| There is a plaque at the corner of
Brentcliffe Road and Broadway Avenue in Leaside (Toronto), Ontario.
It was erected to commemorate the first airmail flight in Canada
which took place on June 24, 1918 - a flight that almost failed.
T he air war over Europe during WWI took
a heavy toll on pilots. More than a few had "touched the face
of God" and not returned to talk about the experience. By the
last months of the war, the number of recruits had dwindled
significantly. Captain Brian Peck volunteered to perform a
aerial demonstration over Montreal to spark the interests of
recruits to join the Royal Flying Corps. He, with a passenger,
Cpl, E.W. Mathers, flew a Curtiss JN4 from the Leaside Aerodrome to
the Bois Franc Polo Grounds near Montreal. His planned air
show on June 22, was cancelled due to poor weather. He planned
to return to Leaside the next day.
Two members of the Aerial League of the
British Empire, G. Lighthall and E. Greenwood, were determined to
make the Peck's return flight the first air mail delivery in Canada.
They had contacted the Postmaster General in Ottawa and were given
120 letters, with special stamps reading "Inaugural Service via
aerial mail - Montreal 23.6.18". Unfortunately the inaugural
flight was delayed until June 24 due to a heavy rainstorm.
When Peck wound up his plane on June 24, his passenger held the mail
on his lap. The plane lumbered down the polo grounds and
slogged its way off the ground. The extra weight added before
takeoff made the plane so heavy that it could not get above 40 feet
altitude. It flew so low that it had to manoeuvre beneath
telegraph wires and around obstacles. It burned so much fuel
that the plane was landed in Kingston where they took on regular
auto gas. The gas resulted in a sputtering engine and loss of
power. Peck landed again at Deseronto, less than 30 miles
later, to drain the fuel tanks and bring on a load of aviation fuel.
At 4:55 PM, after nearly 6 hours in transit, Peck landed in Leaside
and delivered the mail to the Toronto Postmaster.
For almost 45 years the reason why the
plane had so much trouble carrying the mail was hidden from the
public. In 1954, in his book, Canada's Flying Heritage,
Frank Ellis told the story. Prior to his flight to Montreal,
Peck was asked by a friend to bring back something for a wedding.
It was a time when Prohibition was in place in Ontario. Peck
had loaded his plane with cases of Mull Scotch.
By the way, on
July 9, 1918, Katherine Stinson
delivered the first airmail in Western Canada. She also became
the first female pilot to deliver airmail in Canada. |
