Wilfrid Reid "Wop" May, OBE, DFC (March 20, 1896[1] – June 21, 1952) was a Canadian flying ace in the First World War and a leading post-war aviator.

He was the final Allied pilot to be pursued by Manfred von Richthofen before the German ace was shot down on the Western Front in 1918.

After the war, May returned to Canada, pioneering the role of a bush pilot while working for Canadian Airways in Northern Alberta and the Northwest Territories.

(Edmonton Sportsmen), was shipped to England, where he and his friend Ray Ross applied to join the Royal Flying Corps.

His first flight resulted in the accidental destruction of his own and another aircraft; nevertheless, the RFC accepted his application, and May resigned from the Canadian Army.

On seeing his cousin being attacked, Manfred, in a red Fokker Dr.I, flew to his rescue and fired on May, causing him to pull away and saving Wolfram's life.

May and Gorman were hired by Imperial Oil Limited to fly two Junkers airplanes, equipped with skis, from New York to Edmonton in early 1921.

In March, Gorman and Elmer Fullerton flew these two planes across the 60th parallel (the first ever flight into the Northwest Territories) into the Canadian subarctic, proving that aircraft could operate in sub-zero temperatures.

In December 1928, Bert Logan, an employee of the Hudson's Bay Company was posted to Little Red River, Alberta, on arrival he was unpacking when he suddenly became very ill. His wife, a nurse, realized he had diphtheria, and a desperate effort started to get inoculations to the town before anyone else was seriously infected.

He left in an Avro Avian with another flying club member, Vic Horner, the next day around noon, and landed on Kimiwan Lake, McLennan for the night just before 4 p.m. when it was becoming dark.

They had to stop in Peace River on the return flight due to engine damage from the low quality fuel, and did not arrive back in Edmonton until January 7.

By this point, his flight had become known across Canada as "the race against death", and he and Horner arrived to find a media circus and a mob of thousands of Edmontonians waiting for them at the airport.

The news of this remarkable flight helped May establish a new company, Commercial Airways, to provide air service to northern Canada.

The company won a government contract for air mail to the Northwest Territories, a service that had been pioneered by Punch Dickins' rival Western Canada Airways.

While serving a search warrant for illegal trapping on the Rat River, Constable King of the RCMP was shot and wounded by Johnson, sparking off a long chase that became front-page news across the continent.

On February 13, May solved the mystery when he noted a set of footprints leading off from caribou tracks in the middle of the frozen river.

It was decided to form a team of parachute jumpers that could be dropped in on the crash sites to stabilize the injured pilots and start moving them out of the bush.

Early efforts were comical but dangerous, but the US trained a number of jumpers at a smokejumper school in Montana, and it was not long before the Para-Rescue team was in service.

For his work in search and rescue, May was awarded the Medal of Freedom, with Bronze Palm in 1947 by the United States Army Air Forces.

In addition to the Distinguished Flying Cross and the United States Medal of Freedom, Wop May was awarded the Trans-Canada (McKee) Trophy in 1929 and appointed Officer of the Order of the British Empire in 1935.