Lights out - Toronto Pearson International Airport

TORONTO’S AVIATION HISTORY
Last issue, we celebrated the Canadian Centennial of Flight with a special piece by leading aviation writer Kenneth Schwartz. This issue, we
continue with our look back on history with Toronto’s Aviation Pioneers. Submitted by Kenneth Swartz, Special to Toronto Pearson Today.
Toronto’s Aviation Pioneers
The Toronto area’s association with
early aviation began in August 1859
when the balloon “Europa” carried
Professor John Steiner of Philadelphia from
Toronto across Lake Ontario to Minetto, New
York. Other balloon exhibits followed, often in
association with local fairs.
The Toronto aviation story began in
earnest in 1907 when Alexander Graham Bell,
the inventor of the telephone, took an interest
in fl ight and fl ying machines.
In 1907, he founded the Aerial Experiment
Association (AEA) at his summer estate at Beinn
Bhreagh, near Baddeck, Nova Scotia, “to build a
practical aeroplane that will carry a man,” with
his wife Mabel fi nancing the venture.
His partners in the AEA were four young
men who shared his passion for fl ight. Frederick
W. ‘Casey’ Baldwin of Toronto and John A.
Douglas McCurdy, the son of Bell’s long-time
assistant in Baddeck, were recent mechanical
engineering graduates from the University of
Toronto. Lt. Thomas Selfridge was an observer
from the U.S. Army, and Glenn H. Curtiss was
an American motorcycle and small engine
manufacturer, who at the time held the world
land speed record of 219.31 km/h (136.36 mph)
achieved on a motorcycle of his own design.
Like the telephone before, Bell’s
experiments with fl ying machines took place
in Canada and the United States. Much of the
early work with kites took place at Baddeck,
and then shifted to Hammondsport, in the
Finger Lakes region of upstate New York where
Curtiss had his engine business.
The members of Bell’s team were aircraft
designers, builders, pilots, mechanics and
aviation promoters long before these ever
became the professions that employ tens of
thousands of Canadians today.
The first Canadian to fly was Casey
Baldwin of Toronto, who piloted the Red Wing,
the fi rst powered AEA aircraft, off from frozen
Keuka Lake near Hammondsport on March 12,
1908 for 97 m (319 ft.) flight. This was the first
public demonstration of a powered aircraft
fl ight in the United States, although early
aircraft developments by the Wright brothers in
the U.S. were cloaked in great secrecy and not
observed by the general public.
The Red Wing was followed by the further
refi ned White Wing, which was flown by all
of Bell’s boys in May 1908. It was the first
to incorporate ailerons for flight control, an
invention claimed by the AEA but contested by
others.
Curtiss led the design team for the fourth
AEA aircraft, a yellow winged aircraft called the
June Bug. On July 4, 1908, before a large crowd,
Curtiss fl ew the aircraft 1553 m (5,360 ft.) and
won the Scientific American trophy for the first
straight fl ight of more than one kilometre. The
event was photographed and widely publicized,
earning widespread international recognition
for the AEA.
On July 10, the June Bug, flown by
Curtiss, became the first aircraft to navigate
a complete turn. On August 29, the June Bug
achieved another aviation first when Canadian
John McCurdy flew it on a three kilometre
figure eight.
On September 17, Thomas Selfridge died
from head injuries he received in the crash of
a Wright brother’s airplane in which he was a
passenger at Fort Meyers, Virginia, becoming
the first fatality of powered flight.
The fourth and last AEA-designed aircraft
was designed by McCurdy and improved
upon the design of the June Bug. Named the
Silver Dart, it got its name from the silver silk
used to cover its wings. It was test flown at
Hammondsport by McCurdy in December 1908
and then shipped to Baddeck for its record
setting flight in Canada on February 23, 1909.
In the summer of 1909, the Silver Dart
became the first aircraft to fly in Ontario when
it was demonstrated to the Canadian Army
at Petawawa. That same year, the AEA was
dissolved, with McCurdy and Baldwin carrying
on aircraft development in Canada, and Curtiss
developing his business in the United States
where he became the first major challenger to
the leadership of the Wright brothers.
Toronto’s First Aircraft Flight
The first aircraft ever built and sold
in the world was the Curtiss Golden
Flyer which also was the first
aircraft ever flown in Toronto when Charles
Willard demonstrated it at the Scarborough
Beach Amusement Park in the current Beach
neighbourhood on September 1909.
Willard was the first barnstorming pilot in
North America. The aircraft arrived in Toronto
on August 28, but the exhibition organizers had
no idea how large a field the aircraft required to
takeoff. A wooden trough to guide the aircraft’s
wheels was constructed between the various
buildings and ran to the top of a breakwater on
the lake shore, to ensure the wings would not
strike the buildings on the takeoff run.
Willard flew on September 2, 7 and 11
with the Golden Flyer landing each time in
Lake Ontario. The longest flight on September
7 covered a distance of five miles and lasted
about five minutes.
Six years later in 1915, John McCurdy
and Glenn Curtiss teamed up once again to
establish Canada’s first aircraft factory, flying
school, seaplane base and flying field – all in
the Toronto area. The Curtiss Aeroplanes and
Motors, Ltd. factory was located on Strachan
Avenue, north of the CNE grounds, the seaplane
base at Hanlan’s Point on the Toronto Islands
and the airfield located south of Lakeshore
Boulevard at Long Branch, near Lake Ontario.
You can read more about the history of flight
in Canada in Aviation in Canada: the Pioneering
Years, by Larry Milberry. Just published and
now available from the Canadian Air & Space
Museum gift shop – wwww.CASMuseum.org.
12 Toronto Pearson Today First Quarter 2009