History of aviation in Canada
Periodically, lighter-than-air vehicles and hybrid airships are promoted for use in remote northern areas, on the basis of lower cost of operation than conventional aircraft.
While vehicles such as Skyhook and Zeppelin NT regularly obtain press coverage, no company has yet undertaken commercial cargo operations by airship in Canada.
[6] Alexander Graham Bell had organized the Aerial Experiment Association for the development of aviation, which was funded by his wife Mabel Gardiner Hubbard from sale of some of her real estate.
[8] Experimenters were handicapped by limited personal financing, the high cost and short supply of suitable engines of sufficient power, and sometimes even by the lack of technical literature describing current aerodynamic theory and successful experiments.
[13] Notable Canadian pilots include Billy Bishop, William George Barker and Alan Arnett McLeod, who were awarded the Victoria Cross.
Canadian aircrew served in every operational theatre during the First World War, and in roles including air-to-air combat, bombing, air photography and artillery spotting.
[14] In 1915 the Curtiss Aeroplane and Motor Company of New York set up a small plant in Toronto for manufacture of the JN-4 training aircraft, managed by McCurdy.
[17] The Canadian Aviation Corps, with only three members, was founded in 1914 by Sir Sam Hughes, but was an inept and ineffective false start, never flying in combat and with its sole aircraft abandoned after a few months.
The donated aircraft were used both by the nascent air force and for civil purposes such as forest fire patrols, photographic surveying and reconnaissance.
The Canadian Air Board was founded 1919 and had regulatory control over all civil and military aviation, merging into the Department of National Defence (DND) in 1923.
During the Great Depression starting in 1932, many unemployed men were put to work clearing air strips with hand tools and horse-drawn machinery, as a method of providing some employment.
[21] In 1928, the Dominion Meteorological Service began providing aviation weather forecasts, but this was suspended in 1932 due to government austerity during the Depression.
Lack of reliable air mail contracts made it impossible for private aviation companies to operate on a sound financial basis.
Float aircraft, operating on northern lakes and rivers, had become the basis of much commercial aviation for mining, paper industry, medical, police and mail carriage, so many private carriers formed regional airlines to serve this business.
American aviator James Dalzell McKee (1893–1927) and RCAF Squadron Leader Earl Godfrey took nine days in September 1926 to fly from Montreal to Vancouver.
[29] An aircraft could traverse and photograph in hours rugged undeveloped country that would take weeks to cross by canoe, dog team, horseback, or on foot.
These flights were made under the most primitive of conditions, often with no prepared airfields, no reliable weather forecasts, no radio or visual navigation aids, poor maps, and often no indoor facilities for repairs.
In January 1929 Wop May's flight from Edmonton to Fort Vermilion, Alberta carrying diphtheria vaccine became a headline news story.
In 1927 he joined Richardson's Western Canada Airways and airlifted 14 men and 17,000 pounds (7,700 kg) of material in support of exploration at Fort Churchill.
Since shipborne delivery was slow and vulnerable to attack, complete aircraft were flown in stages across a North Atlantic route to the European theatre of operations.
Starting in 1940, fifteen air bases and multiple emergency landing strips were prepared stretching from Great Falls, Montana through Western Canada to Alaska.
However, Northern bush plane operations in support of mining carried on, with such tasks as the export of uranium concentrate for the atomic bomb project.
[32] The Curtiss company established a branch plant for manufacture of engines and airframes in 1915; this was taken over by the federal government and operated as Victory Aircraft until 1945, when it was sold to Hawker Siddeley.
Many aircraft made in Canada during the Second World War were licensed designs from British or American manufacturers, in some cases altered for available materials, engines, and production facilities.
During the Second World War, companies such as Canadian Car and Foundry, not ordinarily in the aviation field, turned their production lines to the manufacture of fighters and bombers.
A later Pitcairn gyroplane model PAA-1 was registered in 1932 and for about 20 years operated in a variety of roles including barnstorming, agricultural and forestry spraying, and photography.
[36] US Coast Guard helicopters were again called for rescue service in September 1946, to recover the survivors of a crashed Sabena DC-4 that had impacted 30 miles southwest of the Gander airport.
[38] During the 1950s and 1960s, United States defence planning viewed Soviet aircraft travelling over the Arctic as a threat, and expended much effort and money on defensive systems.
With no export sales in prospect, the government of the time decided the defence budget could not support both missile operations and aircraft development, and the Arrow program was cancelled early in 1959.
[40] Deregulation of airlines in the United States, along with continuing requests by CP Air and Wardair to provide national service, were among the factors that lead to changes in the regulations.
