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Aviation History
1952
1952 - 1508.PDF
FLIGHT, 30 May 1952 The "Domestic" terminal at Dorval, with a Trans-Canada Air Lines North Star and DC-3 on the apron. Note the tinted glass in the control tower, a necessity in a country where the sun glares down in summer and is reflected from the snow in winter. TRANSATLANTIC TERMINAL Dorval—The Famous Wartime Base of Ferry Command as it is Today AS you fly into Dorval Airport the countryside looks bare and flat, for the airfield lies well clear of Montreal "" City on the western end of Montreal Island, which is here an almost treeless plain. The approaches to the long runways are clear and well-suited to bringing in or taking off large, heavily loaded airliners. Before your aircraft arrives you will have been given a large yellow landing card with more intimate—nay, impertinent— questions than you have seen before, together with a two-page Customs' declaration-form designed for resident Canadians and quite impossible for a visitor to complete accurately. The yellow card will be examined by an emigration official, who will correct such statements as "British" to "English" or "Scots," and "Protestant" to "Church of England"! He will demand the length of your stay and give you part of the yellow card, duly stamped with that period and will tell you to guard it with your life as you cannot leave the country without it—when you leave Dorval for Britain there are no Customs, currency or other examinations, and you keep the card. The Customs' officials, or perhaps more cor rectly douaniers, are even less interested in the declaration you have prepared for them, in what you say, or in the contents of your bags, once they have made you open them—nevertheless, you have to wait over half an hour for the privilege of their chalk mark. The whole performance is so completely at variance with the normal Canadian hospitality that it stands out like the pro verbial sore thumb. Dorval today is two airports in one and is a curious mixture. The international airport still centres on the two-storey wooden buildings that once belonged to Ferry Command, while the traffic of the domestic airport is handled in a crescent-shaped, modern- style, terminal building erected in 1941. Anomalies caused by this arrangement are numerous. Although the two terminals are barely a quarter of a mile apart, the road joining mem makes a detour round all the maintenance hangars, so that one takes ten minutes, travels over a mile, and expends a dollar of one's scarce allowance on a taxi. Two Customs' staffs have to be retained, because the domestic terminal is used for all flights to and from the U.S.A. This division, now a considerable inconvenience to everyone, arose from the wartime need for keeping civil traffic segregated from the Ferry activities when the new airfield was made from 1,500 acres of swamp in 1941. Both terminals are inadequate for today's traffic, although just after the war it was thought that the ferry buildings would be derelict—actually the Department of Transport now wishes there were more of them. The modern-looking domestic building, which includes the control tower, is actually the more cramped, while the unpretentious international "sheds" are most effective and of course are wonderfully warm and draught-free to the feelings of a British passenger arriving in winter. On the international side is Dorval Inn, a transit hotel for aircrew and passengers, which was once the personnel building of Ferry Command—in fact your key still carries the brass disc of that unit. Run on Service-mess lines, the inn offers an excellent standard of comfort, but unfortunately the nearby canteen is not open for meals in the evening or at the week-end, so that hungry residents have to make a $2 return trip to the restaurant in the domestic building or endure the crude facilities of the international building's bar (dry). Dorval's origin as the main Atlantic Ferry base—actually it was established when St. Hubert proved too small for the larger air craft that followed the first Hudson deliveries—is commemorated by a brass plaque in the lobby of the international terminal building. This memorial reads :— PER ARDUA AD ASTRA This Tablet commemorate* the valuable contributions to the War Effort by the following Civil Organizations and Royal Air Force forma tions based at Dorval. Canadian Pacific Airlines ATFERO Ferry Command, R.A.F. No. 48 Group, R.A.F. March 1940—March 1841 March 1941—July 1941 July 1941—April 1943 April 1943—February 1946 The Tablet is presented by the Royal Air Force on the disbandment • of So. 48 Group, R.A.F., as a tribute to the splendid record of achieve ment of personnel, both service and civilian, who served on the strength of these Formations. 1940—1946 The airlines that today use Dorval are T.C.A. (domestic and international); C.P.A. (domestic); B.O.A.C. (international); Colonial (U.S.) (domestic); North Eastern (U.S.) (domestic); Air France (international); and K.L.M., who have transit facilities to the West Indies. There are also the flights of No. 410 Squadron, R.C.A.F., and charter and private facilities, so it is not surprising that the peak peace-time operations of nearly 200 per day (last October) exceeded the wartime peak ferry movements. The hangars which divide the administrative areas are the usual R.M.A. "Centaurus" and entourage: The convoy of trucks required to prepare a modern airliner is truly remarkable power-supply truck, Godfrey heating truck, towing tractors and an attendant jeep. -two Shell refuelling tenders.
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