Halifax pilot draws Blue Jays logo in the sky

A Halifax pilot and longtime Blue Jays fan has taken his support for Canada's baseball team to new heights — literally — tracing the team's logo through the skies over Nova Scotia.

A Halifax pilot and longtime Blue Jays fan has taken his support for Canada’s baseball team to new heights — literally — tracing the team’s logo through the skies over Nova Scotia.

“I wanted to cheer on the Blue Jays, I wanted to cheer the fans, I wanted to do it for myself,” said Dimitri Neonakis.

The two-and-a-half-hour trip, Neonakis says, took about three hours to plan and map out before he took off from Halifax Stanfield International Airport at 11:27 a.m. local time Tuesday.

He began by outlining the maple leaf — the trickiest part, he says — before carefully tracing the bird in the team’s logo with his Cirrus SR22 aircraft. His route stretched roughly 570 kilometres, looping from Halifax to the town of Debert and back.

While still in the air tracing the bird, Neonakis says someone messaged to ask if he was the one behind the drawing.

“I said, ‘I’m a big fan. Of course I did,” he said with a laugh.

The pilot of 27 years says this flight path has drawn more attention than most online, but it isn’t his first of its kind.

He says he has completed nearly 30 of these “sky drawings,” some in support of missing children or to honour people such as George Floyd, Terry Fox and Jennifer Casey, the Snowbirds member killed in a 2020 crash.