Note: Today is a Red Letter Day. One hundred and sixteen years ago the Silver Dart took flight over Baddeck Bay - the first flight in Canada. Sixteen years ago, we all celebrated the Centennial. This blog post is a compilation of my experiences during that wonderful year.
MONDAY, FEBRUARY 23, 2009
ALEXANDER GRAHAM BELL NATIONAL HISTORIC SITE, BADDECK, N.S.
He stands amid those gathered, graciously nodding at their good wishes, shaking hands
and smiling for photographs. He is outfitted to celebrate the day – a well-worn aviator's jacket and Cape Breton tartan scarf casually wrapped around his neck. Suddenly, the crowd quiets. A phalanx of dignitaries, politicians, and officials, dressed in suits, ties and crisp business suits are being ushered into the hall of hydrofoils, the room in the Bell Museum that can hold the biggest crowd. The official commemoration is about to begin.
But Bjarni Tryggvason isn’t interested in the ceremony. He scans the crowd, looks past
the officials and spies one of the Centennial of Flight volunteers standing near the back. He
almost takes flight as he bounds toward her.
“Where's Eleanor?” the pilot & former astronaut asks with urgency, looking for the lead
organizer. “'It's stopped snowing, and the wind has died down,” he says not waiting for an
answer.
“I want to fly,” Tryggvason says almost to himself. He looks impatient as people begin to
settle in for start of the official ceremonies.
It is Monday, February 23, 2009 – one hundred years since Canada first took to the skies
in a powered flying machine and Tryggvason spent the day before in spectacular flight, taking a full-scale replica of Canada's first plane the Silver Dart aloft numerous times before a crowd of a thousand happy onlookers.
But those were test flights. Today is the actual centennial anniversary with afore
mentioned dignitaries presiding over stamp unveilings and ceremonial flypasts of supersonic jets, all culminating with a lovingly built full-sized Silver Dart replica puttering over the ice. It was to be a fantastic moment if the years of planning play out right.
But it wasn’t looking good.
A snowy Nor’easter had rearranged flight schedules preventing the premier, the Governor General, and even the federal minister for Transport from getting to this auspicious occasion in Baddeck, Nova Scotia, the birthplace of Canadian aviation.
No matter. Because these ceremonies are not what will be fondly recalled in the distant
future.
There were no government officials on hand on this day back in 1909 either. But curious locals were there. Main Street businesses closed for the day. A wise Baddeck Academy school teacher cancelled classes, telling her students to instead go to the frozen lake top near Bell’s Beinn Bhreagh laboratory, where they would witness history. The black & white photo snapped of them chasing the plane on their homemade skates that day will be prominently displayed in future years at the Baddeck museum dedicated to the telephone inventor.
By 1909, Alexander Graham Bell had spent his summers and some winters in this tiny Nova Scotia village for a quarter century. In his laboratory notebooks leading up to February 23, he expressed concern about the safety of the expected crowd. How would they react seeing local boy JAD McCurdy flying past them in a powered flying machine? Would they excitedly rush towards the delicate biplane as it scooted down the ice? Bell instructs his laboratory staff to post signs at regular intervals along the ice, warning spectators to stay far from the path of the plane and not to run in front of it, should their excitement at seeing a man fly past overwhelm them.
THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 20, 2009
The excitement in Baddeck has been building since a huge tent was erected at the water’s edge of Baddeck Bay a week and a half earlier. All anyone was talking about was the Dart. The evening before the four-day celebration was about to begin, the village is buzzed by a CF-16 jet. As organizers work preparing a Welcome Centre for the up-coming celebrations, a sudden thundering sound erupts from over St. Patrick's Channel, vibrating the wooden timbers of the homes and businesses. Grown men and women rush like little kids to the window to look skyward. Revelers at the Bras d'Or Yacht Club stumble out onto the wharf to see what could have produced such a deafening noise in their normally quiet town. None of these people will actually see the jet, as it is out of sight by the time the sound has reached their ears. But moments earlier, three young children, who with their father are sledding behind the school, see the plane as it approaches. The kids, on sleds aptly called ‘Flyers’, jump and yell and wave. The pilot tips the plane’s wings to say hello.
SUNDAY FEBRUARY 22, 2009, 7 A.M.
By the time the winter sun had risen on February 22 in 2009 in tiny Baddeck, N.S. (population 945), cars were already lining both sides of the two-lane provincial highway known as the Bay Road for kilometers. Despite organizers attempts to bolster attendance for Monday the 23rd, the actual anniversary, Bjarni has been telling all and sundry that he will, in fact, fly on Sunday, a day earlier.
“Tomorrow,” he tells a journalist mid-morning Saturday.
“You mean Monday,” an organizer offers hopefully from nearby.
“No. Tomorrow. Sunday. I will fly at 9 a.m. If you want pictures of the flight, be there at
nine,” he tells the journalist whose eyes light up at the scoop.
At a celebration Saturday night, Bjarni addresses the crowd and ends his brief speech
with the same invitation – he will fly Sunday, February 22 at 9 a.m.
While people are bundling up to prepare for icy cold that will greet them atop the
frozen Baddeck Bay, others are already on site prepping the runway in anticipation of a flight.
The tent, where the Dart is housed, is a hive of activity. The members of the AEA2005,
builders of the replica, are tinkering and tweaking their beloved craft. Outside in the bright
sunlight, hundreds of people are lined up behind a bright orange snow fence. Hundreds more
walk the narrow two- lane roadway, scooting between parked cars when traffic approaches.
Conversations are easy between groups of walkers. All are excited to see the Dart
fly, especially here. Organizers, easily identified by their brightly coloured badges, race around coordinating an impromptu flight show. (‘On the fly’ one old-timer said with a smile as he watched). Reporters check their recording equipment and scan the crowd for possible
interviewees. Astronaut Roberta Bondar smiles as she is approached by a woman who
quietly asks to shake her hand while a small boy, holding a self-built Lego airplane, sports an
ear-to ear grin as he takes in the scene.
As the tent flaps are pulled back and the Dart slowly emerges, the crowd suddenly
quiets. The star of the show has arrived. The plane is towed to the freshly plowed runway that
stretches before the crowd. After some more tinkering, Bjarni takes his seat, gives the thumbs up and the Dart begins to move. Slowly at first, then faster and faster. But then, it slows, and it is obvious that something is wrong. The single propellor at its nose is struggling and the plane never takes off. As it rolls to a stop, the front wheel buckles and lurches forward. The crowd groans. The plane builders rush to the craft and perform on-site inspections. Soon, they happily announce they have a spare tire, and the flying will start shortly after the repairs.
Over the next - how many hours? - who knows - because time stood still that day –
Bjarni made five spectacular flights, each more impressive than the last. As he took the Dart to the sky, a flight show took place around him. Astronaut Chris Hadfield in his blue and gold Hawk 1 Sabre blasted overhead: two mighty CF-18's thundered past, all while the delicate biplane shuddered and shook its way past the cheering crowd, time and time again. Bringing history to life in a way few get to experience.
SUNDAY, JUNE 14, 2009
BADDECK COMMUNITY HALL (AKA THE WELCOME CENTRE)
People are outside, enjoying the delicious sunshine as they mill about the village, during this ‘Youth in Aviation Week’.
The Welcome Centre on the Main Street is empty, except for an older couple viewing displays. A gift shop clerk busies herself while two locals chat about the up-coming hay wagon tours of the Beinn Bhreagh property, the Bell’s estate that remains privately owned and is rarely opened to the public.
One of the locals, all dressed up in 1909 garb - a long woollen skirt, high necked blouse and large straw hat, is a present-day member of Bell Club, a women's group started by Mabel Bell in 1891 for the empowerment of women in Baddeck. A progressive and slightly radical idea for this little place at the time. The Club continues to this day, its mandate the same now as established by Mabel Bell then: ‘sociability and the acquisition of general knowledge’.
The Bell Club member greets the couple 'who have come all the way from California' for these special celebrations.
“How do I get on a hay wagon tour?” the woman from California asks. “My husband's grandfather lived and worked there with Mr. Bell a century ago.”
“My grandfather worked with Mr. Bell there too!” the Bell Club member exclaims.
For the next half an hour, the couple from California and the Bell Club member share their intertwined family histories.
When it is time to leave, they embrace, like long-lost cousins, with a promise to meet again soon.
A SEEMINGLY TYPICAL WEEKDAY, AUGUST 2009
Normally, on any random day in the summer I am dressed in a Parks Canada uniform and can be found deep inside the Alexander Graham Bell National Historic Site, talking to visitors, answering questions, delivering slide shows, and conducting guided tours. But at this moment I am outside, a brilliant blue sky overhead, a view of Beinn Bhreagh over my shoulder, teacup and saucer in my gloved hands. For the next 20 minutes, I am Maude, a fictional Baddeck resident from 1909, detailing what our lives are like with the Bell Family as friends and neighbours. My audience, also drinking tea from delicate teacups, listens intently as I speak of Mrs. Bell's women’s club and what it means to us (“We weren't suffragists yet!”) and Mr. Bell's odd habit of staying up all night and the time he used Mrs. Bell's fine Venetian blinds for a hydrofoil experiment. On this fine day however, there is a growing roar in the distance. It gets louder and louder until I can no longer speak over it. All eyes look skyward. It is The Snowbirds, Canada's aerial acrobatic flight team, five red and white CT-114 Tudor jets flying in a V-formation overhead. Twice they circle the village and the lake, passing over us. It is an unannounced visit and just as quickly as they appeared, they are gone.
“I believe I have seen the future,” I say as Maude and take a sip of tea.
SEPTEMBER 9, 2009, 2:20 P.M.
BADDECK ACADEMY, SHORE ROAD, BADDECK
It's a sunny September afternoon and all 324 students attending Baddeck Academy are
sitting on the grassy hill facing the school when ZOOM – three fighter jets fly past and shake all to their collective core. Nothing but silly giggles can follow that.
The jets – a CF-18, a CT114 Tudor and the F-86 Hawk One Sabre, fly in formation: the
larger CF-18 in the centre and the two smaller jets seemingly just centimeters off its
wingtips. The kids are jumping, yelling, vibrating with energy. The jets double back, swoop just over our heads and turn towards the head of Baddeck Bay. They are out of our sight from here, but we know they will soon be over the flight-path of the original Silver Dart. They will tip their wings – as pilots do, in honour of this wonderful location and its place in history.
They return. More swoops overhead and the noise begins to fade. The jets
are just far-off dots in the sky now. It is evident that the show is over for today, but no one is
being ushered into the school just yet. The older kids stretch out on the grass, laughing and
talking while the primaries and grade ones hold swinging hands and belt out 'Ring Around the Rosie'. Two kids with arms outstretched like airplane wings, circle each other, making 'zoom' noises as they joyfully play 'jets'. A yellow butterfly flutters past.
Just another day in Baddeck during this, the Centennial of Flight.
ALEXANDER GRAHAM BELL NATIONAL HISTORIC SITE
FEBRUARY 23, 2009
As the dignitaries take their seats among two gigantic 60-foot hydrofoil boats, the
volunteer with the yellow badge spies the manager of the Beinn Bhreagh Estate. Over the past few days, he has been plowing the kilometer-long runway on Baddeck Bay. This fact was just mentioned not 10 minutes ago in a conversation between the two.
“Bill! Bill! Bjarni wants to fly today. He says there will be a window of opportunity
sometime this morning when the wind may die down enough for him to do a quick flight. Can you get the runway plowed?” she asks urgently.
“Absolutely!” he exclaims, and he leaves just as the ceremony begins. At the front desk,
where all is quiet, a museum guide watches as Bill runs out the front door and into the raging
snowstorm.
Despite these efforts, a flight on the 23rd was not to be.
A week later Baddeck catches its breath and life returns to normal – restaurants and
hotels have closed their doors again until spring. The white tent has been dismantled, all the
satellite trucks, media personalities, air force uniforms and aviation enthusiasts are gone; only friends and neighbours are to be seen at the grocery store, the pharmacy and post office.
But there remained a kilometer-long airstrip on the frozen lake for the rest of that
winter, as a constant reminder of the celebrations. One bright and sunny winter day, a couple
of locals – one, with her five-year-old son, carried a basket of homemade goodies, a thermos of hot chocolate, fancy cups and a lace tablecloth, to the ice. There, in the middle of the frozen lake, in the middle of the Silver Dart runway, they had a tea party, toasting to two magical moments in time. And to the future.
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