Stubby Ross, owner of TimeAir Ltd., an Albertan Class II airline based in Lethbridge Alberta called John one day and offered to help in any way that he could.
After receiving a call from John Smithman, Air Canada agreed to include Pem-Air in their media event promoting their new Boeing 747 aircraft in 1970 at the Toronto Pearson Airport.
"We took our new stewardess Carol Suter in her attractive light blue uniform with us to Toronto and parked our beautiful small aircraft under the right wing of the 747 for press photos.
Our biggest clients were Petawawa Army Base, Chalk River Atomic Energy, and Eddy Match Company.
With the continued success of routes between (with 3 King Air turboprop Beechcraft) Gatineau and Quebec City, and Pembroke to Toronto a new airline was formed with new investors.
There were also charter flights and many contracts including with the Quebec Government as the 'bird dog' in the fire fighting operations which travelled across Canada and into the US.
With brokers in Japan, Austria and France the flight school actually had an inhouse ESL program and pilot apartment to help with the transition.
After 31 years, in 2001, the company ended all its routes between Pembroke, Ontario and Toronto Pearson International Airport, after dropping traffic levels with Atomic Energy of Canada (that was responsible for two-thirds of its business at Pembroke) the tech bubble that burst in Kitchener Waterloo, the commercial airline services were discontinued to refocus on its flight school an aviation service operated jointly in partnership with Algonquin College.