization aimed at getting more women into aviation by running free discovery flights for women and girls. Flying is a male-dominated field—only about six per cent of commercial pilots are women—and I wanted to help close that gap. I started doing free PR for a couple of groups, running their social media and writing press releases. At the same time, I started sharing more of my own flying journey on social media, and I realized that I enjoyed combining my lifelong love of writing and storytelling with my passion for flying.

I’d been flying for five years when I learned about the High Sierra Fly-In, which is like the Burning Man of aviation, through the community of aviation influencers online. Every other year, thousands of people fly or drive into the middle of the desert in Nevada for a weekend. People fly their own planes in and then go off for day trips, zipping over to nearby hot springs and skimming over the desert to watch the wild horses. There are bonfires every night. But the main event is the drag races.

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STOL (or short takeoff and landing) Drag races are more like car-racing than flying. Pilots fly along a 600-metre stretch, come to a complete stop, turn around and take off to fly back again as fast as possible. The planes never get more than about five metres off the ground, and they whip around in an incredibly tight turn radius. It takes amazing control of your aircraft to do it well, managing the energy of the plane, all while flying as fast as you can, just above the ground, right next to another plane, along a strip lined with spectators. As soon as I saw it, I knew I had to try it.

It took me six years to get everything set to compete. During that time, I started my own aviation PR company, Avian Creative, and in my free time, I was flying as much as I could. I rented my friend’s plane to practice with, but I didn’t think he’d be into me flying it all the way  to Nevada and back. So, as my social media following grew, I came up with a plan: I pitched the plane manufacturer Aviat on why they should lend me a plane as a brand deal, and somehow it worked. They hooked me up with their Husky built for backcountry flying. Then I had to get serious about practising. I cleared my evenings for months leading up to the 2025 Fly-In and spent the time flying around Collingwood, practicing my takeoffs and landings on empty grass strips. I worked on flying low and “slipping,” or using drag to slow the plane way down without losing control.

Finally, this October, I flew the Husky all the way to Nevada to compete. It was an amazing flight, with landings in beautiful landscapes in Nebraska, Wyoming and Utah. It was also the perfect final practice session, requiring me to be totally in tune with my plane to handle its reactions to the thinner air and the high altitude. I got there early enough to get some last-minute practice in, and then it was race day.

I was anxious before my races—I wanted to do well and give a good showing—but I wasn’t afraid. The race couldn’t have been more different from my flight in, which had been days of gazing at stunning mountain ranges and landscapes. In STOL Drag, the world zips by faster than you can take it in. Everything happens so quickly—a whole run lasts only about a minute or two—and all I could do was focus on hitting my marks. But the speed just adds to the adrenalin. The Husky offers excellent cockpit visibility, which made it easy to spot my competitors. I could see when they were gaining on me, and I’d feel my competitive side come out. I was flying faster than I ever had. There’s nothing quite like flying STOL Drag to make you feel like a badass, managing aerodynamics at the highest speeds you can handle.

I was mostly flying against men in souped-up hot rods of planes, but it was amazing to have some other women flying with me. Four out of the 20 pilots competing were women, three of them Canadian.  I made it to the finals, where 16 aircraft competed in a double elimination format. But I was never in it to win. I was in it for the experience, and I had the best time—honestly, I don’t even know what my final ranking was. I just know I can’t wait to compete again.