Canadian Airways’ competitors on mail runs were hardly more fortunate. A Fokker Super Universal (CF-AJG) owned by International Airways attempted to land in dense fog at Whitby, Ontario, on January 7, 1930, on the Montreal-Toronto mail run and hit a tree. On June 23, 1930, an Interlake Airways’ Fokker Universal (CF-ABL) crashed a mile east of Oshawa, Ontario, when the pilot was forced to perform an emergency landing because of technical problems.
Navigation by radio might have been prone to weather disturbances, but it was critical to the evolution of commercial aviation in Canada. A network of transmission towers approximately 200 miles apart and strategically located around the country, usually near the larger airports, was built. The towers emitted low-frequency radio beams, and not until the beams were functioning on the Trans Canada Airway, beginning with the Prairies, did night flying become marginally safer.[9] All that remains today of the Morse signals that each station transmitted to identify themselves — UL for Montreal, FC for Fredericton, and HZ for Halifax, becoming YUL, YFC, and YHZ — are on luggage tags. On June 15, 1931, in the country’s first radio-guided flight, a Canadian Airways Fokker 14A was flown from Winnipeg to Moose Jaw. By 1936, with the Trans Canada Airway nearing completion (thanks to the Great Depression providing an expanding labour pool of unemployed men), the ability to fly by instruments alone was made mandatory for a commercial licence.
Major W.G. Barker with a wrecked Sopwith Camel, Italy, 1918. Barker was killed in 1931 when the aircraft he was flying also fell inverted onto its back. Library and Archives Canada.
But the crash that got the most attention that year had nothing to do with air mail, night flying, or poor weather — and everything to do with ego. On a freezing March 12 afternoon, a Fairchild KR-21 trainer (CF-AKR) took off from Rockcliffe, Ottawa, only to plunge through the ice of the nearby river almost immediately afterward. The pilot was none other than Wing Commander W.G. Barker, VC, DSO, the most highly decorated Canadian airman of the First World War. Unfamiliar with the limitations of the KR-21, he treated it like the Sopwith Camel fighter aircraft that had served him so well on the Western Front, but it didn’t have the Camel’s engine power and stalled as he put it into a steep loop. At about 250 to 300 feet above the frozen river, on the very top of a zoom, the aircraft slid backward and fell inverted onto its back, smashing Barker’s skull on the ice.
Aware that the press and public would be keenly interested in its report, the court of inquiry called by J.A. Wilson was scrupulous in its investigation. It examined the aircraft wreckage — it hadn’t burned — and concluded that the KR-21 had been perfectly airworthy before Barker had taken it up. Since the accident had occurred at the RCAF’s Rockcliffe air station in full view of several officers, there was no lack of competent witnesses. The cause of the mishap was ruled a judgment error on the pilot’s part: he had performed aerobatics at too low an altitude and had lost control due to too steep a climb without sufficient height to recover from the resulting dive. The court recommended that the dangers of aerobatics at low altitudes be more strongly impressed upon all pilots. Stunting, it seemed, wasn’t just confined to callow flying club students.[10]
Nor was death by aircraft exclusively for the famous. A well-worn HS-2L flying boat, a plane designed by Glenn Curtiss to protect American convoys from U-boats during the Great War, came in to land on Lake Superior at Pays Plat, 100 miles east of Port Arthur (today’s Thunder Bay). It was 4:30 p.m. on May 4, 1931, and the HS-2L was part of the Ontario Provincial Air Service (OPAS) fleet. Pilot Earl Hodgson had left Sault Ste. Marie at 1:00 p.m. that afternoon with Air Engineer J.L. Mewburn and had planned to land at the OPAS Pays Plat station to await orders. He brought the aircraft down from 2,500 to 800 feet and made a circuit of the shore to determine the water conditions prior to landing. The telegraph wires beside the railway track along the shoreline ahead were visible, and Hodgson had enough height to clear them … or so he thought. The telegraph wires caught the aircraft, tripping it up, and the flying boat crashed into the lake. Hodgson remembered nothing more until he was pulled from the wreckage. Mewburn wasn’t so lucky. He drowned.
The court determined that the cause of the accident was pilot error: Hodgson was attempting to land with insufficient height to allow the aircraft to clear the obstruction. The pilot admitted that he hadn’t consulted his altimeter prior to the approach. “With his length of experience of flying this type [of aircraft], it can hardly be attributed to lack of skill but is more likely the result of familiarity that breeds overconfidence,” wrote G.S. Abbott, the CCA inspector. “Pilots,” he added, “are reluctant to allow a sufficient margin for safely clearing obstacles, foolishly thinking that the successful accomplishment of an approach by a small margin is the stamp of a skilled pilot. One sees the same fault continually at aerodromes.” The court’s recommendation was that Hodgson be severely censured and that his licence be suspended for one month.[11]
The prissy “holier than thou” attitude of the investigating RCAF officers toward civil air accidents must be understood within the context of the day. Investigations of accidents didn’t extend further than collecting witness accounts, examining the damage to the aircraft (if it was accessible), and collating the injuries to the occupants. After the correlation of these data before a board of officers, judgment was passed on why the aircraft had crashed. The officers had neither the investigative training nor departmental budget to conduct a forensic examination of the wreckage. Loss of control because of turbulence, mechanical failure, or built-in structural defects weren’t considered. As a niche industry, commercial aviation in Canada didn’t warrant the political will, especially during the Depression, to assign appropriate resources to its accidents. Instead, conclusions were based on answers to inquiries such as: Was the pilot a teetotaller, of good character, or prone to perform aerobatics? Did he always wear a seat belt while flying?
“The direct cause of the accident,” to quote an RCAF finding in one case of the period, “was, in the opinion of the Court, that the pilot allowed the aircraft to get on its back; then in that position, stall — and then fall into an inverted spin, from which he failed to recover in the height available.” In another case, the officer’s prose to describe the contributory cause of a crash hints of an elegant, understated weariness: “The Court assumes that safety belts were not worn on the flight which terminated in the accident under investigation. In the inverted position which the aircraft took up, the difficulties of control would be complicated by the endeavours of the pilots to prevent themselves from falling out of the aircraft.”[12] All that air force officers had to go by were the Air Regulations, and blaming the pilot — who was usually conveniently dead — for contravening them sufficed.
With the onset of the Depression, Prime Minister R.B. Bennett cancelled all air mail contracts, reasoning that government funds could be better spent elsewhere. In response, to educate the public that aviation was more skill and careful attention to aerodynamics than derring-do, the first Trans-Canada Air Pageant was set up in 1931. Launched in Hamilton, Ontario, on Dominion Day that year, the pageant was to travel across the country and parts of the Midwestern United States with 26 flying displays before it returned home on September 12. Pageants weren’t about stunt flying, danger, or risk-taking. Instead, they showcased the latest in aircraft and flying schools, with the most exciting flying being a carefully rehearsed formation flight by the RCAF. Their emphasis was that flying would soon become a means of transportation as safe and commonplace as taking a train.
A formation flight over Hamilton that July 1 morning by all the aircraft involved opened the first pageant. One of the aircraft that had been in the flypast was a Travelair SA 6000-A (CF-AIB). Flown by H.M. Stirling, the plane was part of a demonstration flight and carried four sightseers to the show. The other pilots in the air show saw it returning to the airport around noon and then dive to within 20 feet of the ground near the Motion Picture News truck. The pilot then opened his throttle and pulled up in what RCAF Flying Officer A.L. James called a “gentle zoom.” Just as the aircraft changed altitude, a ripple was seen running