Hej, hej, hur mår du? Yours truly is please to see (read?) that you are reasonably well, my reading friend. I too am reasonably well. (Hello, MM!) One could argue that my old bones would feel a tad better if the federal, provincial and territorial governments of Canada got with the program and celebrated International Workers’ Day, or Labour Day, on May 1st, rather than on the first Monday of September but let us not dwell. We, after all, have an intriguing topic on our plate. Our weekly

If artifacts could talk, what would they tell us? An old, wooden sailboat called Nahma has a treasure trove of stories.

Allow me to offer you a big safe aerospace salute, my reading friend. I would like to talk (type?) to you about an engine, and what an engine! In 1956, realising very well that the heyday of the piston engine had passed, the American parent company of Canadian Pratt & Whitney Aircraft Company Limited of Longueuil, Québec, the Pratt & Whitney Aircraft Division of the American aeronautical giant United Aircraft Corporation, gave it a mandate to develop jet engines of limited power. Shortly

How are you doing on this day, my reading friend? Yours truly has a confession to make: there is more to life than airplanes – and I have to thank a former colleague for pointing this out, many years ago. (Hello, CF!) A list of items covered in this non aeronautical category would be very long. Any list worthy of the name should, however, include Belgian style beer, and no, not a serrano pepper infused one, dinosaurs and pterosaurs (Hello, SB, EG and EP!), as well as air cushion vehicles. In

An important piece of Canada’s marine transportation history has set sail for a new home in the Ingenium Collections Conservation Centre.

Oyez, oyez, let it be said everywhere on this Earth that the subject of our blog / bulletin / thingee for this week does not touch upon aviation or space. Yours truly wanted to broaden your horizons, my reading friend. The photograph with which I kickoff said subject comes from The Gazette, a daily newspaper from Montréal, Québec, that I do not consult very often. It comes, say I, from the 18 July 1959, sorry, 1969, issue. The legend of said photograph read as follows:

Greetings, he who has spent a great deal of time over a keyboard salutes you. While I realise that spring is in the air, up here, did you stop for a moment to think about the people currently living in Antarctica, for whom the month of May is a harbinger of winter? And yes, my reading friend, as the caption of the photo above, found in the May 1939 of the Canadian aviation monthly Canadian Aviation, states all too clearly, our topic of the week has to do with the land at the bottom of the world

Imagine how excited you would be to find a key piece of your family history amidst formal archival records. That’s exactly what happened to Sian Jones, who works as an archives clerk for Ingenium – Canada’s Museums of Science and Innovation; an archivist found herself in the archives! In 2012, Canadian Pacific transferred archives from its steamship subsidiary to the Canada Science and Technology Museum. Archives clerk Sian Jones has worked on the collection, amidst other work assignments, since

Peace and long life, my reading friend. Yours truly dares to hope that all is well in your little corner of the Milky Way. As you have undoubtedly guessed, this week I intend to perorate on a hovercraft / air cushion vehicle, a means of transport for which I feel a certain fondness. The photograph that illustrates my point comes from a weekly published between 1961 and 1972, Vallée de la Petite nation of Buckingham, then Saint-André-Avelin, Québec. Said photo was in the 30 January 1969 issue of

Hello there, my reading friend, and welcome to the first 2019 issue of our blog / bulletin / thingee on the wonderful world of aviation and space, and… What’s this? You do not think that an air cushion caravan fits the mandate of the Canada Aviation and Space Museum of Ottawa, Ontario? I respectfully beg to differ. This unlikely hybrid did lift off the ground, did it not? Besides, you can’t tell me that you are not the least bit intrigued by the image yours truly dredged up from the January 1969