Just a few weeks short of his 96 birthday, one extraordinary Ottawa man decided to take a flying leap from 9,000 feet.
Lyall Gow performed a tandem skydive yesterday in Gananoque, about an hour and a half south of Ottawa.
Although he's 95 years old, he said he is not letting age slow him down one bit.
Gow said the jump couldn't have turned out better.
"When I went out of that plane, the two-minute freefall was just perfect," he said.
Gow said he got the idea for the tandem jump after a conversation with a friend. The pilot told Gow he would take him up in his plane, if he was up for the challenge.
Gow says the thrill of freefalling is like no other and it's kind of thing that people shouldn't wait until they are 95 to try.
"I think it's a tragedy the number of people who go through life and never know they've been alive," he said.
When asked if he felt alive Saturday, he said laughing, "I sure did!"
Gow has always had an adventurous person. A Second World War veteran, he has travelled extensively since retiring from the Bank of Canada. A few years ago, he went horseback riding through the Rockies.
Gow is believed to be the second oldest Canadian ever to skydive. According to the Guinness World Records website, a 100-year-old American woman made a tandem jump in 2004.
