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It was 50 years ago today that the Arrow took flight
2008-03-25 09:27:45.000
"Avro202 off at 9:51 and cleared to company tower."
With those words 50 years ago this morning, the famed Avro Arrow aircraft, with pilot Jan Zurakowski at the controls, took its historic first flight over the farmfields that surrounded the village of Malton.
"This was the signal that Canada was entering the supersonic era of flight," the Avro newsmagazine, sponsored by the company that built and flew the plane for the federal government, reported a short time later.
But alas, that prediction was not to be. When new Prime Minister John Diefenbaker reviewed the cost of the Arrow project as the country headed towards a recession, he dropped the project, which would have been the most expensive in the country's history. It is still considered one of the most controversial political decision in Canada's history.
At the peak of its production in 1958, the A. V. Roe Company and Orenda Engines plants near the four corners of Malton employed a work force of men and women 13,000 strong building the Arrow CF 105 and the Orenda Iroquois engine.
This Saturday, many of the men who worked on the Arrow will gather together at the Toronto Aerospace Museum at Downview Park in Toronto, to recall their involvement and muse about what might have been.
In his just-published book called Fading History, Vol. 1, former Mississauga News reporter and city councillor Dave Cook writes, "when the Diefenbaker government pulled the plug on the experimental CF-105 Arrow, the country lost more than a world-class aircraft. Canada also lost the opportunity to... lead the world as an aircraft country."
More than 200 people are expected to attend the sold-out Arrow gala. One of the features of the evening will be the display of the full-scale replica of the plane that was built over several years at Downsview by supporters. Students from high schools in Malton assisted in the reconstruction.
The keynote speaker at the banquet will be former Avro vice-president James Floyd.
jstewart@mississauga.net
With those words 50 years ago this morning, the famed Avro Arrow aircraft, with pilot Jan Zurakowski at the controls, took its historic first flight over the farmfields that surrounded the village of Malton.
"This was the signal that Canada was entering the supersonic era of flight," the Avro newsmagazine, sponsored by the company that built and flew the plane for the federal government, reported a short time later.
But alas, that prediction was not to be. When new Prime Minister John Diefenbaker reviewed the cost of the Arrow project as the country headed towards a recession, he dropped the project, which would have been the most expensive in the country's history. It is still considered one of the most controversial political decision in Canada's history.
At the peak of its production in 1958, the A. V. Roe Company and Orenda Engines plants near the four corners of Malton employed a work force of men and women 13,000 strong building the Arrow CF 105 and the Orenda Iroquois engine.
This Saturday, many of the men who worked on the Arrow will gather together at the Toronto Aerospace Museum at Downview Park in Toronto, to recall their involvement and muse about what might have been.
In his just-published book called Fading History, Vol. 1, former Mississauga News reporter and city councillor Dave Cook writes, "when the Diefenbaker government pulled the plug on the experimental CF-105 Arrow, the country lost more than a world-class aircraft. Canada also lost the opportunity to... lead the world as an aircraft country."
More than 200 people are expected to attend the sold-out Arrow gala. One of the features of the evening will be the display of the full-scale replica of the plane that was built over several years at Downsview by supporters. Students from high schools in Malton assisted in the reconstruction.
The keynote speaker at the banquet will be former Avro vice-president James Floyd.
jstewart@mississauga.net