A nose cone from an Avro Arrow prototype is on display at the Diefenbaker Canada Centre.

The Diefenbaker Canada Centre is giving the University of Saskatchewan community a look into the history of Canada’s aviation industry.

The exhibit, called Touch the Sky: The Story of Avro Canada, examines the rise of and fall of one of Canada’s foremost aviation companies. Touch the Sky opened in late June and runs until Dec. 15.

Avro Canada was an aircraft manufacturing company founded in 1945 and closed in 1962. It is best known for developing the Avro Arrow during the 1950s.

“It’s interesting how much more there is to the company than the Arrow,” said Leland MacLachlan, a student interpreter at the Diefenbaker Canada Centre. “The C102 jetliner [that Avro created] was the first commercial jetliner to fly in North America.”

The Arrow was intended to be a purely Canadian fighter jet which would be well-suited to perform across the unique and varied conditions posed by Canada’s northern climate.

“For Canada, it should be a source of national pride,” MacLachlan said. “To create something so advanced in a field like aviation, when we have such a powerful neighbor to the south, is impressive.”

Despite the Arrow’s prototypes showing promise in testing, the project was mysteriously cancelled by John Diefenbaker’s government on Feb. 20, 1959 — a day now known as Black Friday in Canada’s aviation community. All existing Arrow prototypes were subsequently destroyed.

Avro Canada went out of business just three years later. The elimination of the Arrow project by the Diefenbaker government led to the loss of 15,000 jobs at Avro Canada and is considered to be the beginning of the end for the company.

The cancellation of the Arrow has been subject to controversy ever since. Some feel that the cancellation is the result of American interference or a government conspiracy. However, the Diefenbaker government stated the reason was in fact the cost of the program, which accounted for 40 per cent of Canada’s defence budget at the time.

Touch the Sky was developed completely in-house by the Diefenbaker Canada Centre staff. Curator Teresa Carlson took the lead in researching the exhibit and was assisted by students and staff at the centre.

Faculty from across the U of S also participated in the creation of the exhibit. Russell Isinger, university registrar and director of Student Services, wrote a thesis on the Avro Arrow in 1997 and loaned artifacts from his personal collection of Arrow memorabilia to be displayed in the exhibit.

The Diefenbaker Canada Centre also got help from the country’s aviation community. The Canada Space and Aviation Museum in Ottawa lent a nose cone from one of the Arrow prototypes to the exhibit.

“The museum community really supports each other. Everyone wants the next person to do something bigger and better,”  said Terresa Ann DeMong, manager of the Diefenbaker Canada Center.

Other artifacts were bought on eBay or were donated by private parties.

DeMong said the exhibit has been a big success. She added that since the exhibit opened the centre has seen a huge uptick in undergraduate traffic, especially through the exhibit.

The Diefenbaker Canada Centre will host a discussion panel on Avro Canada with faculty from the engineering and political studies departments at 7 p.m. on Nov. 20. The session is open to everyone.

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Photo: Deidra Aitken