The de Havilland saga

My father George Shaw was a professional speechwriter for Federal Members of Parliament in Ottawa, Ontario. In 1986, he wrote the following speech:

    " It does not make economic sense for the Federal Government to continue to pump hundreds of millions of dollars every year into a corporation like de Havilland, with no hope of getting it back. In the first place, it was not a sound decision on the part of the previous government to purchase de Havilland. We don't believe that our government should be in the business of manufacturing and marketing aircraft, or automobiles, or refrigerators, or anything of the like. We don't believe that it is good policy for us to do something that can be done better by the private sector. As I mentioned earlier, our philosophy is to create a strong and stable economy that would encourage and enable the private sector to provide jobs.

     Our government placed de Havilland on the market, hoping of course that a Canadian corporation, or a consortium of companies, would jump at the chance to get into the aircraft business. We would have been prepared to make it attractive for a Canadian buyer to take de Havilland off the backs of the Canadian taxpayers.  We waited, but there were no buyers. And then we received an attractive offer from the Boeing Aircraft Corporation in Seattle, Washington, to purchase de Havilland. The terms of the sale were agreeable to us, and to Boeing, and so we announced that the sale would go through.

     The Liberals and the N.D.P. lost no time in accusing us of selling out the Canadian aerospace industry, and of jeopardizing thousands of Canadian jobs. As usual, their rhetoric was no more than that - just rhetoric. De Havilland has long been a world leader in the development of short-takeoff-and-landing aircraft, but the aircraft markets world-wide have experienced hard times in recent years. De Havilland, of itself, does not have the world-wide marketing organization it needs to sell enough planes just to keep its head above water."
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Ironically, back in 1968 my Dad was praising the accomplishments of de Havilland.
A de Havilland airliner was featured on a cover of Dad's magazine "Canadian Armed Forces Review":

Canadian Armed Forces Review cover page--December 1968.

 Canadian Armed Forces Review advertisement - 1968. The de Havilland aircraft factory can be seen in the background.

Another de Havilland ad in the magazine Canadian Armed Forces Review - 1969.

     By October of 2011 there were plans by the Federal government to demolish the de Havilland factory and bunker at Downsview, Toronto. Once a federal building is privatized, the building loses all heritage protection and status ---for example, the Kingston Prison for Women was a Classified Federal Heritage Building, and many of Canada's 1,000 government lighthouses were either Recognized or Classified Federal Heritage Buildings before they were "disposed of".
 There were plans underway to obliterate the Conference Centre in Ottawa, a former train station that is directly across the street from the Chateau Laurier Hotel. During the early 1980's I was a Conference Centre employee.

The Conference Centre in Ottawa, a former Canadian National Railway train station in Ottawa.

     The Canadian Air and Space Museum is trying to save the de Havilland building, and the museum had many aviation artifacts, including a full-sized replica of the Avro Arrow.
See my blogs from the year 2013:
      "Why Downsview Park should not be selling land to developers"
and
     "Parc Downsview Park is saving Canada's military and aviation history".

My father George Shaw talking to The Right Honourable John Diefenbaker, Prime Minister of Canada from 1957 until 1963.

George Shaw and former Prime Minister of Canada John Diefenbaker.