In May 1947, a group of Winnipeg-based businessmen acquired the Canadian Pacific Airlines franchise for routes in Manitoba and northwestern Ontario to establish a new company – Central Northern Airways (C.N.A.). Key names within the C.N.A. ownership circle were E. Milton Ashton and F. Roy Brown, both well-known figures in Canadian flying circles each having …
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The name “Brown” is well-known and celebrated in Canadian aviation history. This is due principally to what has been described elsewhere as “The Curious Tale of Two Roy Browns” – Arthur Roy Brown of Carleton Place, Ontario, famous for having played a role in the downing of Manfred von Richthofen (“The Red Baron”), and Francis …
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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 …
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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 …
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