Magnetic North
Amelia Earhart was drawn time and again to Canada. Her experiences here set her on a path for a celebrated life — and a tragic death.
IN EVERY LIFE, THERE COMES A TIME WHEN A SINGULAR EVENT changes fortunes or sets a new direction. For Amelia Mary Earhart, a young woman from Kansas, it came during a visit to Toronto in 1917. While walking on King Street with her sister Muriel, she saw four soldiers hobble by. Each was missing a leg, and they were holding each other up.
Shaken, Amelia ducked into a store, unable to watch the disabled men. Although the United States had entered the First World War in early 1917, the conflict had not affected many in her homeland. She later wrote, “four men on crutches … was a sight which changed the course of existence for me. There for the first time I realized what the World War meant. Instead of new uniforms and brass bands, I saw men without arms and legs, men who were paralyzed and men who were blind.”
During her 1917 Christmas break, Earhart had been visiting her younger sister, who was enrolled at St. Margaret’s College in Toronto. She was due to return to her college preparatory courses at Ogontz School in Rydal, Pennsylvania, a suburb of Philadelphia, in the new year. Instead, the sight of the wounded returning soldiers made such an impression on Earhart that she decided to stay in Toronto so that she could help the war effort. She completed courses in first aid and home nursing at the St. John Ambulance Brigade, becoming the sole American to enroll in wartime for the VAD (Volunteer Aid Detachment).
This sudden change of course was not unusual for Earhart. She was a gifted student, but flagging family finances resulted in constant upheaval and her being shuffled to six high schools in four years. Abby Sutherland, her headmistress at Ogontz, recognized her student’s unique talents: “Amelia was always pushing into unknown seas in her thinking, her reading and in experiments in science….” Sutherland mused that Amelia might become a scientist, doctor, or engineer.
In Toronto, her patients called her “Sister Amelia.” Her first assignment was at the children’s ward of the Victoria Memorial Hospital in Toronto, where Earhart was present when a child was undergoing a tonsillectomy. She thought she would be upset at the bloody operation. Instead, she found it “interesting.”
Her next posting, in April 1918, was at the Spadina Military Convalescent Hospital. The hospital’s 233 beds were predominantly occupied by soldiers with poison gas burns, shrapnel in the lungs, tuberculosis, and shell shock. Many had fought in Europe at Vimy Ridge or Passchendaele.
Sister Amelia was well-received by her patients, some of whom called her the “American girl.” Working twelve-hour days, six days a week, she emptied bedpans, made beds, served food, delivered medicine, washed patients, and worked in the kitchen. She even used her winnings from penny games to treat her patients to ice cream. Later on, she also worked in the laboratory preparing slides and cultures.
“I spent a great deal of time in the diet kitchen and later in the dispensary, because I knew a little chemistry,” she wrote. “Probably the fact that I could be trusted not to drink up the medical supply of whiskey counted more than the chemistry.”
At times, Sister Amelia played the role of “merry sunshine,” giving back rubs, wheeling her patients out of the hospital, and writing letters home for the soldiers. Earhart, who identified as a pacifist, never forgot the experience.
On days off, she and her sister Muriel, both of them expert riders from childhood, rented horses from a stable. Muriel recollected that her sister conquered one fiery steed called Dynamite with an artful mix of carrots, sugar lumps, and a firm hand on the reins. After this, the stable owner invited Amelia to ride without charge.
While riding Dynamite, Earhart met a Captain Spaulding, a pilot and officer in the Royal Flying Corps. One day, he invited the Earhart sisters to accompany him to Armour Heights, a military airfield outside of Toronto, to watch training planes take off and land. Amelia was close enough to feel the sting of snow kicked up by the aircraft as the pilots gunned their engines.
Earhart tried to get permission to go up but failed, so she did “the next best thing.” She got to know the young fliers, listening to their exciting stories of bad weather and air battles. “My imagination soared … as high as their aircraft,” she said.
In September 1918, Earhart took a girlfriend to see the air show at the Canadian National Exhibition (CNE) grounds. The pair took up a position at a clearing far from the crowd.
Earhart later recalled, “The [pilot] was bored. He looped and rolled and spun and finished his little bag of tricks and there was nothing left to do but watch the people on the ground running as he swooped close to them. That’s when he saw us in the clearing. He dove. I remember the mingled fear and pleasure that surged over me as I watched that small plane at the top of its earthward swoop.”
As the plane approached, her friend skittered away; but Earhart stood her ground, transfixed: “I did not understand it at the time but I believe that little red airplane said something to me as it swished by.”
She continued her work at the Spadina hospital during the worldwide influenza epidemic in the summer of 1918. “When the influenza epidemic struck town, I was one of the few volunteers permitted to be on night duty,” she wrote. “I was transferred to a pneumonia ward and helped to ladle out medicine from buckets in the overcrowded wards of the institution.”
Earhart herself contracted pneumonia. More seriously, she was bedridden with a serious pneumococcal bacterial infection of her frontal antrum (sinus). This condition would afflict her throughout her flying career. Changes in air pressure during flights were especially painful. Antibiotics had yet to be invented, so opening and draining her sinus cavities was the only treatment available. These “washings out,” as Earhart called them, were agonizing and only partially effective, leaving her, at times, a semi-invalid.
On November 11, 1918, the armistice was signed and jubilant residents of Toronto took to the streets. But Earhart, who was bedridden, was in no mood to celebrate. Her
thoughts were with the battered bodies and twisted minds of her patients, who didn’t hear “a serious word of thanksgiving in all that hullabaloo.”
In February 1919, Earhart left Toronto for Northampton, Massachusetts, to join Muriel. Her time in Toronto had left her with “a yen for medicine.” After enrolling in a premedical program at Columbia University in New York City, Earhart prepared for a career as a doctor.
Her plans changed in 1920 when she moved to California to be with her family. Her father, Edwin Earhart, who had temporarily won his battle with alcoholism, asked his wife, Amy, to join him in Los Angeles, where he was practising law. Amelia and her sister arrived during the summer to begin a short-lived family reconciliation.
While in Los Angeles, Earhart and her father attended an air show at nearby Long Beach’s Daugherty Field. There she confessed to him that she had always wanted to fly. In response, Edwin paid ten dollars for a ten-minute flight, piloted by well-known aviator Frank Hawks. Hawks cautiously placed a male passenger in the front cockpit with Earhart, fearing that she might panic once in the air. He need not have worried. “By the time I had got two or three hundred feet off the ground [sixty to ninety metres], I knew I had to fly,” she said later.
In California, Earhart worked as a photographer, truck driver, and stenographer at the local telephone company. With some help from her mother, she scraped together one thousand dollars for flying lessons with famed female aviator Anita Snook.
On her twenty-fifth birthday, six months after her first flight, Earhart purchased a used Kinner Airster — an open-cockpit, single-engine biplane — that she nicknamed the Canary. On October 22, 1922, in an air meet at Rogers Field in Chester, California, Earhart set a world altitude record for women pilots, climbing to fourteen thousand feet without oxygen.
By 1924, however, she was temporarily grounded due to financial hardships caused by her parents’ divorce. She sold the Canary and, with her mother in tow, relocated from California to Boston, where her sister was a teacher. Amelia took a job as a counsellor at Denison House, a Boston settlement house that served immigrants and the poor. She was able to pursue her flying hobby on weekends, gaining a modest reputation among local aviators.
Life seemed to have settled in to a comfortable pace for Earhart when the world became “Lindy” crazed in 1927. American Charles Lindbergh had flown the Atlantic solo to capture the Ortiz Prize for a flight from New York to Paris. There was now public interest in who would be the first woman to complete a transatlantic flight.
Among those interested in being first was wealthy socialite Amy Phipps Guest. Guest had already purchased a plane, the
Friendship, a Fokker tri-motor seaplane outfitted with floats and once owned by U.S. Admiral Richard Byrd. Pilot Wilmer “Bill” Stultz and mechanic and co-pilot Louis Edward “Slim” Gordon were lined up to fly the Friendship. However, at the last minute Guest had to back out due to her family’s objections.
The search for a woman to replace Guest fell to George Palmer Putnam, a publisher, writer, and sometime adventurer, and Captain H.H. Railey, who acted as a go-between. Guest had stipulated that the person to whom she would yield must be representative of American women.
Unbeknownst to Earhart, who had not given the notion a passing thought, her name was at the top of the list. When a phone call interrupted her during rehearsals for a class play at Denison House, her response was, “Ask whoever is calling, to try again later.” The caller was persistent, saying, “Hello. You don’t know me but my name is Railey … Captain H.H. Railey.” With that call in April 1928, Earhart’s life changed forever.
A few months later, she was in Boston harbour, on board the Friendship as both passenger and, nominally, captain. Two attempts to take off failed because of bad weather. The third and final try on June 3, 1928, nearly ended in tragedy, with the cabin door swinging open during takeoff. As a heavy gas can rolled towards the door, Earhart jumped on it to prevent it from falling out but nearly toppled out of the plane herself. Gordon jumped up from his seat and dragged her to safety.
The flight was supposed to remain a secret, so as to stay ahead of other female aviators who were planning similar feats. However, Putnam, conscious of the value of publicity, was on the phone to reporters as soon as the Friendship left Boston.
The Friendship was supposed to fly to the departure point at Trepassey, Newfoundland, but was diverted to Halifax, Nova Scotia, due to thick fog. They hoped to stay incognito, but two Halifax Chronicle journalists dogged Stultz and Gordon far into the night while Earhart hid in a third-floor room of the Thorndyke Hotel in Dartmouth, across the harbour. The next morning, the reporters found the crew at a Chinese restaurant at the Thorndyke, where they took pictures and conducted interviews. It was Earhart’s first brush with international fame.
On June 4, 1928, they flew in to Trepassey. There they waited for twelve days as strong gales and thick fog made takeoff impossible. During that time, Earhart — who cut a bold figure in her broadcloth breeches, high boots, leather flight jacket, and silk scarf — became a local celebrity. She boarded with hoteliers Richard and Fanny Devereaux and read to the children at the convent school.
The crew passed the time playing cards, receiving updates by telegram, and growing more and more dispirited.
The pilot, Stultz, began drinking heavily. They were worried because the delay had opened up an opportunity for two other female pilots to grab the honour of being “first across.” They learned that actress Mabel Boll, known as the “Queen of Diamonds,” had landed at the airfield in Harbour Grace, Newfoundland, on June 12 and was waiting out the storms there. As well, Thea Rasche, a German aviator known as the “Flying Fraulein,” was getting set to fly to Berlin from Long Island, New York. Earhart wrote in the plane’s log, “our competitors are gaining on us.”
The disheartened crew made a dozen attempts to take off from the narrow harbour. On June 12, growing more and more desperate, they spent four hours battling to take off. The “receding tide made the sea so heavy that the spray ... drowned the outboard motors,” wrote Amelia. “We are all too disappointed to talk.”
The crew tried again the next morning, but still the weather made their efforts useless. “The days grow worse,” Earhart wrote. “I think each time we have reached the low, but find we haven’t.”
Stultz’s drinking was worrisome. Earhart, who was authorized in a written contract “to have control of the plane … and of all its employees as if she were the owner,” decided to take actual control of the flight. On the night of June 16,
THE TRI-MOTOR FOKKER PLOWED THROUGH THE WATER, ROSE SLOWLY, DIPPED, STEADIED, AND ROSE AGAIN, WOBBLING UP THROUGH THE FOG, ONE WATER-DRENCHED ENGINE SPUTTERING.
she told Gordon her decision as they sat at the dining-room table. Stultz was in the room above them, drunk and feverish with a cold. They listened as he cursed and paced back and forth. If Gordon was willing, Amelia was determined that they would rouse the pilot the next morning, ply him with black coffee, and take off no matter what.
The next day, Stultz three times tried and failed to raise the heavy craft. Twice they dumped auxiliary fuel tins overboard, until they had only around 3,182 litres onboard. On the fourth attempt, the tri-motor Fokker plowed through the water for about three kilometres, rose slowly, dipped, steadied, and rose again, wobbling up through the fog, one water-drenched engine sputtering. They were on their way.
Blankets, books, food, extra clothes, and other non-essentials had been left behind to lighten the load. However, not long after takeoff, Earhart spied a whisky bottle, three quarters full, lodged between a rib of the fuselage and Gordon’s tool kit. Her first impulse was to toss it overboard, but, remembering the fights she had had with her father over his drinking, she decided to leave it there.
Stultz later recalled: “She was wonderful. She was on the alert the whole time. She was ‘all eyes and ears.’ Even when flying through the thick fog blanket she did not show the slightest concern.” Earhart’s photographs during the flight included one made on an overflight of the SS America near
Ireland, a photograph she shot from an open hatch in the bottom of the fuselage.
For much of the trip, they flew blind in fog and rain. With the plane dangerously low on fuel, Earhart finally spotted land. Stultz brought the plane down after twenty hours and forty minutes in the air.
“We’ve come from America,” Earhart said after disembarking. “Where are we?”
“Have ye now?” replied Norman Fisher, the high sheriff of Carmanthenshire. “Well, I’m sure we wish you welcome to Burry Port, Wales.” It was not long before they were mobbed by reporters and photographers. While Earhart downplayed her role — “Bill did all the flying” — it made no difference to her fame.
Within the next few days, Amelia was feted, she participated in a parade, and she met both Lady Nancy Astor, a member of the British Parliament, and department store magnate H. Gordon Selfridge. She also signed a book contract, purchased an airplane, and was given several trunks filled with fine, expensive clothes. She came back to America as a beloved heroine of the skies.
Yet, in her heart, she knew that she would have to prove her mettle as an aviator. After completing her first book, 20
Hrs., 40 Min.: Our Flight in the Friendship, Earhart began a series of public appearances under contract to publisher G.P. Putnam’s Sons.
George Putnam (known as G.P. to confidantes) marketed her image aggressively, promoting her through lecture tours and endorsements. These bolstered her fame and provided her with much-needed income. However, Earhart was reluctant to appear in an advertisement for Lucky Strike cigarettes, since she did not smoke, and only signed her $1,500 contract so that her crew mates would be paid. She was soon contacted by Cosmopolitan magazine to write a regular column on flying.
During the next years, Earhart set numerous flying records, and she solidified her partnership with G.P. when they married on February 7, 1931, at his mother’s home in Noank, Connecticut. A.E. (his name for her) laid out a severe caveat: “I must exact a cruel promise, and that is that you will let me go in a year if we find no happiness together.“They would stay together throughout her life.
Despite the nearly unanimous acclaim she garnered, Earhart strived to prove herself once more over the Atlantic, this time solo. She would again have to come to Newfoundland.
Early in 1932, Earhart decided to attempt a transatlantic flight, in her rebuilt Vega 5B, on the fifth anniversary of Lindbergh’s crossing. In preparation for the project, she took instruction in instrument flying and studied Atlantic weather patterns. A new P&W Wasp C engine of 450 horsepower and fuel tanks totalling 1,900 litres were installed. Earhart recruited mechanic Eddie Gorski and pilot Bernt Balchen, who acted as her instructor and consultant.
On the afternoon of May 19, 1932, Earhart, Balchen, and Gorski departed Teterboro, New Jersey, aboard NC7952. Balchen flew the aircraft, while in the back, Gorski was squeezed in behind the large fuselage fuel tank. Earhart slept there as well.
The trio stopped for fuel at Saint John Airport in New Brunswick. Although Earhart tried to remain in the background, Stuart Trueman, a local reporter, recognized her and conducted an interview. After a night’s sleep at the Admiral Beatty Hotel in Saint John, the trio came back to the airport in the morning and flew to Harbour Grace, Newfoundland. Trueman provided Earhart with a copy of the paper’s morning edition to carry as proof that she had flown that day.
On May 20, 1932, Amelia left Harbour Grace. Her minimal provisions included canned tomato juice and a few squares of chocolate. Around her wrist she wore her lucky elephant-toe bracelet, a gift from Putnam. She needed some luck, as the grass airstrip at Harbour Grace was on a plateau that left no room for error; a few seconds of inattention, and an airplane would be smashed against an outcropping or fall into the sea.
Thirteen hours and thirty minutes later, she landed at Derry in Northern Ireland, the first woman to have flown solo across the Atlantic Ocean.
After the landing, the newspaper she had carried slipped out of the cockpit. Robert Gallagher, the Irish landowner on whose field she landed, picked up the newspaper, which Earhart had autographed in small, neat print, and sent it back to the Saint John Telegraph in New Brunswick. It is now in the archives of the Canadian Air and Space Museum.
From that point on, Earhart was constantly in the news. Her countless public appearances included one in Toronto at the end of 1932. She had not returned to Toronto since her nursing days. This time she was delivering lectures to the University Women’s Club and the Canadian Club. Her presentations provided insight into her passion for flight.
Earhart admitted that she was not impressed with the first airplane she saw — a “thing of rusty wire and wood” at the Iowa State Fair in 1907. It was in Toronto where she found her passion. Recalling her experience at the CNE air show, Earhart concluded her speech by saying: “I think that I can attribute the beginning of my aviation career to what I experienced here in Toronto.”
She authored two more books and taught women’s studies and aviation technology at Purdue University. Then, at the age of thirty-nine, Earhart planned the most daring feat of her career, a circumnavigation of the globe.
On May 21, 1937, with her navigator, Fred Noonan, Earhart set out, flying as close to the equator as was possible. On July 2, 1937, they left Papua New Guinea on their way to Howland Island, four thousand kilometres away. They were never seen again.
By a trick of the atmosphere, ham radio listeners in Toronto received a message a few days later that sounded like an exchange between Earhart and Noonan. A newspaper report said the message was recorded by a “Mrs. Ernest Crabbe,” who transcribed on July 5, 1937: “Are you alright? ... Hold this line ... Do you think they got our SOS?”
Over the ensuing days, a handful of other people also claimed to hear messages from Earhart — but American naval authorities dismissed the transmissions as hoaxes. To this day, the true fate of Amelia Earhart remains a mystery.