Canada's Flying Heritage

This book not only records the significant events of Canadian aviation but also pays tribute to the forgotten flyers who flew by guess and by God or with calculating caution - for the sheer love of flying - in the early days.
'Pioneers of the Air' recounts the first tentative experiments with that overgrown monster, the flying machine - at this stage, the glider. Next come the Barnstormers, the first professional airmen, trying desperately to wrest a living from the air, pioneering in the field of practical flying as little more than vaudeville performers. These were the days of daring aero-acrobatics and tense and crowded air-meets.The First World War saw a tremendous advance in technical manoeuvres and in pilot skill; the first aviation school was established in Toronto, where the War Birds learned to fly. An unparalleled boom in aviation followed the war. Public interest had been aroused by the celebrated achievement of Canada's Air Force, and many young men, the restlessness of the war still in them, were obsessed bythe itch to fly again. The Dollar-a-Minute days mark the beginning of passenger travel and a steady increase in experimental flying, to bear its practical fruit in days to come. The next chapter is one of heroic enterprise - the conquest of the Atlantic and the spanning of the Continent. No less epic is the history of the bush pilots who invaded the untamed Canadian North.


by Frank H. Ellis
Published by University of Toronto Press 1st paperback edition 1981 (reprint) illustrated, index, appendices. 20x28 paperback, some light wear to extremities, yellowed, otherwise good.






Note:
"Long" descriptions, where shown, may have been taken from the book's dust jacket notes, and as such are relevant to the date of publication (e.g. any references to "new edition" "previously unpublished photographs" etc.) and not the present.

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