At 91 years of age, Gloria Ruttkay is proving you’re never too old for a new adventure.
Ruttkay, a resident at Amica Little Lake in north-end Barrie, has already lived a life full of adventure, but, despite her age, has no plans to slow down anytime soon.
Instead, she's choosing to live life to its fullest.
This fall, the local senior took flight from Edenvale Aerodrome in Stayner in a two-seat plane for a 90-minute lesson where she got to learn the controls — and even take over steering the light sport aircraft and getting to enjoy the fall colours over Lake Simcoe — as well as a fly over Amica Little Lake.
She admits learning to fly was never something she’d considered, but told BarrieToday she saw an ad for a local flight school and decided to give it a whirl, literally.
“I thought it’s nice and close to home, I’ll do that,” she said. “I had a choice — I could have gone to Niagara Falls, but I wanted to stay in this area because I cross-country skied, snowshoed, canoed, hiked in this area, so I wanted to see it from the air.”
Ruttkay says she didn’t feel any apprehension leading up to the flight.
“It was easier than the mountains that I have climbed and everything else I have done. I just sat there with the stick and did it,” she said. “I wasn’t the least bit nervous because I had this handsome pilot with me and he flies jets and I felt good about that.”
Ruttkay, who grew up in Calgary, said she has always had a sense of adventure, and decided she wanted to learn to fly because she had already done “pretty much everything else.”
“I went to the summit of Kilimanjaro when I was 63. I went skydiving for my 80th birthday. At 87, I went to the CN Tower (Sky Walk). The only thing I am really missing out is to go to Alaska to see the polar bears. The tours that I have hiked with could never arrange it so that we could connect with Winnipeg in order to go to Churchill (Manitoba) so if I live another year, I might be able to do that.”
