Canada's First Air Mail

Photos by Alan L Brown - Posted September, 2004

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 southeast corner of Brentcliffe Road and Broadway Avenue, near the former airport, stands an Ontario Heritage Trust plaque which says:

Plaque coordinates: 43.717078 -79.36136

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.

Related websites
Royal Air Force
JN-4 Curtiss
Leaside Aerodrome

More
Communications
East York plaques

Here are the visitors' comments for this page.

Posted July 17, 2010
Did they pick up mail in Kingston?

Posted January 18, 2009
I've been looking for this place for ages and now I know where it was! I was told that it was a little east of the Winners store. I assumed the street named Aerodrome Cres. was where it was.
Thanks!

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