Milhouse's Dad

About the Book

Milhouse's Dad is a heartfelt account of a grieving father's memories of his exceptional son, of their life together and of the father's struggle to find meaning in the seemingly empty existence that followed the violent death of the son who had filled his life with joy.

The happy "coming-of-age" stories and warm descriptions of family adventures are interspersed with soulful chapters revealing the deep feelings of grief experienced by the family, of their post-traumatic quest for some understanding of their loss and of their painful efforts toward accepting a life without the beloved young man who was so cruelly taken from them.

This is a story about the heights of joy we can all experience and of the depths of despair that can lurk, unexpectedly, around ever corner.

About the Author

Roland Selby was born on Canada's west coast. In 1941, when he was two years old, he saw a twin-engine Anson or Crane RCAF trainer (his aircraft recognition skills were not great at that age) and decided he wanted to be a pilot. Membership in the Royal Canadian Air Cadets led to him earning a Private Pilot Licence at age seventeen while in high school in Trenton, Ontario.

Pursuing his dream Roland attended the Royal Military College at Kingston, Ontario as a Royal Canadian Air Force cadet and earned his RCAF pilot wings on the Lockheed T-33 in 1962. After fulfilling his air force commitment he became a commercial air transport pilot with Canadian Pacific Air Lines in 1965. In a forty-year flying career Roland flew numerous types of aircraft on routes that spanned the globe and he retired as a Boeing 747-400 captain with Canadian Air Lines International in 1996.

In the 1990s Roland proudly watched as his son Miles followed, more or less, in his footsteps, but achieved much higher levels of success than Dad had ever imagined. "Milhouse's" aptitude as a CF-18 Hornet fighter pilot even allowed Dad to witness this skill first-hand when father and son shared a supersonic flight in one of those jet fighters.

Miles's outstanding ability was publicly acknowledged when he earned the position of "Snowbird 4" with the Snowbirds aerobatic team for the 2004 air show season. Miles died in a mid-air collision at the end of that year while training for his second season with the team.

Roland has written this memoir hoping that others who have experienced a similar life-wrenching loss might find some solace, or at least some understanding and resignation, from reading it.

Mr. Selby lives in Tsawwassen, British Columbia with his wife Kristin.