Charles Willard
Image Credit: San Diego Air and Space Museum Archive
The first public exhibition flight in Canada took place on September 7, 1909, when American pilot Charles Willard took to the air in the “The Golden Flyer” in Toronto.
American Charles Willard was a 25-year-old Harvard graduate and race car driver when he became the first student taught to fly by aviation pioneer Glenn Curtiss. Willard took his first and only lesson July 18, 1909, and made his first solo flight on July 30, 1909.
The Golden Flyer was the first aeroplane built under the Curtiss name and the very first commercial aeroplane ever sold. It was acquired by the New York Aeronautic Society in the summer of 1909 to fly at public exhibitions.
The Society’s first request for an exhibition flight came from the management of the Scarboro Amusement Park in the Beach neighbourhood of eastern Toronto. Willard departed for Toronto by train with the airplane in three huge packing cases and arrived at the exhibition grounds south of Queen Street on August 28.
Few people had ever seen an airplane before or understood their landing field requirements. A confined space between some buildings was provided to erect a tent to assemble the aircraft but there was no space on the exhibition grounds for a proper takeoff area.
Willard decided to takeoff from an alley between some of the permanent the buildings on the fairgrounds that led to a three-foot drop over a breakwater on the shore of Lake Ontario. Since the alley only offered six feet of clearance on either side of the wing tips, Willard had 90-metre-long wooden trough built down the center of the alley to guide the front wheel landing gear to the waterfront.
Willard’s first flight attempt on September 2 ended in a splash when the front wheel started rubbing against the trough preventing the aircraft from reaching the ideal flying speed. The aircraft traveled a short distance in the air and landed in the water in the dark.
It required five days to dry out the aircraft and then Willard made a second attempt on September 7. This time the wooden trough was greased, and the aircraft rose into the air. Willard flew for about five minutes over the Lake Ontario but when he approached the shore for a landing, he discovered the beach was filled with people and he had to land in the lake again.
Willard is considered North America’s first barnstorming pilot and the flight in Toronto the first barnstorming exhibition, He was the fifth American to fly an airplane after Orville and Wilber Wright, Glenn Curtiss and Thomas Selfridge.
– Kenneth Schwartz
Today, students from Centennial College, Toronto Metropolitan University, Queens University, McMaster University, York University and the University of Toronto are working on collaborative DAIR projects, developing skills, and helping to build an even stronger aerospace industry for Ontario and Canada.