A personal blog covering aviation history and whatever else I find interesting.
November 8, 2026
Forty-eight years ago today — November 8, 1978 — the first Canadair Challenger lifted off from Montreal. It began life as the LearStar 600, a business jet design by Bill Lear, who sold the rights to Canadair. Canadair renamed it the CL-600 Challenger, and a Canadian aviation success story was born — one that still flies today in both civilian and military colours.
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Woodstock, Ontario, produced a remarkable concentration of airmen for a city of its size — and one of the most important airmen in Canadian history. At least eight men with a solid Woodstock connection served as RCAF pilots in the Second World War, and seven of the eight were killed. The eighth was a First World War ace who went on to become one of the RCAF's senior commanders. This is their story — and the story of the Woodstock men named on the city's cenotaph, and of a Woodstock pilot lost in our own time.
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