While the controversy surrounding the federal government’s relief camp scheme was well-founded for its underpaid “slave” labour and remote poor living conditions, these facts do not detract from acknowledging the Trans-Canada Airway was completed by the labour of more than 160,000 men who participated.
These men gave their “blood, sweat and tears” and some their lives to clear land and build emergency landing fields and aerodromes across the country.
Although parts of the airway were already in place, for example Lethbridge to Vancouver and Rimouski to Montreal, the gaps by the relief camp labourers were filled in to create an aviation road map at intervals between 50 to 100 miles apart from coast to coast.
Two individuals stand out for helping to turn the vision of a national airway into a reality: John A. Wilson, Secretary, Controller of Civil Aviation, and Andrew L. McNaughton, Chief of Staff, Department of National Defence from 1929 to 1935.
Respecting the difficult times, social, economically thus politically, it was their drive, determination and political savvy that led to the airway’s undertaking and completion.
The Trans-Canada Airway and those that made it happen deserve to take its rightful place in our nation’s aviation history.
Background
During the Great Depression in the 1930s, the Canadian government led by Prime Minister R.B. Bennett implemented a make-work scheme for Unemployed Single Men in every province except Prince Edward Island.
In response to a perceived threat to Canada’s public security, Canada’s General Andrew McNaughton, Chief of Staff, Department of National Defence determined the relief camps would create work and keep the high and steadily rising numbers of reportedly close to 80,000 unemployed workers busy, out-of-sight and disinclined to organize a revolt.
Almost destined to fail before the military-run scheme got started it quickly became a political and media football with critics emerging from every direction. After all the Great Depression was a global economic downtown and could hardly be blames on one factor. No politician, I believe, no matter how skilled could have turned the situation around.
So what began as make-work lead to one of the country’s most historic examples of civil disobedience – the On To Ottawa Trek in 1935.
The camps and their workers, despite the extreme political and economic instability in the country and around the world, did make a considerable contribution to the nation’s infrastructure by pure blood, sweat and tears through 18,156,212 man-days (based on an eight-hour work day) of labour.
Can we label the relief camp scheme a complete failure due to the civil uprising it lead to? Were the efforts of the workers, the political leaders and the critics in vain? I argue a resounding NO!
Did the end justify the means?
Some projects began as early as 1932 but by the end of 1936 all were shut down after a federal election ousted Bennett, a Conservative, and invited Liberal, W.L. Mackenzie-King, to lead the country.
Trans-Canada Airway
While some camps were tasked with highway construction and others public works improvements like the Citadel and Port Royal in Quebec and Fort Henry in Ontario, the majority built either aerodromes or emergency landing strips. With rigorous planning and extraordinary labour, manual labour was predominately used, as stipulated in the relief scheme, to complete the goal of an Trans-Canada Airway from Halifax to Vancouver.
Wikipedia notes in History of Aviation in Canada that by 1927, a system of airways crossing the country had been proposed. The plan was to provide a major airport every 100 miles, with emergency landing strips every thirty miles, across the country. Airfields were equipped with navigational and runway lighting. Navigation beacons were provided.
During the Great Depression starting in 1932, many unemployed men were put to work clearing air strips with hand tools and horse-drawn machinery, as a method of providing some employment. By 1937, the airway system stretched from Vancouver to Sydney, a distance of 3108 miles.[21]
In Ontario 75 per cent or 31 out of the 41 relief camps built an airport or emergency landing field or both.
McNaughton’s scheme revealed a man of vision and opportunity. He now had the means (labour) to advance the nation’s air navigation system by completing the Trans-Canada Airway.
By the end of his term as Chief of Staff and that of Prime Minister Bennett, who on several occasions discussed with McNaughton his desire to shut down the politically contentious unemployment scheme, Canada was ready for civil and commercial aviation growth.
Trans-Canada Air Lines began by providing air mail service for government before launching its commercial flights in 1937.
When war broke out in Europe in 1939, Canada, still a member of the British Empire, was well equipped to support the allied war effort by sending trained pilots and ferrying aircraft across the Atlantic during WW2.
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The Madawaska Group - 1933 - 1936 