Celebrating flight

I was hoping that the 100th anniversary of Canadian aviation, which was yesterday, would be noticed in some special way across the country. There was a commemorative flight of the Silver Dart which took place in Cape Breton. But not much more than that. I remember several years ago, when TCA (Trans-Canada Airlines) celebrated its 50th anniversary with a cross-Canada flight of a rebuilt Lockheed Electra. It was a cool thing. In 1984, Austin Airways of Timmins celebrated its 50th anniversary with a display at the Timmins Airport. That cute kid there in front of the DC-3 is my son Neil Gillis. He was all of four years old back then. Toward the end of the day, Austin had a routine flight to Iroquois Falls and back. Knowing that it would be likely be last time Neil would ever have a chance to fly aboard such a legendary aircraft, we climbed in and took the flight. Neil got a kick out of the fact that passengers got on the plane from a door at the rear and then had to “walk uphill” to get to their seat. It was a good day.

One of my favourite moments in aviation was not in actually flying, but visiting the Canadian Aviation Museum in Ottawa a few years back. Just as you go through the main doors, there is a full-sized Fairey Swordfish biplane. It was just right there, a big jumble of wooden struts, canvas and steel wire. I remember being amazed that this was the airplane that dropped the torpedo that crippled the Bismarck of the German navy in May 1941, which at the time was the largest, fastest, deadliest battleship in the world. I remember standing there being amazed at the guts it took to fly this flimsy piece of flying-machine into the face of no less than 60 anti-aircraft guns to drop a torpedo. Amazing.