In 1934, setting into motion a historic relationship, the Department of Commerce compromised the investigative function of the Aeronautics Branch when it renamed the branch the Bureau of Air Commerce.[7] For the real significance in the Air Commerce Act — evident in its title, wrote Mary Schiavo, the former inspector general of the U.S. Department of Transportation — was its commitment to promote commercial aviation rather than create an aviation safety program. That would require several air disasters to take place.
It came as no surprise that at the end of the Great War, Canada followed the Mother Country (and not its American neighbour) in how it regulated civil aviation. Prime Minister Robert Borden is remembered for ensuring that Canada was represented in its own right at the signing of the Treaty of Versailles in 1919. But being part of the British Empire had its privileges and entitled Canada to attend the 1919 International Convention of Paris. This historic convention on air law decided that each nation had absolute sovereignty over the airspace overlying its territories and water. And Canada had more than enough of both. Signatories to the convention, which unfortunately didn’t include Germany, Japan, or the United States, then rushed home to draft domestic aviation policies.
At a speed that must have made other governments envious, as soon as the delegates returned, they completed a set of Canadian Air Regulations that was drawn up and introduced to the Privy Council on December 30, 1918, and then approved by the governor-in-council the next day.[8] As with the British regulations, the Canadian ones conformed to the provisions of the International Convention of 1919.
The man behind this uncharacteristic bureaucratic efficiency was John Armistead Wilson, who is forgotten today in Canadian history. Born in Scotland in 1879, Wilson trained as an engineer before immigrating to Canada in 1905 to work for the Canada Cement Company. In 1910 he became director of stores and contracts for the Department of Naval Services and was later appointed deputy minister of the department. A rising star, he came to Borden’s attention in November 1918 when he wrote “Notes on the Future Development of the Air Service in Canada Along Lines Other Than Those of Defence.” Asked also to write the Air Board Act, he made use of his engineering and administrative skills to complete the first draft in two days. The legislation was introduced into the House of Commons on April 29, 1919, and received Royal Assent on June 6, 1919.
The Air Board was mandated “to supervise all matters connected with aeronautics,” including a Canadian Air Force (CAF) that was to be a non-permanent, non-professional force. The act emphasized that unlike road traffic, the new mode of transport was to be the exclusive preserve of the national government and not the provinces. The Air Board was granted wide regulatory powers over aircraft, pilots, mechanics, and air bases, and $250,000 was budgeted for its expenses. To control civil flying before technical officers could be appointed, the government at first attempted to prohibit it altogether and an order-in-council (P.C. 1379) to do this was passed on July 7, 1919.
As with the Canadian Aviation Safety Board (CASB) in 1984 and the Transportation Safety Board (TSB) in 1990, the members of the Air Board were political appointees. Appointed on June 23, 1919, the chairman, the Right Honourable A.L. Sifton, PC, KC, was from a politically powerful Ottawa family and was one of two Canadians who signed the Treaty of Versailles. The other members of the Air Board were O.M. Biggar, KC (vice-chairman and judge advocate general); the Honourable S.C. Mewburn, CMG (the minister of the militia); the Honourable C.C. Ballantyne (the minister of the naval service); Dr. R.M. Coulter (the postmaster general); J.A. Wilson (the assistant deputy minister for the Department of Naval Services); and E.S. Busby (chief inspector for customs and inland revenue). Unlike the appointees to the TSB today, no one on the Air Board knew anything about aviation or safety (who at that time did?) or had served in the First World War. But their government connections more than made up for these deficiencies.
The board was also mandated to undertake “technical research for the development of aeronautics and of co-operating for that purpose with other institutions.” For these duties the government was prepared. Prime Minister Borden had set up the National Research Council (NRC) in 1916, which now would study aerodynamics and aviation safety. Other government facilities were also pleased to provide services for the new mode of transport. Weather information for air navigation was to be collated and distributed by the Dominion Meteorological Service; its director, Sir Frederick Stupart, even had temperature, pressure, and humidity measured by Air Board aircraft at various heights from air stations across the country. The Government Radio Telegraph Service was put in charge of wireless qualifications for pilots and the issuing of radio licences. Similar arrangements were made with the Department of Marine and Fisheries for navigators’ certificates for pilots.
On June 15, even as the Air Board was organizing itself, two former RFC officers, John Alcock and Arthur Whitten Brown, flew across the Atlantic Ocean in a war-surplus Vicker Vimy bomber, foreshadowing the advent of transatlantic airliners and bombers.[9]
The Air Board first met on June 25, at which time, after consultation with the Civil Service Commission, the board’s mandate was divided into three sections, headed by Lieutenant-Colonel Robert Leckie, DSO, DSC, DFC (superintendent of flying operations of the Government Civil Air Operations Branch); Lieutenant-Colonel James Stanley Scott, MC, AFC (superintendent of the Certificate Branch — the licensing of aviation personnel, aircraft, and air harbours on land and water); and Major A.M. Shook, DSO (administrator of the internal office organization). This time, at this level, the government ensured that all senior personnel were qualified pilots and war heroes. Both Shook and Scott had been decorated, and Leckie, a future air marshal of the RCAF, had shot down two Zeppelins while serving in the RNAS.
In 1919 there were two reported aircraft accidents in Canada, but the only one to be recorded by the Air Board involved a pair of veterans. Flying a Thomas LFW aircraft on July 19, Lieutenant S.P. Kerr crashed at Portage la Prairie, Manitoba. He injured himself but killed his passengers, Lieutenant W.R. Cross and his own wife, Mrs. S.P. Kerr. The cause of the accident was recorded as “stalling close to the ground after engine failure,” but there is no record of a court of inquiry, nor were Air Board personnel sent to the site. Since the Thomas-Morse Aircraft Corporation of New York only made two-seater training aircraft, how Kerr packed two passengers into the second cockpit wasn’t commented on. Then, as now, the human factor remains the largest single cause of aircraft accidents.
A preliminary survey was begun by the Air Board that November to work out what public services could more efficiently and economically be performed by aircraft than by existing methods. Forestry, treaty flights, and photography/mapping were agreed upon, and on January 2, 1920, former RFC/RAF officers recruited for the Air Board were assembled in Ottawa. Regulations were published in the Canada Gazette on January 17, 1920, and made available at the same time, conveniently for aircraft operators, was a book containing not only the regulations but also the Air Board Act, the Convention Relating to International Air Navigation, and the forms to use them. The process of keeping records of every plane crash in the country had begun. Their causes were to be investigated by a court of inquiry, and recommendations were to be made in order to avoid future such accidents.
The formal investigation of all aircraft accidents, military and civilian, in Canada was assumed by the Canadian Air Force at its formation in February 1920. When notified by telegram of an air accident, a board of inquiry was convened by the local senior flying officer to investigate the cause and report on it. The findings of the boards of inquiry were forwarded to Air Force Headquarters (AFHQ), which performed a statistical and reporting function only. No recommendations were made concerning what could be done to prevent future such accidents. All aircraft now had to be certified as airworthy, with journey and aircraft logbooks kept up-to-date. As a signal that the day of the pre-war amateur aviator had ended, all pilots’ licences were to be awarded by the Certificate Branch of the Air Board — only after study and testing. The caveat was that the licences were only awarded on the condition that the holder would serve in the CAF, if called upon.