“Flying through an eclipse, from a flying point of view, is just an ordinary job of work;” Or, How the Royal Canadian Air Force captured the total eclipse of the Sun of 24 January 1925 – and some extra stuff about that event, part 2
Greetings to you, my reading friend. Yours truly hopes that the vagaries of life have not eclipsed your interest in the total eclipse of the Sun which took place on 24 January 1925.
You will of course remember that, when I cast you adrift last week, we were about to find out what the management of a renowned Canadian daily newspaper, The Toronto Daily Star of… Toronto, Ontario, planned to do about that celestial event, after discovering that local civilian pilots were not too keen at the idea of taking to the sky with a journalist or photographer on that day.
Said management then wondered if Royal Canadian Air Force (RCAF) aviators based in Camp Borden Air Station, southwest of Barrie, Ontario, might be able to carry aloft one of its photographers. After all, the pilots stationed on that air station, the only flying training air station in Canada at the time, flew 12 months a year. Only gales and snowstorms kept their aircraft on the ground.
Mind you, the ever present risk of frostbite tended to keep the length of wintertime flights fairly short.
In mid-January, a representative of the newspaper paid a visit to the building, in downtown Ottawa, which housed the Department of National Defence and the headquarters of the Canadian Militia, the service under which the RCAF fell at the time.
A brief digression if I may. The building in question was the Woods building. Logically enough, said building was named after the individual and firm responsible for its construction. Founded in Ottawa in 1885 by the Canadian James William Woods under the name Woods Manufacturing Company, Woods Manufacturing Company Limited, a corporate identity adopted in March 1918, quickly became the most successful outdoor supply firm in Canada, if the not the British Empire / Commonwealth.
Factories located in 3 Canadian provinces (Québec, Ontario and Manitoba) produced all but revolutionary tents, sleeping bags and other items which were known around the globe. Used by the British and Canadian troops sent to South Africa to fight in the Anglo–Boer War / Boer War / Second Boer War / South African War / Transvaal War of 1899-1902, Woods tents were also made in huge numbers during the First World War, thus ensuring the fortune of the firm and its founder.
Mind you, Woods Manufacturing supplied some of the most famous voyages of exploration of the early 20th century, from the first successful crossing of the Northwest passage, a near mythical Arctic sea route between the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans, in 1903-06, by the Norwegian polar explorer Roald Engelbregt Gravning Amundsen and his team to the 1925 James Simpson-Roosevelt Asiatic Expedition sponsored by the Field Museum of Natural History of Chicago, Illinois, financed by the Scottish American businessman James Simpson and organised by two sons of a former American president, Theodore “Teddy / T.R.” Roosevelt, Junior, namely Kermit Roosevelt and Theodore Roosevelt, III.
And yes, my reading friend, Amundsen was indeed mentioned in a March 2019 issue of our adventurous blog / bulletin / thingee, but you digress. I will even add to your digression by stating that “Teddy” Roosevelt was mentioned in April 2023 and September 2024 issues of that same publication.
Mind you, again, Woods Manufacturing also supplied the famous Canadian Arctic Expedition of 1913-18, led by the influential if controversial Canadian anthropologist / ethnologist / explorer / instructor Vilhjalmur Stefansson, born William Stephenson.
Sadly enough, that venture did not become famous for the best of reasons. You see, while it was truly the most expensive and scientifically sophisticated Arctic expedition to take place in Canada until then, the dissension and disaster plagued Canadian Arctic Expedition resulted in the deaths of 17 people.
Let us bow our heads for a moment before going back to our story, shall we?
The federal government leased, then bought the Woods building to house the headquarters of the Canadian Militia and Royal Canadian Navy at some as yet unknown dates. End of digression.
The aforementioned representative of The Toronto Daily Star seemingly intended to pitch his employer’s idea of a flight, the day of the eclipse, by an RCAF pilot based in Camp Borden Air Station with a photographer from the newspaper, and this to the very top of the Department of National Defence’s food chain. Indeed, said representative met the Minister of National Defence, the Canadian lawyer Edward Mortimer Macdonald, and the Chief of the General Staff of the Canadian Militia, another Canadian, Major General James Howden MacBrien.
Both men enthusiastically backed the idea put forward by The Toronto Daily Star. In turn, the Director of the RCAF, Group Captain James Stanley Scott, (gladly?) consented to assist the newspaper. As a result, the commanding officer at Camp Borden Air Station, Wing Commander Lloyd Samuel Breadner, was told to cooperate in every possible way with the staff of The Toronto Daily Star, and… Err, yes, both of those men were Canadian, and…
Let me guess, you have a question, my reading friend? Was it possible that at least one other Ontario newspaper tried to have one of its photographers go up aboard a civilian or military aircraft? A good question. One or more newspapers may indeed have tried, and failed.
In any event, The Ottawa Evening Citizen of… Ottawa, Ontario, claimed that it got in on the deal set up by The Toronto Daily Star.
A person with a negative turn of mind, but not yours truly of course, might wonder if the fact that The Toronto Daily Star was generally well inclined toward the political party in power in Canada at the time played a role in the positive answer that this newspaper got to its request, but I digress.
As you might have imagined, as the date of the eclipse grew nearer, newspapers in Canada and, even more so, in Ontario began to provide more and more information to their readers. As befitted their status as the newspapers with the largest circulation in Toronto and Hamilton, Ontario, The Toronto Daily Star and The Hamilton Spectator published their fair share of texts – and illustrations.
One of those articles pointed out that the telescope of the Toronto Meteorological Observatory in… Toronto would be used to photograph the eclipse, and this under the supervision of yet another Canadian, the meteorologist Sir Robert Frederic Stupart, Director of the observatory and Superintendent of the Dominion Meteorological Service, in Ottawa.
Mind you, the staff of the Toronto Magnetic Observatory of… Toronto set up near the village of Agincourt, Ontario, near Toronto but far from that city’s massive amounts of instrument disturbing iron and steel, would also take measurements.
And yes, my reading friend, newspapers in Ontario also advertised the presentations, with or without lantern slides, that various experts would make prior to the upcoming eclipse. One only needed to mention the one made by the Canadian amateur astronomer / magazine editor / physician / poet / psychical researcher Albert Durrant Watson at the Labor Temple, in Toronto, under the auspices of the Labor Party Forum.
Or the one made by the renowned Canadian astronomer / physicist / professor mentioned in the 1st part of this article, yes, the one based at the University of Toronto’s Department of Astronomy, Clarence Augustus Chant, at the Canadian Club, in Toronto.
To answer the question you were about to ask, my reading friend, a Canadian Labor Party did exist in Canada. Well, to be more precise, branches of such a party came into existence in several provinces in 1906-07. They met with varying if limited success. A Labor Party of Canada was formed in November 1917 but did not amount to much either, but back to our eclipse.
An unknown number of people flocked to Hamilton to watch the show. Indeed, the mayor of that city, an English Canadian by the name of Thomas William Jutten, asked all business owners to allow their employees an opportunity the watch the eclipse. All the major stores of the city agreed to open their premises only after the end of that rare event, but back to our story, and…
Are total eclipses of the Sun really rare events, you ask, my sceptical reading friend? Well, to tell you the truth, the denizen of planet Earth experienced no less than 10 such events between January 1921 and December 1930.
The denizens of Kingston, Ontario or, as that province was called back then, Upper Canada, on the other hand, had experienced such an event on 16 June… 1806. And you know by now that many Ontarians living in the southern part of the province experienced another total eclipse of the Sun on 24 January 1925. Does an interval of more than 118 years fit your definition of rare, my reading friend? I thought so.
And yes, there were newspaper articles which mocked the presumed reaction of First Nations people of Canada who, many centuries ago, had witnessed solar eclipses. Their authors rarely mentioned that most of the people who lived in Europe at the same time were deeply frightened.
This being said (typed?), there were certainly articles which mentioned that those Europeans were frightened by eclipses. After all, even the high and mighty could fall victim to those enigmatic events.
The Frankish Emperor Hludowicus Pius / Louis I the Pious died not too long after the total eclipse of the Sun of 5 May 840. King Olaus / Olaf II, or Olaf Haraldsson, of Norway died on the very day that a total eclipse of the Sun took place, namely 31 August 1030, during the Battle of Stiklestad, in Norway. As well, the death of King Henricus / Henry I of England, in other words of Henry Beauclerc, in early December 1135, was directly associated with the total eclipse of the Sun of 2 August 1133.
The catch with those statements was that King Olaf II had kicked the bucket in late July 1030. As well, how could one link the death of a king in 1135 to an eclipse which had taken place more than 2 years before?
Speaking (typing?) of eclipses as omens of bad news, it might be worth noting that an editorial note published in The Brantford Expositor of… Brantford, Ontario, the day before the eclipse, stated that, and I quote, “The eclipse of Trotsky was timed to synchronize with the eclipse of Old Sol.”
The Trotsky in question was of course the Russian politician / revolutionary / political theorist Lev Davidovich Trotsky, born Lev Davidovich Bronstein, but better known to anglophone audiences as Leon Trotsky.
You see, a tad after mid-January 1925, the Tsentral’naya Kontrol’naya Komissiya of the Kommunisticheskaya Partiya Sovetskogo Soyuza, in other words the central control commission of the communist party of the Soviet Union, sacked Trosky from his posts of people’s commissar for military and naval affairs and chairperson of the Revolyutsionny Voyenny Sovyet, or revolutionary military council.
That was the beginning of the end for Trotsky. He was expelled from the communist party of the Soviet Union in November 1927 and expelled from the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics in February 1929, but back to our story.
It was but 5 days before the total eclipse of the Sun of 24 January 1925 that Canadians, well, many Canadians, read in their local newspaper that the Canadian National Railways Radio Department would be broadcasting a presentation on the eclipse penned by the aforementioned Stewart. Said presentation would be broadcasted 4 times, over a period of 4 days, in the evening, by 4 radio stations located in 4 Canadian cities, Ottawa and Toronto, as well as Montréal, Québec, and Moncton, New Brunswick.
It was also but 5 days before the upcoming astronomical event that Canadians, well, many Canadians, read in their local newspaper that the RCAF would be sending aloft a pair of aircraft to take photographs of said event. Said aircraft would leave Camp Borden Air Station and fly south, toward Hamilton. This would be the first time that photography of that nature would be undertaken in Canada.

A typical example of a post-First World War version of the Avro Type 504 on skis, unknown location, February 1927. That machine may well have been one of the aircraft used to observe the eclipse of 24 January 1925. Library and Archives Canada, HC-1007.
The aircraft in question would be Avro Type 504s equipped with the finest aerial cameras available, available that is to the RCAF.
For some reason or other, the involvement of The Toronto Daily Star was not mentioned in the newspaper articles, and…
You are indeed correct, my wingnutty reading friend. There is indeed a Type 504 in the stupendous collection of the Canada Aviation and Space Museum, in Ottawa, and…
You have a question, do you not, my reading friend? When did the first solar eclipse photographed from an aircraft take place? A good question. As far as yours truly can tell, the eclipse in question took place on 17 April 1912. Several French pilots took to the sky to observe it.
The French pilot Michel Mahieu took off from Issy-les-Moulineaux, France, near Paris, and headed toward the heart of the French capital with a friend, the French pilot Gaston de Manthé. And yes, photographs were indeed taken.
Incidentally, de Manthé was a minor poet and playwright who happened to be brother of the son in law of French aviation pioneer Clément Agnès Ader, a gentleman mentioned in September 2022 and December 2023 issues of our aerial blog / bulletin / thingee.
And yes, Mahieu and de Manthé were mentioned in the same September 2022 issue of that august publication, but I digress.
The eclipse might, I repeat might, also have been photographed from an aeroplane flying near the Camp de Mailly, near… Mailly, in central France, well to the south of the zone of total darkness. Aboard that flying machine were Lieutenant Léopold Varcin of the Aéronautique militaire of the Armée de Terre as well as a fellow member of the Aéronautique militaire, a sapper / pilot by the name of Henri Louis Brégi, not to mention an unidentified (military?) photographer. Another French military pilot, lieutenant Louis Gabriel Battini, based at that same camp, observed the eclipse from a second aeroplane, and this with an unidentified observer.
In addition, two military aeroplanes apparently flew that day near Villepreux, France, near Paris, and near Clayes, France, near Rennes. They and their crews had been put at the disposal of lucky observers. Yours truly cannot say if any photograph was taken.
It went without saying that other types of military flying machines were used to observe the eclipse, namely the non-rigid airship Capitaine Ferber and at least one captive balloon.
Mind you, up to 18 free flights made by 18 civilian gas balloons took place that day.
One of those balloons, Le Globule, took off from the airpark of Lamothe-Breuil, France, near Compiègne. Aboard were a trio of French aeronauts, Paul Tissandier, Auguste Julien Nicolleau and Louis Édouard Octave Crouzon. The latter was of course far better known as a neurologist while Tissandier also gained fame as an aviator. Sadly enough, yours truly has yet to discover how Nicolleau kept a roof over his head, but back to the RCAF’s role in the study of the January 1925 total eclipse of the heart, err, Sun, sorry.
Before I forget, here is a photograph of the total eclipse of the Sun of April 1912 taken by Nicolleau, over the city of Rethondes, France, near Compiègne,…

A photograph of the total eclipse of the Sun of 17 April 1912 taken by the French aeronaut Auguste Julien Nicolleau from the gas balloon Le Globule, Rethondes, France. Georges Bans, “L’Aéronautique et l’Éclipse de Soleil.” L’Aérophile, 1 May 1912, 208.
As you might have expected, many Ontario amateur astronomers hoped to photograph the January 1925 eclipse. One only needed to mention the Canadian philanthropist / lawyer / amateur historian / businessman Harry Blois Witton of Hamilton.
It so happened that, in January 1925, Witton was chairperson of the board of the oldest tobacco processing firm in Canada, a firm with factories in Hamilton, Montréal as well as London, Ontario, Tuckett Tobacco Company Limited of Hamilton.
Why am I busting your chops with twaddle related to such a cancer causing firm, you ask, my angry reading friend? A good question. You see, slightly after mid-May 1930, Tuckett Tobacco donated a primary glider, described in the June 1930 issue of the Canadian monthly magazine Canadian Aviation as an American-made Eaglerock primary glider, to the Toronto Flying Club of… Toronto.
The club’s president, a Canadian First World War fighter pilot by the name of Earl McNabb Hand, and a few others flew the glider the very day of the donation, despite some gusty winds, and…
To answer the question coalescing in your little noggin, a primary glider was a type of very basic, easy to fly and repair single-seat flying machine originally designed in Germany and mainly used for training. Built strong in order to withstand hard usage, primary gliders were chiefly used for relatively brief gliding flights made pretty much in a straight line, and…
Yes, yes, yours truly did state that primary gliders were single seat machines, which meant that the first flight of a budding glider pilot was made without the benefit of any prior flying training. That type of solo training was certainly not for the fainthearted. It also helped to explain the rather high number of incidents and accidents which befell gliding enthusiasts and gliding clubs the world over from the late 1920s onwards.
Incidentally, the aforementioned primary glider of German design which inspired countless imitators around the globe, in other words the RRG Zögling, was the brainchild of two German First World War veterans and more or less self-taught aircraft designers, Friedrich “Fritz” Stamer and Alexander Martin Lippisch, the latter being the recently appointed director of the technical department for aerodynamic research of the central glider pilot training organisation in Germany, the Rhön-Rossittten-Gesellschaft eingetragener Verein (RRG).
Incidentally, Lippisch was the individual who originated the concept which led to the development of one of the most spectacular aircraft of the Second World War, the Messerschmitt Me 163 Komet rocket-powered bomber interceptor, a type of machine present in the world class collection of the Canada Aviation and Space Museum.

The christening of the Alexander primary glider known as the Buckingham Booster by Irene Barchard Wemp, Leaside aerodrome, Leaside, Ontario, May 1930. From left to right, Earle Spafford, Vice President of Tuckett Tobacco Company Limited of Hamilton, Ontario; Bert Sterling Wemp, mayor of Toronto, Ontario; Earl McNabb Hand, President of the Toronto Flying Club of Toronto; and Irene Barchard Wemp, spouse of Wemp. Anon., “Major Wemp of Toronto at Glider Christening.” Victoria Daily Times, 10 June 1930, 12.
Christened Buckingham Booster slightly after mid May 1930, after the Buckingham cigarettes made by Tuckett Tobacco, that flying machine was in fact an American-made Alexander primary glider.
Said christening was performed at Leaside aerodrome, near the town of… Leaside, Ontario, near Toronto, by the spouse of the mayor of Toronto, a Canadian of course, Irene Barchard Wemp, born Flint.
That mayor of Toronto, Bert Sterling Wemp, was a former Canadian journalist who was also a former bomber pilot in the Royal Naval Air Service of the Royal Navy and, later on, the Royal Air Force. That First World War veteran was mentioned in a September 2023 issue of our aerial blog / bulletin / thingee.
In any event, the Buckingham Booster was the first glider donated to a Canadian flying / gliding club by a private firm. It was hoped at the time that this generous contribution would have a far-reaching effect. It seemingly did not, courtesy of the Great Depression, which was beginning to bite really, really hard.
Incidentally, the Buckingham Booster was not to be confused with the Buckingham Boosters, a snappy dance orchestra sponsored by Tuckett Tobacco and active between 1928 and 1948, if not later, which could be heard on the radio.
And yes, by then, the glider known as the Buckingham Booster had long been scrapped.
In any event, the Buckingham Booster and the Toronto Flying Club’s second machine, a recently acquired Detroit Gull primary glider christened Eatonia, were flown by various members of the club over a period of time in the early 1930s, and…
What is it, my agitated reading friend? You wish to know what a typical primary glider looked like? Oh, yes, of course. Please feast on the following photograph…

A typical Detroit Gull primary glider being tested by the chief test pilot of Detroit Aircraft Corporation, the American Herbert J. “Hub” Fahy. Anon., “–.” Mid-Week Pictorial, 15 March 1930, 14.
I could not agree more with you, my reading friend. Yours truly would not be caught dead on a primary glider, regardless of its type, but back to our story.
Being entirely made of wood, the Eatonia could be repaired in-house. The welded steel tubes of the Buckingham Booster’s minimalist fuselage on the other hand, sometimes required the services of a welder who was not a member of the Toronto Flying Club. Because of this, the group soon came to the conclusion that gliders with a wooden fuselage were better training machines.
At the risk of overstepping the limits of reasonable digressing, Eatonia had an interesting origin story. You see, the first Canadian owner of that glider was apparently the largest department store chain in Canada and a firm mentioned on moult occasions in our incomparable blog / bulletin / thingee, and this since January 2019, namely T. Eaton Company Limited, of Toronto. Indeed, the sporting goods department of that firm was said to have such gliders on stock in 1930, for sale to individuals or clubs.
A brief digression within a digression if I may. The glider known as Eatonia was not to be confused with the Eatonia Gliders, a family of bicycles for one and all sold by T. Eaton between the mid-1920s and the mid-1970s, I think.
The Eatonia, yes, the glider, was put on display in the sporting goods department of the T. Eaton store in downtown Toronto, for a number of days, and this around late April 1930.
It was flown on 26 April, an auspicious day if yours truly may state so, at de Lesseps Field, an airfield also known as Tretheway Airport, at Mount Dennis, Ontario, near Toronto, in a front of a crowd estimated at 5 000 or so people. The glider’s American pilot, Richard W. Duncan, was a field representative of its maker, Gliders Incorporated, a subsidiary of an important American aircraft manufacturing concern, Detroit Aircraft Corporation.
In an advertisement in the May issue of the monthly magazine Canadian Air Review, Gliders waxed poetic as it described the joy felt by a glider pilot as she or he flew like a bird. As well, the firm indicated that their glider cost only $ 895, a sum which corresponded to $ 16 275 or so in 2025 currency.
By comparison, the average factory price of an automobile in Canada in 1930 was $ 600 or so, a sum which corresponded to $ 10 875 or so in 2025 currency.
By the way, the average price for a new automobile in Canada in July 1924 was apparently $ 66 800 or so. Wah! Nay, double wah!
Mind you, a penny wise consumer could also have bought a perfectly fine vehicle with a manufacturer’s suggested retail price of $ 20 800, but I digress.
The aforementioned advertisement went to say (type?) that, if a gliding club had a $ 40 membership fee, it only needed to sign up 25 members to be able to buy a glider and have some money left for its expenses. Another club with membership fees of $ 20 needed 50 members. A gliding club was therefore a very good way indeed to make the sport available and give wings to many enthusiasts.
The catch with that statement was that the $ 20 and $ 40 membership fees were no small change even in the best of times – and 1930 was by no means the best of times for a lot of Canadians. Those sums corresponded to $ 365 and $ 725 or so in 2025 currency, by the way.
The cherry on top of that pricy cheesecake was that the membership fees in question may well have been annual membership fees, but I digress. Yes, yes, I. This time.
Alexander Aircraft Company, the firm which had produced the aforementioned Buckingham Booster, was somewhat unusual in that it owed its origin, in 1925, I think, to the American film industry, and this through one of the largest American producers of film advertising for movie theatres, Alexander Film Company, a firm founded no later than March 1919 by the Americans Julian Don “J. Don” Alexander and Don Miller “Don M.” Alexander.
Following the stock exchange collapse of October 1929, aircraft sales dropped rapidly and precipitously. To protect Alexander Film, whose profits were now subsidising Alexander Aircraft, the latter filed for bankruptcy in August 1932. In the meantime, some of the surplus material owned by Alexander Aircraft might have been used to build an additional number of primary gliders. End of inordinately long digression.
I can only apologise for that. With no aeronautical topic on the menu in December 2024, I got a tad restless. Besides, yours truly rather likes gliders. I flew in one of those machines, eons ago, when I still had hair, and brown hair too. Sigh… In any event, I shall endeavour to offer you a more balanced menu in the future.
See you next week.