The first graduating class at Camp Borden.
Image Credit: Library and Archives Canada
The father of aviation in Canada was Scottish-born telephone inventor Alexander Graham Bell. After studying aeronautics for many years, Bell formed the Aerial Experiment Association (AEA) at his summer house in Baddeck, Nova Scotia on October 1, 1907.
Bell’s first step was to recruit two recent engineering graduates from the University of Toronto to join the AEA who had visited him in the summer and shared his interest in aeronautics. John Alexander Douglas McCurdy was the son of Bell’s former private secretary and Frederick Walker (Casey) Baldwin was an established family in Toronto. Then to round out the team Bell also invited Glen Curtiss, an American builder of motors and motorcycles and Lieutenant Thomas Selfridge with the US Army to join the AEA.
Under Bell’s guiding genius, the young men progressed step-by-step in designing and building the AEA’s four pioneering aircraft – Drome 1 through Drome 4. The work began at the Bell estate in Baddeck, but largely took place at Glen Curtiss’ workshops in Hammondsport, New York.
The first aircraft to fly was Selfridge’s Drome No.1, named the Red Wing, which Casey Baldwin flew for the first time off the frozen surface of Lake Keuka in Hammondsport on March 12, 1908. This was the first publicly announced flight in the US and Baldwin became the first Canadian to fly a heavier than air aircraft.
The second aircraft to fly was Baldwin’s Drome 2, named the White Wing. Baldwin flew it for the first time on May 18, followed by Selfridge the next day who became the first military officer to fly a powered airplane, followed by Curtiss and McCurdy.
This was followed by Drome 3, the June Bug, which was designed and first flown by Curtiss on June 21. The June Bug became one of America’s most famous aircraft when it made the first official one-kilometer flight in the western hemisphere in front of thousands of spectators and news reporters at Hammondsport on July 4, 1908.
The flight of the June Bug caught the popular imagination in the US, since all the Wright brothers’ flights had been made in secret and the first time the Wrights flew in public was in August 1908 at a racecourse at Le Mans, France, not the United States
– 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.