This undated pamphlet probably came from a rack in Windsor Station when LC Gagnon was working for the railway there.
LC Gagnon had a great interest in aviation developments during the Second World War. He travelled out to see what was then known as the airport 'at Lachine'. There, he witnessed the early efforts Canadian Pacific organized to ferry aircraft across the Atlantic Ocean early in the war - via Dorval and Newfoundland. Later in the war, this ferry work was taken over by RAF Ferry Command and the British Ministry of Aircraft Production.
Readers will probably be very familiar with the history of railway development in Canada. Small companies with small networks of lines developed ('portage railways' between navigable waterways were an early Canadian specialty). As investment was attracted, an integrated system developed. Large companies often acquired control of smaller, older railways to facilitate their own growth and to manage competition.
A similarly complex situation evolved with the corporate development of Canada's aviation sector in the 1920s and 30s. Unlike the railways, aside from transportation equipment, commercial aircraft operators had no terrestrial assets of any significance, so most companies were privately owned. I checked for aviation securities (stocks, bonds, etc) in a Financial Post reference book from 1928 and only a flying school in British Columbia was listed as an issuer.
Until curtailed by Prime Minister RB Bennett during the Great Depression, airmail services subsidized the early air routes. Beyond the typical Canadian east-west routes between cities, aircraft travelled where most railways did not - to the Canadian north for the purposes of developing natural resources. Depending on the season, skis or pontoons were used to land on the northern lakes before permanent runways were built.
Trans-Canada Air Lines was established in 1937 (nested under Canadian National Railways administration) with Sir Edward Beatty and the CPR bowing out of the proposed joint participation with the CNR. Beatty felt that putting up 50% of the capital for the project was not consistent with having less than 50% representation on the board of the TCA.
In 1943, Prime Minister Mackenzie King demonstrated that the federal government had the capacity to learn from its past mistake of allowing too much railway overbuilding and ruinous competition. His policy statement in the Commons was:
- TCA would be the only airline operating international air services.
- TCA would operate all transcontinental ... and 'main line' services as designated by the government.
- Competition over the same route between TCA and a private airline ... or between two private airlines ... would not be permitted.
... As a result of this policy statement, the air transportation companies already acquired by the CPR would remain as providers of regional and north-south transportation for the time being.
Many readers will easily identify the DC-3 aircraft shown in the pamphlet. A total of about 11,000 aircraft of this design were built between 1935 and 1946. In 1946-7, Canadian Pacific Air Lines acquired 17 war surplus C-47 aircraft (the military transportation variant of the DC-3) and fitted them for passenger service. Most of them were sold off by the end of the 1950s.
Much of this short historical account has been taken from the exquisitely detailed story of CPAL's origins in Canadian Pacific Air Lines - Its History and Aircraft; DM Bain; 1987; Kishorn Publications.
... Bain notes that the DC-3s were probably the first true airliners seen in the northern communities they served.
(There are additional posts on CPAL and TCA - just press the Short Subjects 02 radio button above.)
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| from: Canadian Pacific Air Lines, Its History and Aircraft: DM Bain; 1987; Kishorn Publications. |