Legacy
In addition to the DFC and the United States Medal of Freedom, Wop May was awarded the Trans-Canada (McKee) Trophy in 1929 and became an Officer in the Order of the British Empire in 1935. In 1974 May was declared a National Historic Person, and a plaque to commemorate him was installed in Edmonton in 1978.
May is immortalized in songs by Stompin' Tom Connors ("Wop May"), The Gumboots ("Wop May"), and John Spearn ("Roy Brown and Wop May"). He was also the subject of a 1979 National Film Board of Canada vignette.
On October 6, 2004, NASA's Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity located a rock on the south slope of the Endurance Crater on Mars. The 1 metre (3.3-foot) rock was given the name wopmay after the legendary Canadian bush pilot.
Canada has a geologic feature known as the Wopmay Fault Zone, lying to the west of Hudson Bay along the Wopmay river, where the earliest mountains in earth's history appeared during the Paleoproterozoic era, approximately two billion years ago.
The city of Edmonton, Alberta named the neighbourhood of Mayfield in honour of Wop May.
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Famous quotes containing the word legacy:
“What is popularly called fame is nothing but an empty name and a legacy from paganism.”
—Desiderius Erasmus (c. 1466–1536)