By: Rénald Fortier
Ingenium – Canada's Museums of Science and Innovation
A down to earth machine which could… fly – MHV Industries Limited / Modern Hover Vehicles Limited of Ottawa, Ontario, and its multi-purpose recreational hovercraft, part 3
Mar 9, 2025
Media
A typical MHV Spectra II recreational hovercraft. Anon., “Cosy Cockpit.” The Gazette, 6 November 1973, 23.
Good day, my reading friend, you are just in time to inflate the skirt of our time-travelling hovercraft in order to begin the 3rd and final part of this article on MHV Industries Limited / Modern Hover Vehicles Limited of Ottawa, Ontario, a defunct manufacturer of recreational hovercraft.
You will remember that, when we parted company, MHV Industries had received some good news.
Unfortunately for MHV Industries and the Canadian manufacturing industry, in August 1971, President Richard Milhous “Tricky Dick” Nixon, a not too honest person mentioned in many issues of our blog / bulletin / thingee since May 2019, imposed a temporary 10% surcharge on many foreign, and not only Canadian, imports.
Even though that temporary surcharge thankfully went bye bye a few days before Christmas of 1971, a fair amount of damage had been done to the Canadian economy – and to Canada’s relationship with its neighbour to the South. The unilateral imposition of that kind of measure was hardly the best way to make friends.
As might have been expected, MHV Industries was faced with reductions and cancellations of orders.
All in all, the firm produced only 100 or so Spectra 1s in 1971, delivered primarily to the Prairie provinces, thanks to Poundmaker Limited of Winnipeg, Manitoba, a far cry from the 30 or so machines a month it had hoped to produce that year. Incidentally, MHV Industries hoped to produce 130 or so Spectra 1s and / or IIs in 1972.
The Nixonian surcharge was not the only problem the management of MHV Industries was faced with, however. Nay.
Unfortunately for the Ottawa firm and, one presumed, quite a number of other Canadian firms, powerful economic players strongly opposed Bill C-256, or Competition Act, yes, the bill / act mentioned in the previous part of this article, and what was seen, in a somewhat hyperbolic manner, as an almost unlimited discretion given to the federal government to prohibit or threaten to prohibit a very wide area of business activity.
Indeed, that opposition was such that the Competition Act was left hanging on the official agenda of the House of Commons of Canada, in other words on the Order Paper, at the end of the parliamentary session, and this without a final decision having been made. In other words, the bill died on the Order Paper, in early January 1972, I think.
And no, a modified version of the Competition Act was introduced in the House of Commons of Canada at no point after the opening of a new session of Parliament, in mid-February 1972.
Incidentally, the political party which was in the saddle at the time held a majority in the House of Commons of Canada, but I digress.
Given the possibility that your flighty mind has already forgotten how a Spectra II looked like, please find enclosed a rather interesting photograph of that handy little machine…
A typical advertisement for the MHV Spectra II recreational hovercraft, made by Modern Hover Vehicles Limited of Ottawa, Ontario. Anon., “Modern Hover Vehicles Limited.” National Post, 19 February 1972, 34.
Observant like you are, my reading friend, you will undoubtedly have noticed the name by which our hovercraft manufacturing firm was known when the advertisement we just saw was published, in February 1972.
Sadly enough, yours truly does not know when MHV Industries became Modern Hover Vehicles Limited (MHV) of Ottawa. Sorry.
Was this name change linked to some sort of change within the management team, you ask, my perpetually curious reading friend? A good question. I wish I knew. Sorry.
And yes, the MHV Spectra II recreational hovercraft offered some limited protection from the elements to the Homo sapiens it could carry. Well, it offered that protection if a buyer actually bought the optional canopy, supplied by a subsidiary of an American photographic products giant, Eastman Kodak Company, namely Eastman Chemical Inter-American Limited of Don Mills, Ontario, in the borough of North York, near Toronto.
Incidentally, other options included a windshield wiper, extra gasoline tanks, a two-way radio and a… cigarette lighter. I kid you not.
MHV hoped to launch full scale production of the Spectra II in June 1972. Unit price would be around $ 2 950, a sum which corresponded to around $ 22 250 in 2025 currency.
By mid-March, the firm claimed to have received an order for 25 Spectra IIs and a commitment for 75 more, seemingly signed by the aforementioned Poundmaker.
The typical MHV Spectra II recreational hovercraft presented on the ice of Mississippi Lake, in Ontario, for the benefit of the fish and game chronicler and the financial editor of The Ottawa Journal of Ottawa, Ontario, Phil O’Reilly and Robert Urquhart Mahaffy. R.U. Mahaffy, “Test new hovercraft on Mississippi ice.” The Ottawa Journal, 11 March 1972, 9.
Eager to boost sales of its new product, MHV’s management contacted the fish and game chronicler and the financial editor of The Ottawa Journal of… Ottawa in early March 1972. Phil O’Reilly and Robert Urquhart Mahaffy readily agreed to take a spin on a Spectra II on nearby Mississippi Lake, in Ontario, not too, too far from Ottawa. They were impressed by the antics of the experienced MHV driver on site and by the 95 or so km/h (60 or so mph) achieved on the ice of that body of water, and this without so much of a hint of a seatbelt. Yee haw!
This being said (typed?), as versatile as the hovercraft obviously was, O’Reilly did not believe that this vehicle would replace the snowmobile. The Spectra II might, however, prove commercially successful.
Yours truly wonders if MHV’s management contacted other daily newspapers based in Ottawa and elsewhere in Ontario. I guess we will never know.
Incidentally, the Spectra II could reach speeds of up to 65 or so km/h (40 or so mph) over water. It could travel over land at more than 70 or so km/h (45 or so mph). Over ice or hard-packed snow, a Spectra II was allegedly clocked at 145 or so km/h (90 or so mph). Wah!
The word allegedly might indeed be appropriate. You see, the official world hovercraft speed record was set in September 1995 when the American racing pilot Robert James “Rocket Bob” Windt reached a speed of 137.4 km/h (85.38 mph) at the World Hovercraft Championship held in Peso da Régua, Portugal.
In any event, given the capabilities of its Spectra II, the management of MHV decided to set a world speed record, albeit an unofficial one it seemed, as no official world hovercraft speed record seemed to exist in 1972.
The Modern Hover Vehicles Limited pilot Henry Tom at the wheel of the MHV Spectra II he had used in early April 1972 to set an unofficial speed record for hovercraft. Jim Robinson, “Man o Man gets off the ground with a hovercraft demonstration.” The Advertiser, 1 June 1972, S32.
And so it was that, in early April 1972, an MHV pilot by the name of Henry Tom reached a speed of 88.5 or so km/h (55 or so mph) on the ice of Mississippi Lake.
Before I forget, a team from the Division of Mechanical Engineering of Canada’s National Research Council (NRC), in Ottawa, thoroughly modified a Spectra II in the early 1970s, and this as part of an extensive research program centered upon its Cushion Air System Parametric Assessment Rig (CASPAR), a hovercraft used to test, among other things, a variety of skirt designs.
Another small hovercraft involved in that CASPAR research program, an air cushion vehicle apparently put together by the staff of the NRC, can be found in the collection of the Canada Science and Technology Museum, in Ottawa, a sister / brother institution of the magnificent Canada Aviation and Space Museum, also in Ottawa.
The management and staff of MHV got an early Christmas present in late October or early November 1972, in the form of a $ 100 000 venture capital loan from Ontario Development Corporation of Toronto, Ontario.
By the looks of it, however, the firm failed to obtain the $ 250 000 grant it had requested from the Program for the Advancement of Industrial Technology of Canada’s Department of Industry, Trade and Commerce.
Those sums respectively corresponded to $ 740 000 or so and $ 1 885 000 or so in 2025 currency, by the way. They were no small change for a small entity like MHV.
And yes, you are quite correct, my incredibly knowledgeable reading friend, MHV was indeed one of the firms involved in a trade mission which visited the twin cities of Minneapolis and Saint Paul, Minnesota, in mid-November 1972. Said trade mission was the baby of Ontario’s Ministry of Industry and Tourism.
Other products involved in that venture included items as diverse as handbags and swimming pools.
The management and staff of MHV got another early Christmas present a few days before that holiday, in the form of a US $ 200 000 letter of intent for 100 hovercraft to be delivered in 1973 to an important American boat manufacturer and distributor, Lund Boat Company Incorporated. This potential major American order, the largest the firm had ever obtained, was no small change for a small entity like MHV.
That sum, incidentally, corresponded approximately $ 2 125 000 in 2025 currency.
Would you believe that this deal was arranged in mid-November 1972 while MHV representatives were pressing the flesh in Minneapolis and Saint Paul? Why, you should. You see, Lund Boat was located in Minnesota.
Mind you, MHV also had a firm order for 25 hovercraft which were to be shipped to an otherwise unidentified firm in Iowa and another firm order for 25 hovercraft which were to be shipped to an equally unidentified firm in Australia. An unidentified firm in Brazil (!) had also signified its intent to order an as yet undetermined number of hovercraft.
Incidentally, the Australian order might or might not have been linked to the previous sale of a hovercraft to a gentleman from Sydney, New South Wales.
Things were looking up, were they not? Even so, MHV’s management readily recognised that the firm would need help, hopefully from the provincial and / or federal governments, in order to be successful.
You see, in late 1972, MHV had a grand total of… 12 workers which could produce 40 or so hovercraft a month, in theory. Yes, yes, in theory. You see, again, MHV and its predecessor, MHV Industries, had produced only 200 or so hovercraft between 1969 and the early weeks of 1973.
Incidentally, a breakdown of the firm’s potential customers as of late 1972 read as follows:
40% – fishermen, hunters and owners of hard to reach recreational land,
30% – power companies and conservation departments of emergency government agencies, and
30% – recreational users.
Mind you, another version of that breakdown dating from that time concerned potential future customers. It read as follows:
40% – people who could use an amphibious form of transport in their work,
30% – people who wanted to use a hovercraft as a recreational vehicle, and
30% – people for whom a hovercraft would be a status symbol.
As had been the case in the past, MHV continued to provide hovercraft to event organisers. In late May 1972, for example, a Spectra II was both on display and demonstrated at an exhibition of outdoors vehicles held in a large shopping mall in the borough of Etobicoke, Ontario, near Toronto.
In early February 1973, a Spectra II was demonstrated at the Belleville Winter Carnival, in… Belleville, Ontario. One could even argue it stole the show, but not in a good way.
You see, a loose bolt left in the cockpit of the Spectra II jammed its throttle wide open at one point. The local pilot of the craft, a Canadian, American and North American waterski kite flying champion in the early 1960s, I kid you not, could not prevent the hovercraft from running into rocks, on the shore of the Bay of Quinte, under a bridge. Joseph Roland Thomas “Ronnie” Bonneau was not injured but the skirt of the hovercraft was somewhat torn up.
By the middle of 1973, MHV’s distributor in Alberta and, I think, British Columbia was H.E.S. Land and Water Craft Sales Limited of Calgary, Alberta. Might this have meant that the aforementioned Poundmaker was no longer associated with the Ottawa firm, you ask, my reading friend? A good question. I wish I could answer it.
The oil crisis which exploded on the world scene in October 1973 changed the situation, everywhere and for everyone, and for the worst.
In reaction to the support given to Israel by the United States during the Yom Kippur War / Ramadan War / October War / 1973 Arab–Israeli War / Fourth Arab–Israeli War, in October 1973, the Munazamat al’Aqtar Alearabiat Almusadirat Lilbitrul, in other words, the organisation of Arab petroleum exporting countries, reduced its production by 5 %. Worse still, it intended to reduce its production by 5 % per month as long as the Tsva ha-Haganah le-Israel, in other words the Israeli armed forces, did not evacuate all of the Arab territories occupied during the Six Day War of June 1967.
The organisation of Arab petroleum exporting countries also imposed an embargo against the United States and other countries which supported Israel, but not really against Canada. In the United States, millions of motorists flocked to gas stations. Many of those soon found themselves dry. All over the country, there was panic.
The administration headed by the aforementioned Nixon was so shocked by what was happening that it briefly considered seizing by force the oil fields of countries such as Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, etc. I kid you not.
Let us not forget that, in October 1973, Nixon was mired up to his neck in the Watergate scandal. One wonders how the United States Congress and the people of the United States would have reacted to the news of attacks launched against Arab countries hitherto friendly to the United States by a president who deserved to be impeached. One also wonders how the United Nations Organization and the international community would have reacted.
In any event, the embargo of the Arab petroleum exporting countries was not lifted until March 1974. It was lifted despite the fact that the Palestinian populations of the West Bank, the Gaza Strip and East Jerusalem were still under the yoke of Israeli occupation troops.
More than 50 years later, in 2025, those same populations were still living in territories under Israeli occupation, and we all know what has been happening in the Gaza Strip since October 2023 (more than 45 000 fatalities, including more than 17 000 children), but back to 1973.
As you might have imagined, the price of oil skyrocketed between October 1973 and March 1974, hitting the Canadian economy hard. You see, at the time, the country imported large quantities of oil from countries in the Middle East and North Africa.
The dramatic increase in the price of oil significantly affected sales of recreational vehicles such as all terrain vehicles, snowmobiles and hovercraft.
In the United States, arguably the main market targeted by MHV, the price of a barrel of oil quadrupled in 4 months, going from US $ 2.90 in September 1973 to US $ 11.65 in January 1974, sums which correspond to around $ 29.25 and $ 117 in 2025 currency.
Since a barrel of oil is a unit of measurement corresponding to approximately 159 litres (35 Imperial gallons / 42 American gallons), the price of a litre of gasoline increased from 18 or so cents to 74 or so cents in 2025 currency. Once converted in Imperial measurements, the price of Imperial and Americans gallons respectively went from 80 or so cents to $ 3.32 or so and from 67 or so cents to $ 2.77 or so in 2025 currency.
Unless yours truly is mistaken, a litre of gasoline cost around $ 1.60 in Ottawa in February 2025, did it not, my reading friend? Would you not love to find gasoline at 74 cents a litre? But back to our topic.
Before I forget, that $ 1.60 per litre corresponds to $ 7.27 or so per Imperial gallon and $ 6.05 or so per American gallon.
And no, my reading friend, you do not want to know how much a typical American paid for her or his gasoline in February 2025, trust me. So, back to our story. Again.
All right, all right. The average price for a gallon of regular gasoline in the United States was US $ 3.12 in February 2025, a sum which corresponded to $ 1.17 or so per litre in 2025 currency. Are you happy now? I did warn you, you know.
Incidentally, a typical Spectra 1 could apparently run for 2 and a half hours on 18 or 19 or so litres (4 or so imperial gallons / 5 or so American gallons) of gasoline, which was not exactly a huge amount of fuel if you asked me, but I digress.
Yours truly found no information regarding what MHV was up to in the spring, summer and fall of 1973, or during the winter of 1973-74. If it was still in business in March 1974, its management could only have been horrified by articles published in some Ontario newspapers.
You see, a select committee of the Legislative Assembly of Ontario, in Toronto, suggested that the province and municipalities found therein should have the right to ban all terrain vehicles, trailbikes, snowmobiles, hovercraft, dune buggies, etc. from wildlife, recreation, picnic and camp areas within their jurisdiction, and this if those vehicles were deemed to be a hazard to the environment or the pleasure or health of the people present in the aforementioned areas.
Worse still, the committee suggested a near total ban on hovercraft, which it saw as “a threat and nuisance to the safety and privacy of the people of Ontario.” Ow…
The reaction of the small Canadian hovercraft manufacturing industry was understandably and unanimously negative. The proposed ban would bring to a crashing halt research then underway to develop controllable, quiet and safe vehicles, research sometimes funded by provincial and / or federal government moolah.
In the end, however, Ontario’s Minister of Transportation, John Reginald Rhodes, decided not to follow the suggestion of the select committee, a committee where members of his own political party held a… majority of seats. He limited his modifications to the Motorized Snow Vehicles Act, a piece of legislation adopted in the fall of 1968, to the possibility that municipalities could ban snowmobiles from local roads. The modified Motorized Snow Vehicles Act was given royal assent just before Christmas of 1974.
Hovercraft were seemingly left off the hook altogether. By then, however, MHV had seemingly gone out of business, its assets sold to help pay back its creditors.
MHV might, I repeat might, have been officially dissolved in 1980. And so our story ends.
If truth be told, MHV’s story mirrors that of the 40 or so, if not more hovercraft manufacturing firms which have seen the light of day in Canada since the 1960s. Yes, yes, since the 1960s.
Let us not forget that one of the first, if not the first hovercraft tested in Canada got off the ground in early 1961, in Mount Hope, Ontario. Indeed, the Saucercraft of a retired Royal Canadian Navy officer named Adrian “Ade” Phillips’s was at the heart of an article of our blog / bulletin / thingee which was uploaded in March 2021.
And let us not forget either the hovercraft completed no later than November 1962 by a sign painter of Stamford Township, near Niagara Falls, Ontario, George T. Cocksedge, with the help of his spouse and their two sons, but enough for today.
Carpe diem, my reading friend, but stay warm.
Rénald Fortier
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