The death of a dream: The sixtieth anniversary of Avro’s Black Friday

There were concerns about the political fallout (particularly in the Malton riding) as well as potential economic consequences, but in the end, John G. Diefenbaker’s cabinet defence committee recommended that the Arrow be scrapped in early February 1959. His cabinet agreed and formally decided on the cancellation on February 17. Three days later, on February 20, Diefenbaker announced the cancellation in the House of Commons at 9:30 a.m.

It didn’t take long for word of the cancellation to hit the news outlets; within an hour or so, friends and family of Avro employees found out. At 11:15 a.m., an announcement was made over the Malton plant’s loudspeaker informing Avro employees of the government’s decision. They were told that work would continue as normal until more information could be obtained from Ottawa. But that afternoon, Avro President Crawford Gordon came on the loudspeaker to make another announcement: all workers were to stop what they were doing, put down their tools and implements, and go home. Just like that, nearly 15,000 people lost their jobs.

The country’s brightest and most talented engineers were soon forced to look for work elsewhere. Many Avro employees moved to the United States and Great Britain to lend their expertise to amazing projects, like the Apollo program and the Concorde respectively. Others had to leave aviation altogether.

To add insult to injury, the six complete — or largely complete — airplanes were cut up in pieces for scrap, and largely destroyed a couple of months later. The blueprints, drawings, and nearly everything else to do with the Arrow were to suffer the same fate. Despite this being a relatively common practise for classified material, it appeared to many to be a malicious act. Some believe that Diefenbaker ordered the destruction of the airplanes out of spite, essentially to stick it to Crawford Gordon with whom he had a tense relationship. There is no concrete evidence to support this claim, but some believe it to this day.

Fortunately, a lot of paperwork, photographs, and objects associated with the Arrow program have survived. The Canada Aviation and Space Museum’s collection features a great deal of archival material, small objects, and personnel mementos from Avro employees. It also has the privilege of preserving and displaying the largest survivors of the program, the nose section of RL-206 and the wing tips of RL-203.

The Arrow continues to capture the imagination and generate controversy, even 60 years after it was cancelled. It is particularly fascinating considering that the airplane was never tested to its intended capabilities, was never put into production, and never taken on strength by the Royal Canadian Air Force. Despite all this — and perhaps because of it — the Avro Arrow holds a special place in Canadian aerospace history.