Canada's First Air Mail
An airport in Leaside? Who would have imagined! But at that airport in 1918, a JN-4 Curtiss landed after making Canada's first air mail flight. In this small parkette at the south-east corner of Brentcliffe Road and Broadway Avenue, near the former airport, stands an Ontario Heritage Foundation plaque. The text says:
At 10:12 a.m. on June 24, 1918, Captain Brian Peck of the Royal Air Force and mechanic Corporal C.W. Mathers took off from the Bois Franc Polo Grounds in Montreal in a JN-4 Curtiss two-seater airplane. They had with them the first bag of mail to be delivered by air in Canada. Wind and rain buffetted the small plane and forced it to make refuelling stops at Kingston and Deseronto. Finally, at 4:55 p.m., Peck and Mathers landed at the Leaside Aerodrome (immediately southwest of here). The flight had been arranged by a civilian organization, the Aerial League of the British Empire, to demonstrate that aviation was the way of the future.
Location Co-ordinates: 43.717055 -79.361329
Photo by Alan L Brown - September 2004
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