Canada's Contribution in Aerospace...?

Question

Hello,

I need to write a speech on Canada's Contribution in Aerospace.

If someone can provide me with some key points of information, i shall greatly appreciate it.

Thanks

~Tapan21

Answer 1

Here are a couple things to think about:

Canada's aviation industry got to work pretty quickly. The Aerial Experiment Association, run by the distinguished inventor Alexander Graham Bell, was a major player in aviation between about 1908 and 1912, when things were really getting going.

The first flight in Canada was made by one of the association's aircraft in the early spring of 1909.

A number of small manufacturing companies existed in Canada thereafter, and it is worthy of note that a huge number of training aircraft were built in Canada in 1917 and 1918.

The major bit of history for the Canadian aerospace and aviation industry came into existence during the Second World War, when a number of modern aircraft manufacturing plants were started or developed. They were at Montreal (Canadian Vickers),  Toronto (Victory Aircraft, which built the mighty Lancaster four-engined bomber as well as  the Canadian branch of the British de Havilland company), and at Thunder Bay, where Canadian Car and Foundry built huge numbers of Hurricane fighters and Helldiver bombers.

Postwar, Canadian Vickers became Canadair, Victory Aircraft became Avro Canada, de Havilland continued under its own name and Canadian Car and Foundry slowly withered away. A couple of high points in the 1950s were the construction, design and manufacture of the remarkable Avro C-102 Jetliner, which was five are six years ahead of comparable American aircraft, like Boeing 707 and the DC-8.

As well, Avro Canada built the CF 100 jet interceptor (imagine a clone of a F-89 scorpion, only with much better the performance) and finally the CF-105 Arrow delta wing jet interceptor. Before it was canceled because it's cost was spiraling out of control, it showed that it was a fine piece of engineering. Had better, more economical engines been available, then it might have been a "world-beater" that still would be flying.

The spotlight for the next 20 years shifts to two companies: de Havilland and Canadair. The former built a very lucrative business building single- and twin-engined transports, while Canadair built sophisticated jet aircraft under license and also designed some of its own interesting machines, such as and CX-84 for Dynavert and the CL-215 waterbomber.

A discussion of canada's aerospace industry must include the ambitious satellite industry in the country (Canada was the third country in the world, behind only the United States and the Soviet Union) to build a satellite, Alouette 1, in about 1963) and it has developed many others since then.