Flying back through history
Former pilot’s new book launches today at Bell museum
He may have been an airline pilot for 38 years but it wasn’t until he took a writing class at Cape Breton University that Terrance MacDonald realized how little he really knew about his favourite subject.
A class assignment from writing instructor Paul MacDougall soon made MacDonald realize there was much more to know.
“During one particular class, Paul challenged his group to write a story about something that is already known but it’s not as well known as it should be,” MacDonald recalled. “That took me to the Wright Brothers — I discovered new things about the Wright Brothers that I didn’t know — that was my project and I presented it.
“So that started me thinking about our own Canadian team so I started investigating … and I just about fell off my chair when I discovered that the Silver Dart was not Canada’s first airplane. Here I am, a professional career pilot and I don’t even know this material.”
Before long, MacDonald’s tireless research led to the publishing of his second book, “Firsts In Flights: Alexander Graham Bell and his Innovative Airplanes” by Formac Publishing. That book will be officially launched at the Alexander Graham Bell Museum National Historic Site today and MacDonald will do a book signing at Coles in the Mayflower Mall on Sept. 30.
For MacDonald, the book is the culmination of his two favourite things — aviation and writing.
“My mother says that as soon as I could walk and talk, anything that flew — it wouldn’t matter if it was a little bird or a butterfly or especially if an airplane passed overhead — I had to stop in my tracks and look at it,” says MacDonald, 60. “I’ve been fascinated by anything that flies ever since I could remember. It’s been naturally a lifelong pursuit. I was a bit of a geek in high school. I didn’t
do what all the other guys did, chasing girls on the weekend, I would go out to the flying school and take flying lessons during my high school years and by the time I graduated form high school, I was already a fully licensed pilot and I was ready for my aviation career.”
He was involved in commercial aviation as a pilot for 38 years and when he retired, he continued to enthusiastically pursue his writing hobby. He soon discovered that researching the information was half the fun.
“I got into the history of this and became so fascinated that I wrote this book,” says MacDonald. “All I ever heard about was the Silver Dart and Baddeck and in fact, the Silver Dart was built in the United States and test-flown there first. Then I found out the first truly allCanadian aircraft that was built and test flown in Canada in order to qualify for the first airplane in Canada status was in fact the Baddeck No. 1. I had no idea. I found out there was the Baddeck No. 2 and there’s the Hubbard and there’s over 20 different flying machines that this team (Bell’s Aerial Experiment Association) was involved in. I felt so embarrassed that all I really knew was the Silver Dart.”
In additional to the planes, MacDonald says Bell’s overall contributions to aviation haven’t really received the credit that they deserve. Even Bell’s wife Mabel felt her husband’s contributions had been overlooked.
“As I dug in to it, I came across some written material that Mabel Bell always felt that the telephone overshadowed all the other great work that her husband did,” said MacDonald. “He did over 1,200 aviation experiments in his day.”
MacDonald believes Bell also spent at least 39 years involved in aviation research. Because of his strong scientific background, Bell was always analyzing and looking for ways to improve.
“Bell would take something and make it better,” says MacDonald. “He would look for problems and try to come up with solutions and make an existing item better. He wasn’t the first to work on the telephone but he made it best. He wasn’t the first to work on the airplane but he made it better.”
Bell’s team worked out ways to measure the speed of an aircraft properly and some of their discoveries are still used in modern aircraft today.
“There’s all kind of technologies that these guys had discovered that carry on today in the modern day airplanes and their work shows up in the flight decks of modern airliners. I know because I have been on these flight decks.
“I didn’t realize that the Baddeck team were the first to think about it.”
MacDonald’s book even has a chapter devoted to Dolly MacLeod, the first woman to fly in the British Empire. MacLeod is buried in North Sydney.