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September/October 2000 issue

NEXT TIME AIR CANADA squeezes you into a tight row of seats with no knee or elbow room, count your blessings. There was a time, not so long ago, when air travellers were handed chewing gum, wads of cotton batten and a cup. The gum helped equalize pressure on the eardrum, the cotton was to protect your hearing, and the cup was for queasy stomachs.

Despite the discomforts, Canadians have embraced air travel with a passion. We use airplanes to extinguish fires, deliver emergency supplies, carry the mail, link remote communities, patrol our coastal waters and fly to grandmother's place in the old hometown. Per capita, we own or fly more airplanes than any other people in the world.

Our story on the history of flight in Canada was researched and written by associate editor Mary Vincent, who comes by her interest in aviation naturally. Her father, historian Carl Vincent, has written two books on Canadian aviation history. And an equally rich source of inspiration was the tale, oft-told within the Vincent family, of Aunt Marilyn Rideout, who is believed to be the first baby born in Gander, Nfld. Her mother had to be airlifted there in a yellow Fox Moth airplane from her home in Musgrave Harbour, Nfld., in March 1942, for an emergency appendectomy and the birth of her baby girl.

In one way or another, flight figures prominently in many family tales and is a vital part of the past 90 years of Canadian history. From the first flight to the first stewardess to the development of the latest commuter jet, Vincent's feature covers our long and storied relationship with air travel.

BACK IN GANDER, the defectors are few and far between these days. But it was once a small opening in the Iron Curtain for air travellers from the old Soviet bloc. Today, while Gander still serves as a refuelling stop for the private jets of movie stars and an alternate landing strip for Concorde jets and space shuttles, it serves a much more vital role as a skyway control centre. Air traffic controllers there are in charge of routing flights across the stormy North Atlantic. We sent writer Alan Morantz to the control room in Gander to learn about the sweet spot in the jet stream that pilots are eager to ride to early-morning arrivals in Europe.

SOME 321 YOUNG ATHLETES, their coaches and other members of our Canadian Olympic team were preparing to leave for Sydney, Australia, as this issue went to press. Let's bless them all with our best wishes. They are winners, every one; making the Olympics is an achievement of a lifetime. We will follow the competitions with keen interest. At the magazine, we tend to see the world in cartographic terms, so when we began considering a tribute to the team on our website we wondered whether there might be a map in it, and indeed, there was, or is. We have mapped the hometowns of all the Canadian Olympic athletes. Check it out, add your messages to the team, and look for regular updates on the site as the games unfold.

Rick Boychuk

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