By Kevin Rollason (Winnipeg Free Press)

POWERED aviation may have started with a 12-second flight by the Wright Brothers in the United States 100 years ago today, but in this country, a major chapter in the history of aviation came 23 years later when the country's first airline took to the skies.

And that chapter was written in Winnipeg by one of the city's most illustrious families.

Western Canada Airways was born in 1926, with $200,000 invested by James Richardson, already president of James Richardson and Sons (named after his grandfather, father and uncle), the largest private company in Canada, specializing in the grain industry.

Until Richardson died in 1939, along with his dreams of creating a national airline, he was a pioneer in commercial aviation and is credited by many people with helping to open up the Canadian North.

By 1927, his company's planes, emblazoned with a Canada goose, were flying to Churchill, Prince Albert, Berens River, Norway House, Moose Factory and Minneapolis.

In Richardson's inscription in Canada's Aviation Hall of Fame, it says: "In the annals of this nation's flying history, no businessman gave more of himself for less reward to the everlasting benefit of Canadian aviation."

For a young George Richardson, he learned about his father's airline business literally around the dinner table.

"It was dinner conversation at the time," Richardson recalled recently. "He'd be talking to my mother when we were told the conversations had to remain at the dinner table and never to say anything to anyone.

"I didn't realize history was in the making. It was just happening.

"My father was very interested in the airline. He thought it was the best way to advance the North. My father was far-sighted and visionary and saw the potential and that was it."

Richardson, who grew up to head the family's company, said it was during those dinner conversations he also learned why his father wanted to create a Canada-wide airline.

"He was very hopeful to end up with a national airline to keep the Americans out," he said.

A national airline soon took to the air, but it wasn't the dream Richardson had.

"His big disappointment was when the air mail contract was cancelled and what became Air Canada started," he said.

That was 1937. Two years later, Richardson unexpectedly died and during the war years the air company was purchased by Canadian Pacific.

Richardson was 11 years old when his father took him up on his first flight in 1935, a float-plane trip from Kenora to Red Lake.

"It was very exciting and very interesting. My father just wanted us to go with him."

But the bug never bit the younger Richardson to want to get his pilot's licence to fly a plane. And he laughed when it was pointed out that Air Canada could still use a saviour and would the Richardsons consider getting back into the aviation business to write another chapter in the country's air history.

But the Richardson family's flight legacy did bite the airway founder's son in another way -- for years he flew a helicopter from his home outside the city to the downtown office tower bearing his last name.

"I've been flying a helicopter for 40 years. For my use it's more practical -- you don't need a landing strip."

Richardson said a lot of his father's airline records were only saved for historians because of a fluke errand.

"I forget the reason, but in the late 1940s I had to go (to the WCA's former) offices to get something for my mother in the basement. The janitor took me to where the old wood furnaces were. The company's records were there, but whenever the fire went out he would take some records and throw it in.

"The next day, a truck went there to get the records."

Many of Richardson's aviation employees have passed on, but those still around remember with fondness the man and his company.

Reg Nichols, 88, said he spent four years as an apprentice at the company's Brandon Avenue facility as a flight engineer starting in 1936.

"It was a really good place to be," Nichols said.

"We had such good talent there from our foreman to our president. They did everything so good.

"But we were supposed to get the mail run across Canada," but instead the federal government gave it to Trans-Canada Airlines, the predecessor to Air Canada, he said.

"We were relying on getting the mail. We had the men and brains.

"But then we lost some good people to Trans-Canada. And in 1942, CP Air took us over."

Nichols remembers the elder Richardson well.

"He was a very fair man. Every once in a while he came to Brandon Avenue just to see what was going on. He always talked to the guys."

Sixty-six years after the federal government made its decision, Nichols says he knows what choice it should have made.

"Mr. Richardson should have got the mail run. He was already in that business and he had men to operate it. The men with Trans-Canada were practically new guys in the business."

Don Whellams, 90, worked as a mechanic at the Brandon Avenue facility from 1935 until the Second World War broke out.

"I didn't meet the old man, but I was at his funeral," Whellams said.

"We had the old Fokkers, Fairchilds, Junkers and several other types of aircraft. I worked on actual planes that are now in the museum. We have four aircraft there that I worked on."

Shirley Render, executive director of the Western Canada Aviation Museum and author of the book Double Cross, detailing the history of James Richardson and his airline and how the federal government did in his airline, said his company really did blaze a trail.

"It was the first company in Canada set up in a businesslike way to be run to open up and develop the North by airplane," Render said.

"He was a grain man who saw beyond the grain industry."

The original landing site for float planes was on the Red River at Brandon Avenue, but the company's operations later shifted to what is now the headquarters of Poulin's Pest Control Services in St. Boniface, before ending up at Stevenson Field, which was named after the bush pilot Frederick Stevenson, a Western Canada Airways pilot who died in a crash in 1928. Stevenson Field later became the Winnipeg International Airport.

"The irony of it all is the museum is actually in the Trans-Canada Airlines' first building so the Richardson aircraft we have are in his competitor's hangar."

Render said one of the most lasting legacies of the Richardson family's foray into aviation is the number of aircraft manufacturing companies still in Winnipeg.

"Bristol Aerospace, Boeing and Standard Aero are here because of our air connection."

kevin.rollason@freepress.mb.ca