Tuesday, September 11, 2007


Sixty-year old Halifax native Sean Rossiter's interests are varied. From July 1975's Spartacus on the Fairview Slopes Rossiter wrote 110 monthly "12th & Cambie" columns on civic affairs for Vancouver Magazine until his last in August 1991: Fire & Speed about Russian MIG test pilot Valery Menitzki. City Politicians in the know automatically went to Vancouver's last page to read Rossiter's column. Fire & Speed revealed an interest close to his heart: airplanes. In 1996 Rossiter published his first airplane book, The Immortal Beaver - The World's Greatest Bushplane and another Otter; Twin Otter.  Rossiter (an old time goalie since he was 35) has written books on hockey and, Douglas & McIntyre has just published City Making In Paradise - Nine Decisions That Saved Vancouver by Mike Harcourt and Ken Cameron with Sean Rossiter. When he is not writing, Rossiter builds model airplanes. Here he is with his favourite. ("For many years the Hasegawa 2-scale Boeing P-26 was the best that I had ever assembled. It is the epitome of colourful interwar Air Corps paint schemes.") He built his first model, a Lindberg Line Messerschmitt Bf 109 in Ottawa in 1955.
Alex Waterhouse-Hayward

The above has appeared in the September issue of VLM.