2) Presence Build It And They Will Come - Seneca College

AFT curriculum and ultimately it would be shown that there was just not
room to house Breezy at the Buttonville hangar. It lacked radio equipment
and its very slow speed interfered with the normal circuit traffic at Buttonville
Airport. So, the airport invited the management of Toronto Airways Limited
to request that Breezy no longer operate from Buttonville.
Breezy was sold to the Experimental Aircraft Association of Canada (EAAC)
for $1.00 with an option to Seneca to repurchase for the same price at any
time in the future. EAAC would bear the insurance, maintain it, retain the
inspiring Seneca insignia and rent the aircraft to all members of EAAC and
the Seneca Aeronautics Club for $7.20 per hour (then). This arrangement
extended into free membership for all Seneca Aeronautics Club members
(ordinarily $300 per share + $15 per annum + $9 per month flight
insurance) including permission to book any EAAC aircraft on which they
were qualified at any time of the week or weekend, opening up the skies to
Seneca flight students…all thanks to their diligence, their evident dedication,
their sure future and, of course, their Breezy. Thus was established those
vital relationships that made Seneca’s applicants so plentiful and her
graduates so employable.
Caught up in the spirit of aircraft construction that had infected the entire
course with the success of Breezy, aviation and engineering instructor Robert
A. Froebel (a future co-ordinator of the Aviation program at Seneca) went
home one day in 1969 and announced to his sons Eric 7, Michael 9 and Peter
11 that they were going to help daddy build an aircraft in the garage. Those
who came to enjoy the meteoric nature of Froebel over the next quarter
century knew him to be nothing if not intrepid. On Sunday September 28,
1975, following 6 long years of gritty resolution, Froebel and the Thorp 18, C
- Graf were aloft. The aircraft was designed by John W. Thorp of Torrance,
California. It was an all-metal, low-wing monoplane capable of carrying two
people. It was powered by a Lycoming 180 horsepower engine which would
stall at 60 mph, cruise at 160 and boasted a top speed of 190 mph. After 50
test hours, all restrictions were lifted and the flying Froebels loosed the surly
bonds of Earth.
By 1973, the Aviation and Flight Technology program at Seneca was thriving
under the earnest stewardship of the Course Director known to the students
as “The Godfather”, Captain Frank M. Rock who had undertaken the
responsibility in 1970 after having served on the original AFT Advisory
Committee. Rock was into expansion mode. In support of his submission, the
Seneca Board, at its May 14 meeting of 1973, directed the College to
proceed with the purchase of seven additional aircraft for the program…all to
operate out of Buttonville and all to bear the red, white and black flashings
and the flaming S…now known all over the Metro-centred region as tis pilots
coursed the Toronto skies. Ten of the 37 originals from 1968 had graduated
and, from the freshman class of 1969, 13 of the 49 who started proceeded to
Spring Convocation. Now, in 1973, the 16 survivors from the 53 who began
in 1970 cross the Minkler stage and proceeded into the Air Transport
industry: a grand total of 39. How well was Seneca doing in putting its
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