This content is archived.
Centennial Celebration of Canadian Aviation
Ottawa, Monday, February 23, 2009
I had hoped to be in Baddeck today, but Canada being the northern country that it is, the weather conditions in Nova Scotia would not have allowed us to land.
My thoughts and best wishes are with you and with everyone in Baddeck who worked so hard to commemorate an event that changed the course of history in their village, in Canada and in the world.
It was in Baddeck, one hundred years ago today, that an inventor’s dream took flight.
Pulled onto the ice by a team of horses and followed closely behind by villagers wearing skates, the Silver Dart took to the air, to the astonishment of those who had gathered for the occasion.
It was the first powered, manned, heavier-than-air flying machine to leave Canadian soil and to fly over it for several hundred metres.
It was a daring, and not to mention dangerous, undertaking: the Silver Dart was made out of steel tubes, bamboo, tape, steel cables and wood, as you can see by the replica on display here at the Museum.
It had no brakes and was apparently extremely difficult to control.
The team that attempted to recreate that historic moment yesterday knows a little something about that!
Exactly fifty years ago, another team sought to recreate what Bell and the Aerial Experiment Association achieved.
The attempt was more or less successful, which further emphasizes how daring an adventure this is.
But Alexander Graham Bell had been passionate about the idea of flying since childhood, and nothing would stop him from defying the law of gravity, even if it meant burning his wings like Icarus in the Greek legend.
Even now, we marvel at what Bell and his companions accomplished without the knowledge that we have today.
Bell’s wife, Mabel, had these words to describe that historic event:
“Everybody came. School was let out and the children brought their skates. When the Silver Dart lifted off the ice, they cheered and tossed hats and mittens into the air.”
What Bell achieved that day, with the help of four young men who shared his passion and with the support of his wife, formed the basis of aeronautics as we know it today.
Of course, the turn of the 20th century was the ideal backdrop to give wings to the man who had invented the telephone 33 years earlier.
It was a time of rapidly evolving science and unprecedented progress; a time when the horizons of human genius were finally opening to a boundless universe.
Bell was said to be obsessed.
He even joked that he was suffering from “a bad attack of flying machines.”
This marked the beginning of Canada’s great aviation story, which we are commemorating this year from coast to coast to coast.
As the saying goes, necessity is the mother of invention.
And so it was, that in a time of war, Canadian aviation really took off, reaching new heights and producing some of our greatest pilots, whose exploits have become legendary.
Consider, for example, the noble past and reputation for excellence of Canada’s Air Force, celebrating its 85th anniversary this year. As commander-in-chief, I have often had the opportunity to witness the exemplary work of the members of the Air Force.
After the First World War, many of our experienced pilots put their talents to use in exploring regions that were difficult to access—like the North—and that were little-known at that time.
The small aviation societies that were formed became the precursors of the airlines we know today.
But it was following the Second World War that commercial aviation really began to soar.
We owe Alexander Graham Bell a debt of thanks for shrinking the distances between us, for bringing us closer together, be it over the airwaves or through the air.
Bell gave shape to the dream that humanity had cherished since the dawn of time: the dream of flying.
Big dreams do take flight. What had once been thought a miracle is today a reality for travellers worldwide.
The Silver Dart is the irrefutable proof that nothing is impossible.
It is proof that imagination is as infinite as the sky.
It is proof that sometimes a dream is all it takes to give history an unexpected, unforeseen and wonderful turn.
Thank you for welcoming me to your absolutely magnificent museum.
Only here, in this museum, can we fully appreciate how far we have come from the Silver Dart to today’s modern aircraft.
Thank you very much.