The Vinyl Café Notebooks (26 page)

And then, almost as if it was planned, the war came along. So they made the runways longer.

It is hard to overstate the importance of the Gander airport to the war effort. The Allies would have won World War II without the Gander airport, but the war was shorter because of it.

Pretty much everyone in Gander will tell you that Frank Tibbo knows more about the airport’s history than anyone else alive. I sat in his basement late one afternoon and he gave me a history lesson. During the war, twenty thousand fighters and heavy bombers, built in North America, were brought to Gander and flown across the Atlantic to the United Kingdom. At the beginning of the war, they were shipping planes by sea, said Frank, and losing as much as 80 percent of the shipments to German U-boats. No one believed they could fly over; they didn’t have the range. Frank shook his head and told me that they hadn’t counted on the engineers who modified the fuel
tanks, or the bush pilots and crop dusters who flew the planes. Often by dead reckoning. The first flight of seven Lockheed Hudsons left on 10 November 1940.

What a story. They were supposed to leave the day before, but there was so much ice on the planes they couldn’t scrape it off. So they waited a day. There was only one
real
navigator among the seven planes. So instructions were simple:
if you get separated, head for England
. They did get separated. They hit bad weather. But they all made it.

By the end of the war, planes flying out of Gander were guarding convoys, ferreting out submarines and, of course, being ferried to England not by the tens but by the hundreds every week.

And then, when the war was over, the airport was right at the epicentre of civilian flight. If you were flying east from Paris, you might stop at Cairo, Constantinople or Karachi. You might even overnight at the world famous Raffles hotel in Singapore.

If you were flying from New York to London, you put down in Gander. Virtually every plane that flew across the Atlantic stopped in. In 1956, which was the heyday of it all, approximately one hundred and fifty international flights put down at Gander airport
every single day
.

And something remarkable happened. Someone, somewhere, realized that the international transit lounge at the Gander International Airport might be, probably would be, the only impression of Canada that thousands of people ever had.

If Canada was going to make a good impression,
this
was her only chance.

So they decided to build a showcase. They commissioned a lounge to end all lounges, with a geometric terrazzo floor from Italy, sleek mid-century modern furniture from the über design house Herman Miller. And a stunning seventy-two-foot mural—an ode to flight—painted on site. The artist, Kenneth Lochhead, from the Canadian prairies, used more than five hundred dozen eggs to temper his paint.

It was a remarkable room—an avant-guard snapshot of the future when it was designed and appointed, and today, a glorious snapshot of the past, because what is most remarkable of all is that the Gander Airport International Lounge has remained virtually untouched for fifty years.

The
New York Times Style Magazine
was impressed enough to commission a feature about the lounge. In the glowing essay, the article quoted Alan C. Elder, curator at the Canadian Museum of Civilization, who said the lounge is “one of the most beautiful and most important Modernist rooms in the country. Maybe, the most important room.”

I was born at the edge of the age of aviation, the era of airlines and airships, jet planes and rockets, the astonishment of flight defined my boyhood. And so when I read that article, I bought a ticket and took myself to Gander.

I spent an afternoon at the airport, and here’s what I can add to Elder’s enthusiasm. I think the lounge is one of the most remarkable rooms I have ever been to in Canada, every bit as glorious as some of the grand railway hotels and stations this country is known for.

And in better shape than most. The lounge feels as if they closed the doors in 1959 and only reopened them yesterday.

And its history is almost as splendid as its design. Because if every plane that crossed the Atlantic put down there, so did every person.

“Oh sure,” said Cynthia Goodyear, whom I met in the airport restaurant, and who has worked there, at various jobs, for twenty-seven years.

“I have served all the presidents, from Ronald Reagan to George W. Bush.”

And to heck with the presidents, Cynthia has made tea for the Queen.

“That’s right,” she said. “But she turned it down. She asked for coffee instead. Cream, no sugar.”

Just about everyone in town has a story like that.

“That’s true,” said Marilyn Stuckless, who was a teenager when Fidel Castro came through town and went tobogganing for the first, and probably
only
, time in his life.

“There were a bunch of us on the hill opposite the Hotel Gander,” said Marilyn. “And these men came along. They were more tanned than us, that’s for sure. And excited too. They told us it was the first time they had seen snow.”

Someone told
me
that when Fidel went down the hill on his borrowed toboggan, he had a cigar in his mouth.

“I don’t remember a cigar,” said Marilyn. “But that was a long time ago.”

A more innocent time. Before air travellers were shuffled through X-ray machines and cordoned off behind security glass. In those days you didn’t need a ticket to get into the lounge; you could just walk in, and on Sunday afternoons that’s what townsfolk would do. They would drive out to the airport and get an ice cream and hang out in the lounge and
chat with Muhammad Ali. Everyone from that era has an autograph or two. If you had made it your life’s work to collect autographs in the Gander airport, if that was the only job you ever did, and you were good at it, you could have retired wealthy.

The list of the people who went through the lounge reads like a social register of the twentieth century. Everyone thinks The Beatles’ first stop in North America was New York City. Everybody is wrong—their first stop was Gander. Jackie O stopped there. And so did Frank Sinatra, Winston Churchill, Nikita Khrushchev, Marlene Dietrich, Richard Nixon, Richard Burton, Elizabeth Taylor, Ingrid Bergman, Julia Roberts, Tom Cruise and John Travolta, who still drops in regularly on his own plane. Humphrey Bogart, Bob Hope, Tiger Woods, Woody Allen, Bruce Willis, Demi Moore, Rod Stewart, Clint Eastwood.

“I know a lot of them personally,” said Cynthia. “Elizabeth Taylor always calls ahead and asks for our homemade bread. Vicente Fox orders two plates of lasagna.”

“Bill Clinton loves our muffins,” said the man standing beside Cynthia. “I saw him stuff a few in his pocket on his way out.”

The Gander International Airport is not as busy as it once was.

A lot of the flights that land these days are private flights. Corporate planes. These days there are no more than five scheduled flights landing every day.

As for international flights, today’s jets don’t need to refuel on their way back and forth to Europe. Eleven international flights put down in Gander the month I visited.

These days the flights that do stop are often unscheduled.

When they arrive, phones start ringing around town. And in this world where customer service is often an automated voice message, people in Gander tumble out of bed in the middle of the night and open up the gift shop and staff the restaurant and the duty free. They stand by, ready to serve.

They are still rolling out the red carpet to people from all over the world in Gander, and they will roll it out at any hour of the day or night.

That is how it all began during the war. And during the early days of transatlantic flight. And on September 11, 2001, when almost forty planes landed out of the blue. And everyone was cared for.

Canadians like to see themselves as a nation that welcomes others.

That is what they do in Gander.

They have been doing it for years.

In style.

28 March 2010

MY FAVOURITE

PHOTOGRAPH

Whenever I am in Victoria, British Columbia, and have time to spare, I drop in to visit my friend Jim Munro. Jim owns and operates Munro’s books on Government Street, in that beautiful old part of Victoria down by the water.

Munro’s is a wonderful bookstore, one of the last great independent bookstores in the country, and for years and years, for decades, one of the best. It is certainly one of the best appointed; housed in a glorious old bank, Munro’s was big before the big chains arrived and made big the name of the game where bookstores are concerned. But it is not for its size, or its knowledgeable staff, or its well-stocked shelves that I like to visit Munro’s, although those would all be good reasons. Truth be told, there are other bookstores in Victoria that could fit that bill; there is a good Chapters down the street, and Bolen Books across town, and Renaissance Books on Bastion Square, which is as good a second-hand bookstore as you will find anywhere. In fact, if it’s bookstores you are looking for, Victoria is as good a place to go as anywhere.

The thing is, it is not the books, or even Jim Munro’s always convivial welcome, that draws me to Munro’s. I like to go because, when I do, I can always pop into Jim’s office and
spend a moment with my favourite photo in the country. It is a modestly framed colour snapshot, taken about thirty-five years ago, and it makes me happy every time I see it.

“Ah,” says Jim, beaming, “you want to see the cruise picture.”

In 1969 or 1970, somewhere back there, Jim’s friends Marvin and Mary Evans invited him to join them on a weekend sailing trip. They were going to sail up to Princess Louise Inlet and view the waterfalls.

“It was a lovely weekend,” says Jim. “We talked, and relaxed, and had a lovely time.”

Though he seems to flourish as a bookseller, I have always had the feeling that Jim would have been just as happy had he been born as one of the characters in
The Wind in the Willows
, so I have always imagined that a weekend mucking around on a boat, any boat, anywhere, would suit Jim just fine.

“It was a lovely weekend,” says Jim again, gazing at the photo fondly.

Then he points out the people in the picture and names them one by one.

“That’s Marvin and Mary Evans on the left,” he says. “Marvin was a Unitarian Church minister. And that is their son, I forget his name, and that is me in the blazer and sailor’s cap, and that,” he says ...

This is my favourite part, this is the part where he points at the tousled-haired blond boy.

“That,” says Jim, still beaming, “is their son’s friend, who they brought along for the trip.”

He is pointing at the teenage boy in the pink golf shirt and the plaid pants in the centre of the picture.

“That,” says Jim, about to deliver the coup de grace, “is Bill Gates.”

Jim calls his picture “My cruise with Bill Gates.”

And what does he remember of the two boys? Just this. That they stayed below deck the entire time. “They sort of irked me,” says Jim. “They were sort of boring and nerdy. They weren’t at all interested in any of the scenery. All they did was sit below and talk.”

And what did they talk about, Jim?

“Computers,” says Jim. “And how they were going to start a computer company. And all of the things they would do with it.”

Jim has never seen Bill Gates since.

“He lives in Washington State,” he says. “He has a huge yacht. Sometimes I see it in the harbour.”

Pause.

“It is good to know that he has kept in touch with the sea.”

Bill Gates is one of the world’s richest men. He seems to be working hard to do good with the money he has accumulated. That is a pleasing thing to see. But what pleases me more is to visit his picture in Jim Munro’s office every now and then, and be reminded that somewhere inside him is that fourteen-year-old tousled-haired boy doing what all fourteen-year-old boys should be doing: irritating adults and dreaming dreams beyond belief.

2 May 2010

ROGER WOODWARD

AND NIAGARA FALLS

When Charles Dickens saw Niagara Falls, he wrote that he seemed “to have been lifted from this earth, to be looking into Heaven.”

Of all the things I know about Niagara Falls, there is one story that lifts me from this earth, one story that makes me think I have looked into heaven. It is the story of Roger Woodward, the seven-year-old boy who was, on 9 July 1960, in a small boat that capsized on the Niagara River, above the falls. Wearing nothing but a life jacket, seven-year-old Roger went over Niagara Falls—and lived.

I think about Roger Woodward every time I visit the falls. Every time I stand on the observation deck and watch the hypnotically and impossibly black water roaring over the escarpment, I wonder about him and what it could have been like to be in that water.

Last week it occurred to me that Roger Woodward would only be fifty-one years old today. And it occurred to me that if I really wanted to know what it would be like to go over the falls, I could ask him. And so I set off to find him.

It turns out Roger Woodward lives in a small town outside of Huntsville, Alabama. He is semi-retired. When I got him on
the phone, I introduced myself and asked if he minded talking about his remarkable adventure. Do you remember it? I asked.

“I remember it like it was yesterday,” he said. “I remember everything.”

In July 1960, Roger lived in a mobile home in Niagara Falls, New York. His father worked in construction, so the family lived where the jobs were. “We were very much a blue-collar family,” Roger told me. “We travelled from one place to the next, from one job to the next.”

During that summer Roger’s father worked at the Robert Moses power plant as a carpenter.

Roger told me that he has a sister.

“Her name is Deanne,” he said. Deanne’s birthday is 5 July, and to celebrate her seventeenth birthday in 1960, a family friend, Jim Honeycutt, offered to take Roger and Deanne on a boat ride. Jim had a small aluminum fishing boat. There wasn’t room for Roger’s mother and father.

The day of the ride, was a beautiful sunny day. Jim, Roger and Deanne set off down the Niagara River from well above the falls. Deanne was in the forward seat, Roger behind her in the middle. Jim was in the stern. There were two life jackets on board. Roger wore one of them. They tucked the other one under the front seat.