MONTHLY LETTER

Canada in the Air

The airplane could almost have been createdfor Canada’s rugged immensity, and Canadians

have made the most of its marvellous attributes.In so doing, they have made a significant

contribution to world aviation which has itsroots in the ingenuity of the bush pilots ofan earlier age...

[] A colour illustration in a Canadian children’sbook of a generation ago shows a cabin by a north-ern lake. A mother and child stand nearby watch-ing a forest fire rampaging towards them. A floatplane has just landed and put some men ashore tofight the conflagration. The family has been saved.

The theme of the illustration is a familiarone--the dramatic role of the airplane in anemergency. Through the mass media, the exploitsof Canadian bush pilots in flying to the rescue areknown to people around the world. But while talesof derring-do may crowd the pages of Canada’saviation history, a serious and significant themeunderlies them- the Canadian achievement ofputting the aircraft to work to meet the specialtransportation needs of a vast, rugged and sparse-ly-populated country. For, possibly more than anyother nationality, Canadians have capitalized onthe aircraft’s unparalleled ability to leap dauntingdistances and impassable terrain.

It would almost seem as if the aircraft werespecially invented for Canada’s wild immensity.That Canadians should have been among the firstto be excited by its marvellous potential is nosurprise. That they should later have fashioned adistinctively Canadian tradition of aircraft opera-tion, design and production may also be natural.But this could not have been done without a prodi-gious expenditure of vision, intelligence, diligenceand sheer guts.

No less imaginative a man than the great in-ventor Alexander Graham Bell took the initiative

in exploring the practicability of powered flightwhen he founded the Aerial Experiment Associa-tion in Halifax in 1907. In March 1908 a member ofthe group, F. W. Baldwin, became the first Canad-ian to pilot an airplane when he flew a modeldesigned by an American fellow-member at Ham-mondsport, N.Y. Then, on the ice of Bras d’Or Lakeat Baddeck, N.S. on Feb. 23, 1909, member J. A. D.McCurdy flew his own design, the ~’Silver Dart", forabout half a mile, becoming the first Canadian tofly in Canada. He was also the first British subjectto make a successfully controlled flight in aheavier-than-air machine in the British Empire.

The serious approach to aviation seemed to wanein the next few years as airplanes, mostly from theU.S., made their first appearances in major com-munities across Canada. Aerial wizardry and dare-devil acts took precedence over aeronauticalscience.

A more utilitarian approach to aviation ap-peared in May, 1914, when Canada’s first intercityair passenger was flown from Toronto to Hamiltonand return. With the outbreak of World War I fourmonths later, flying suddenly developed into a veryserious business indeed. Many young Canadiansjoined the British air services. They went on tomake up a large proportion of the British airservices, showing a special aptitude for the individ-ualistic combat in the skies. Some gained renownfor their exploits as aerial warriors -- among themW. A. (Billy) Bishop, Raymond Collishaw, W. Barker, D. R. MacLaren, and Alan A. McLeod.

By the time the conflict ended, more Canadianswere experts in the art of flight in proportion to thepopulation than the citizens of any other Alliedcountry. Besides distinguishing themselves inbattle, they had gained flying experience in everytheatre of war and patrol route from the North Seato the Indian Ocean. Some 13,000 veteran fliersreturned to Canada after the war, and some ofthem went on to take up the challenge of pio-neering commercial aviation in their own land.

The post-war surge in interest in civil aviationcame when attempts to fly the Atlantic from New-foundland caught the public imagination, alertingpeople to the potential of this new mode of trans-portation. The major success of 1919 was a flightfrom Quidi Vidi, Nfld. to Ireland in a little over 16hours by the British aviators John Alcock andArthur Brown. At the same time, commercialaviation in Canada began to make significantstrides. On Aug. 7, 1919, Ernest Hoy flew over thewestern mountain barrier for the first time in a161/2-hour flight from Vancouver to Calgary. Thefirst trans-Canada flight, sponsored by the newly-constituted Canadian Air Board, began in Halifaxon Oct. 7, 1920, in a Fairey Seaplane piloted by Lt.Col. Robert Leckie and Major Basil Hobbs. Usingsix float and land planes along the way, theycompleted the 3,265 miles 10 days later, havingspent about 45 hours in the air.

Canadian pulp and paper companies may becredited with the idea of using aircraft to open upremote areas of the country. Early efforts focusedon the timber tracts along the North Shore of theSt. Lawrence, its estuaries, and in Labrador.

In his recently-published book Aviation In Can-ada, Larry Milberry explains how the forest firmsquickly caught on to the potential of aviation intheir industry: "For example, a sweep over a tractof forest provided the aerial surveyor with animmediate bird’s eye view of what lay below -- thegeneral character of the forest, its extent andaccessibility. Maps could be sketched and photostaken, classifying tracts by tree type and maturity.

Future camps could be planned and plant sitescould be determined, and gravel deposits and waterstorage areas located and plotted." This was thebirth of a body of Canadian expertise in aerialsurveying which has carried Canadian pilots andsurveyors over mountains, jungles and desertsaround the world in more recent years.

The first airlift helpsto build a brand new port

The Canadian mining and oil industries alsofound uses for aviation. In the early 1920s planeswere used to fly supplies for oil exploration ven-tures on the MacKenzie River and to explore thenorthern Ontario gold belt. Patricia Airways andExploration Company was set up in 1925 to pro-vide services to the Red Lake area. Its chief pilotwas Doc Oaks, who is credited, among a greatmany other achievements, with inventing the per-table nose hanger. This innovation made it pos-sible to service engines outdoors in severely coldtemperatures wherever aircraft happened to be.

In 1926 Winnipeg financier James A. Richardsonhired Oaks as the first pilot for his newly-formedWestern Canada Airways. The next year the com-pany took on its first contract, an airlift of cargofrom Cache Lake to Fort Churchill, Man., possiblythe first operation of its kind. Pilots flew thecargoes in open cockpit planes in sub-zero temper-atures. Through their efforts, a whole new port wasbuilt on Hudson Bay.

Western Canada Airways went on to absorbother bush airlines. In 1930 the two nationalrailways formed Canadian Airways with Richard-son as president. Western Canada Airways andsome eastern lines were absorbed into the newcompany, but the result was less of a nationalairline than a series of regional runs.

The government eventually proposed that Can-adian Airways, Canadian Pacific Railway andCanadian National Railways become joint ownersof a "trans-Canada airline". But the CPR andCanadian Airways declined to take part, and soTrans-Canada Air Lines was set up April 10, 1937as a wholly-owned subsidiary of Canadian Natio-nal, a status it maintained until the present AirCanada became independent of CN in 1978. Can-adian Airways turned over its Vancouver-to-Seattle

run to TCA, plus two Lockheed 10 aircraft, on Sept.1, 1937. TCA operated its first flight on this Pacifictrans-border route.

The CPR eventually went on the acquire Canad-ian Airways and develop its own airline. It con-solidated 10 airline companies, mostly bush opera-tions, and merged them into Canadian PacificAirlines in May, 1942. The famous bush pilotGrant McConachie joined the new organizationwhen CPA bought his company, Yukon SouthernAir Transport. McConachie, who later becamepresident of CPA, had started out as a fish haulerin northern Alberta. When business was slow, hesupplemented his fish-hauling activities withbarnstorming. The mixture says something aboutthe tradition of Canadian aviation.

TCA went to work in the 1930s to establish aroute across the country. It added larger Lockheed14s and, on April 1, 1939, inaugurated a trans-continental passenger service between Montrealand Vancouver. The flying time of the first east-west flight was 16 hours, five minutes, with fiveintermediate stops. As early as 1943, TCA spreadits wings over the Atlantic, operating the Canad-ian Government Trans-Atlantic Air Service, whichcarried priority passengers and mail in Lancasterbombers to and from Britain. This war effort pavedthe way for routine postwar transatlantic cross-ings by North Stars, then Super Constellations,then DC-8s, and the present giant Boeing 747s andLockheed L-1011s. In the meantime, TCA, re-named Air Canada, has grown into one of the 10largest airlines in the world.

Civil aviation gets ahead-start from the war

During the war Canadian airmen served withdistinction in the entire range of aerial operationalroles. Again, as in the case of World War I, thenation’s civil aviation reaped some benefits fromwarfare. One of the most significant was theBritish Commonwealth Air Training Plan. A totalof 131,553 aircrew from Commonwealth countriestrained under the plan, and when the war endedmany of the training strips became civilian air-ports. This gave a head start to the rapid progressof civil aviation in the postwar years.

After the war, both TCA and CPA acquiredCanadian-designed and manufactured North Starairliners. The latter used them to open up sched-uled routes far and wide to such points as Sydney,Tokyo, and Hong Kong.

The Canadian airlines’ international expansionin the 1950s and 60s was paralleled by stronggrowth in domestic services. By the mid-60s, Can-adians had become heavily reliant on flight. Re-gional airlines grew up to provide service to small-er markets, and to bring more and better service tothe North.

In the midst of the growth of these scheduledservices, the aircraft continued to play a key role inresource development and in major constructionundertakings in remote areas. How could Canadahave managed without the airplane in tacklingsuch projects as the development of the iron oreresources in Labrador and New Quebec, the build-ing of the DEW Line, the search for oil and gas inthe Arctic and offshore zones, and the constructionof the Churchill Falls and James Bay power pro-jects? What other form of transport could efficient-ly cope with ice reconnaissance, could spray cropsand forests, water bomb forest fires, or carry outsearch and rescue missions in the frozen tundra,dense forest country, and at sea?

It was only natural that Canada’s aircraft manu-facturing industry should adapt itself to this north-ern nation’s special requirements. In 1947 deHavilland of Canada hired bush pilot Punch Dic-kins to help design the ideal bush plane. Hespecified all-metal construction, extra-large load-ing doors, a high power-weight ratio, and short-take-off-landing (STOL) capability. The result wasthe Beaver, one of themost useful and reliableaircraft ever developed. Out of the Beaver grew theOtter, Twin Otter, Caribou, Buffalo and Dash 7.

The design and manufacture of short-take-off-landing aircraft is the leading claim to interna-tional renown of the Canadian aviation industry.STOL planes from Canada have brought a newmeasure of accessibility to the harsh wildernessenvironments of the world, whether desert, moun-tains, jungle, tundra or bush.

The industry also competes internationally inother fields: the Montreal manufacturer Canadairhas recently launched into the highly competitive,big league world of building business jets. ItsChallenger twinjet is a wide-body, long-rangeplane designed to appeal to multinational com-panies, heads of state and government depart-ments. The company has built many military andcivil aircraft since World War II, including theNorth Star, F-86 Sabre, CF-104, CF-5, T-33, CL-44,CL-66, and CL-84, which is capable of verticaltakeoffs and landings. The characteristicallyCanadian CL-125 water bomber, which has provedits worth fighting fires in many different countries,is also a Canadair design.

A record not withoutits disappointments

Canada’s aircraft industry has not been withoutits disappointments. Very early on in aviationhistory a company formed by the two flight pio-neers, McCurdy and Baldwin, failed. In 1949Canada moved to the forefront in the passenger jetfield when Avro Aircraft of Canada built the AvroJetliner. The 500-mile-per-hour plane flew for thefirst time on Aug. 10 that year, long before anyother commercial jet, but it failed to win orders.The project was dropped when the governmentordered the company to concentrate on CF-100interceptor jets for the Korean War.

While the CF-100 was a successful aircraft, theAvro CF-105 Arrow, said to be the most advancedall-weather interceptor of its time, ran afoul of agovernment decision early in 1959 to cancel theproject because of heavy costs and poor foreignsales prospects. Most of the 13,000 Avro workers,along with thousands working for subcontractors,were left without jobs.

The Arrow affair underlined the cyclical natureof the aviation industry, often referred to as a’¢swinging door" industry in terms of employment.

Much of the current upswing in the industry activ-ity is the result of production of the de Havilland’sDash 7 STOL aircraft, the Challenger jet, andaviation turbine manufacturing for export. Canad-ian firms also build parts for larger aircraft manu-factured in the U.S.

The bush flier came alongand wrought his miracle

Canada today is a full and active participant inmodern air transport with a high reputation fortechnical competence at the most advanced level.Yet even in the age of the globe-girdling jumbo jet,we must go back to the picture of the bush pilotchallenging the frontier to find what gives Canad-ian aviation its special cachet.

As Billy Bishop noted in his book Winged Peace,the style of bush flying in Canada in the early daysset a different pattern from that of aviation else-where. Men began with little or no capital, andeach project had to pay its way. In the U.S. andEurope, the pioneers of commercial flight sought toallay man’s fear of flying, a long-term propositionwhich meant that the operator had to take lossesover a lengthy period of public education. "InCanada, however," wrote Bishop, "the operatorwas offering to deliver the human being and hischattels, or say, his mining machinery, to pointsoften as far removed from rail or other communica-tions as to involve weeks of dog team or canoetravel . . . Under [the former] conditions . . . theopening of the rich Canadian North was impos-sible. Then the bush flier came along and wroughta miracle."

That ~miracle" was mainly one of applying theCanadian genius for adaptability, a faculty which,in the days before powered flight, served to settle agigantic, frigid, and incredibly difficult country.Through the citations accorded its members,Canada’s Aviation Hall of Fame in Calgary tellsthe story of just how ingeniously adaptable Canad-ians can be. If the spirit of the bush pilot can live onin this age of high technology, Canadian aviators,aircraft designers and technicians will continue tomake an enduring contribution to the art andscience of flying. And as in the past, the wholeworld will benefit -- Canada most of all.