Aviation Stories

When Robert Starratt arrived at Hudson, Ontario, with his wife Iris and their children in April 1926, the town was little more than a train station isolated in the forests of northern Ontario.  Gold, tons of it, had been discovered the previous year, locked in the 2.5 billion-year-old rock of the Canadian Shield and thousands …

The first airplane to fly over Winnipeg took off from the Dufferin Avenue fairground on a July afternoon in 1911.  Among the observers was 14 year old Konrad Johannesson.  Konnie, as he was known to friends, snuck away from the crowd to get a close look at the Curtiss Pusher ‘flying machine’ and, before he …

Elisabeth ‘Elsie’ MacGill was determined for a career in aviation from the start. Beginning her studies in the 1920s, she became the first woman in Canada to graduate with an electrical engineering degree, and would go on to be first woman in the world to graduate with a master’s in aeronautical engineering. When MacGill was …

Ann Weetaltuk became Canada’s first Indigenous flight attendant when she was hired by Manitoba-based TransAir in 1958. Ann made a habit of breaking boundaries, both as a woman and as a person of indigenous ancestry, throughout her long and varied career. Some of our readers may even remember flying with Weetaltuk on TransAir Mainline flights …