RCAF Centennial Book on the Go

Welcome back to the CANAV Books blog. Too bad how it’s been dormant for so many weeks, but I’ve been swamped getting our grand RCAF Centennial book researched, written, edited and (now) into layout. As with earlier CANAV projects, this one has entailed lots of field work, so the book will be a solid picture of today’s RCAF. I thought I was smart to begin the project nearly four years ago. Now it’s crunch time and I sure wish I had another year to play with! Well, not to worry, the book is well on its way for 2024 roll-out. Along the way today I’m dropping in a few photos that we’ve taken lately while visiting RCAF bases (some of ye old book publisher – yes he’s actually still “out there”).

Impressive subject matter on the 442 Squadron ramp at Comox on May 11, 2023. First, one of 442’s Cormorant SAR workhorses, then one of the new Kingfishers that’s in the SAR evaluation stage but delayed entering service until unexpected snags and operational issues are cleared. In the meantime, 442 has added two C-130Hs to cover SAR ops.

All you hardcore RCAF history fans remember our 1984 Sixty Years book celebrating the RCAF 60th. At times that one seemed impossible to finish, but from concept to books rolling off the bindery took something like 16 months. It’s hard to imagine, but Sixty Years got to the finish line, then had launches in Toronto, Ottawa and Winnipeg (a big deal for a small publisher back then). At 480 pages Sixty Years turned out a real beauty having something like 800 photos, many wonderful original paintings, a vast chronology and index, etc. Few aviation books ever received such glowing reviews. At the time a huge thing for CANAV was being interviewed about Sixty Years by the legendary Peter Gzowski on his beloved CBC radio show This Country in the Morning. In short, Sixty Years turned out to be a wonderful book that since 1984 has become the single-volume source for authoritative RCAF history. More than 20,000 copies came off the line at The Bryant Press in five printings.

If by some oversight you still don’t have your copy of Sixty Years (if you’re a real RCAF believer you need this book) check such sites as bookfinder.com or biblio.com for a good used copy or contact me for a shiny new autographed one ($67.50 all-in for Canada, larry@canavbook.com).

Our RCAF Centennial book also will knock you out, especially since the content largely is new. Of course, the basic RCAF story is there from “Day 1”, but we’ve been working steadily to find new material. This is something that CANAV readers expect from us. So it shall be with masses of new reading and photos. Well, if you’re a CANAV reader, you know what to expect and won’t be disappointed. Meanwhile, there will be several other important RCAF Centennial books. This wasn’t the case in 1984 when the only “killer” book was Sixty Years. You’ll be able to order all the other RCAF Centennial books from CANAV.

As to my field work so far, I’ve visited such bases as Alert, Borden, Comox, Petawawa, Trenton and Winnipeg to do interviews and photography. On Vancouver Island 443 Sqn took me on a busy search and rescue exercise in the Cyclone, 450 Sqn at Petawawa flew me on a mission training in-flight medical personnel, and 437 Sqn at Trenton took me along on an air refueling exercise so I could do CF-18 air-to-air photography. Talk about living the RCAF history dream for a little ol’ writer/publisher, eh! Kudos to the RCAF for supporting CANAV and giving me an inside track in understanding today’s airforce. Well, the clock is ticking and it’s time to get the chapters laid out in those beautiful page spreads that you love to flip through in any CANAV book. In the next few months, I’ll keep you informed. Meanwhile, keep visiting the blog and surfing back to see the hundreds of aviation history items and amazing historic photos of planes, people and places. Here are a few more recent photos.

It’s Plain Sad

Over the years we’ve covered the passing of many key figures on the Canadian aviation scene. Sad to say but it’s my sad job to report that Sheldon Benner died yesterday, August 5, 2023. He had been gradually fading in recent years, not that that kept him down. Happily, Toronto chapter member Ken Swartz had been keeping a helpful eye on Sheldon in recent weeks and getting him some important care he’d never have bothered with otherwise. You know … that “Stubborn Old Batchelor” syndrome.

Into his 80s, Sheldon (born in 1935) was one of Canada’s really remarkable aviation fans. Having followed the scene first around his native Fort Erie (Fleet Aircraft, etc.), he worked for years at De Havilland of Canada and was an early member of the Canadian Aviation Historical Society. With the CAHS he served doggedly at the Toronto chapter and national levels, holding several executive positions. He was a bear for doing thing the right way, abiding by “The Rules of Hoyle”. No matter how often some less concerned members tried to block Sheldon’s insistence about this, he plugged away at his insistence. Sheldon rarely missed a CAHS chapter meeting or annual convention since the 1960s, always turned up at the airshows and fly-ins, and always was up for a flight whether with Millardair in a DC-3 or BA in the Concord when it visited for the annual airshow. He looked up endless little details for me, came to every CANAV book launch and loyally attended funerals from chapter members to aviation luminaries. His annual airplane spotting/photography road trips with his old Brit pal Peter Keating of BOAC/BA became legend, as they indulged their passion for De Havilland of Canada bushplanes. Few remain from the early days of the CAHS, so losing Sheldon is a blow. He was a genuine “solid citizen”, a generous fellow dedicated to Canadian aviation history and always ready to help from answering your specific query to helping organize a CAHS convention. Cheers, Sheldon … you were tops! Larry

Here also is CAHS Member Ken Swartz’s obituary for Sheldon. Lots of extra details about this most interesting Canadian, so do take the time:

With great sadness, the Toronto Chapter of the Canadian Aviation Historical Society (CAHS) announces the loss of its longtime President and volunteer Sheldon Dean Benner on the morning of Friday, August 4, 2023. Sheldon had recently been ailing and passed at Toronto General Hospital after a brief stay. Sheldon was predeceased by siblings Kenneth, Marion, Oliver and Alma. Although he never married or had a family of his own, Sheldon leaves behind an extended family, primarily in Fort Erie, Ontario. He will be greatly missed and will always be remembered by colleagues and friends for his stalwart contributions and dedication to the Toronto Chapter and National CAHS.  Shedon will be laid to rest along side his parents with a private family graveside service, at St. John’s Anglican Ridgemount Cemetery, Fort Erie ON. Benner Funeral Services entrusted with arrangements.Sheldon was CAHS member number 67. He joined the Society in its formative years when there was a growing interest in documenting and preserving Canadian aviation history before it was lost. 

Over the past six decades, Sheldon held many leadership and administrative roles within the CAHS, including serving as a National Director from 1965 and the National Vice President – Membership for many decades. He was well respected for his outstanding leadership as President of the Toronto Chapter. 

Sheldon Dean Benner was born in Fort Erie, Ontario on July 11, 1935 and developed an interest in aviation at an early age. Fleet Aircraft of Canada had an aircraft factory in Fort Erie and Curtiss and Bell had aircraft factories across the Niagara River in Buffalo and Niagara Falls, New York.

Some of Sheldon’s sisters and brothers worked at Fleet Aircraft building Fleet Finches and Fairchild Cornells during the Second World War and his brother Kenneth was a long-time employee of what became Fleet Industries. Sheldon left Fort Erie for Toronto in the late 1950s and received a BASc degree from the University of Toronto in 1960 and a MASc degree from the U of T’s Institute of Aerophysics in 1964. He later obtained his Professional Engineer (P. Eng.) status in 1975.

Sheldon worked in the Engineering Dept. at the de Havilland Aircraft Company, Downsview, ON (1962-1969). While at DHC, he was part of a small group of employees such as Terry Waddington who actively documented the history of the company and its current and historic aircraft production with their notebooks and cameras. 

Sheldon started photographing aircraft in black and white film in the early 1960s and on Kodachrome colour slides in about 1963. He was especially interested in de Havilland Canada products and in the 1970s-1980s made many road trips to northern Ontario, Quebec, Alberta and British Columbia, to photograph bush planes with renowned British aviation photographer Peter Keating and others. He also enjoyed a flight on a British Airways Aerospatiale/BAC Concorde, G-BOAF, from Toronto to London on September 5, 1982 – the ultimate experience for an aviation fan.   

In 1970, Sheldon became Research Director for Consolidated Industrial Dynamics where he specialized in environmental noise measurements through 1974. Then he was employed by the Air Approvals Branch (Noise Section), of the Ontario Ministry of the Environment from 1974 until he retired in 2000. 

Sheldon was also an active member of the “Friends of the CNE” from 2000 to 2013 and a member of the CNEA’s Archives Committee for several years. 

Sheldon provided unwavering leadership for the CAHS Toronto Chapter, as well as processing recent membership requests, meticulously proofreading Flypast newsletters and more recently contacting the Canadian Forces Staff College as to when the CAHS could resume in-person meetings at their facility at Armour Heights.

Early Flights by Sheldon D. Benner

Sheldon always kept a diary and documented his numerous aircraft flights.

For example, his very first aircraft flight was on July 11, 1947 in Piper Cub J3-65C, CF-EFL with its owner and pilot Earl V. Detenbeck. The flight took off and landed on his (Detenbeck’s) private grass strip in Ridgeway, Ontario and included sightseeing over his dad’s farm and brother’s house on Sunset Drive in Fort Erie and then past Sheldon’s home on Sunset Drive.  The ride was a birthday present from Earl’s sister Evelyn (Detenbeck) Grover whose birthday was the same day as Sheldon’s. The flight was prior to an air show that Earl hosted the following two days at his farm. This aircraft was manufactured by the Piper Aircraft Corp. in Lock Haven, PA in 1946. 

Less than a month later, Sheldon had a flight in Cessna T-50 Crane, CF-DGF (formerly 7946) on August 3, 1947 during an air show at Fleet Aircraft.  He liked to reminisce that we “Flew to Crystal Beach and circled the Buffalo/Crystal Beach and the cruise ship “Canadiana” as it was approaching the dock at Crystal Beach.  I sat on my brother’s lap and I wasn’t fastened in with a seat belt; I was 12 years old and my brother was 16 years old.  This was my first flight in a twin-engine aircraft.” 

Then when Sheldon was 13, he had a flight in a Luscombe Silvaire 8A, N2033B, north of Buffalo N.Y on November 21, 1948. The aircraft was owned by Shawnee Flying Service.  Reminiscing again, “I was given a free ride in response to my request to obtain literature on the new private planes being constructed.  I operated the flight controls.”

More than 13 years would pass before Sheldon would fly again after already embarking on a career in aeronautical engineering.  His next flight was on June 14, 1962 in a Nordair Douglas DC-3C, CF-HGD, from Toronto to Montreal via Kingston on the Seaway Route. “The HP Dart Herald was u/s to-day.  My first scheduled flight in a DC-3 as an airliner,” also noting his “Concerns about the long T/O at Kingston as we had a full planeload of people and I was on my way to Montreal to attend a hearing on the crash of a TCA DC-8 at St. Therese, QC.” 

How Goes Canada’s Book Publishing in 2023?

Over the decades many of you have followed my pro and con (mostly con) rants about Canada’s book publishing and book selling sectors. For book publishing, you’re familiar with my stand regarding government grants. In general, my opinion pretty well stands. Having begun in 1981 with The Avro CF-100 ( five printings, around 6500 copies), CANAV Books never so much as applied for a publisher’s grant. Finally, in 2023 I did so (at the urgining of the granter) and have received a cheque that definitely will help towards the publication of CANAV’s massive 2024 history of the RCAF in its Centennial year.

I’ll follow up later with some thoughts about “the granting games”. For now, you should read this summary by Charlotte Gray in the Globe and Mail reviewing Canadian book publishing and the role of grants. If you get a chance, tell me what you think of it all. Meanwhile, if you get curious about Canadian book publishing, let me recommend the best history of it that I’ve yet read, Roy MacSkimming’s The Perilous Trade: Book Publishing in Canada 1946 – 2006. And perilous it definitely is. You’ll likely find a nice cheap copy at biblio.com or bookfinder.com Cheers … Larry

Canadian writers can’t afford to write non-fiction anymore – and that’s a problem for all of us

CHARLOTTE GRAY

SPECIAL TO THE GLOBE AND MAIL

PUBLISHED 9 HOURS AGOUPDATED 1 HOUR AGO

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Charlotte Gray is a Canadian author and historian. Her newest book, Passionate Mothers, Powerful Sons: The Lives of Jennie Jerome Churchill and Sara Delano Roosevelt, will be published in September.

When I arrived in Canada more than 40 years ago, I was clueless about this country’s past, so I turned to Discover Canada: The Rights and Responsibilities of Citizenship, in order to pass the citizenship test. This brief and cheery document had a section on history that focused on European explorers and Anglo-Canadian and Franco-Canadian political leaders, plus sidebars on soldiers, hockey players and inventors. The citizenship guide has been updated a few times since then, but the version currently on the Government of Canada website sticks to this basic narrative, much of which would make many of us cringe today.

Still, there were plenty of other ways to pursue an interest in Canadian history. Back then, there was a thriving Canadian publishing industry, releasing a steady stream of bestsellers by both academic and non-academic historians – Pierre Berton, Michael Bliss, Farley Mowat, Donald Creighton, Peter Newman.

Like the citizenship guide, those books were Whiggish and smug, confident in the wisdom of the Fathers of Confederation and optimistic about this country’s future. The writers usually ignored people who had lived here for eons, before the settlers from Europe and elsewhere arrived.

Books we’re reading and loving this week: Globe staffers share their book picks

But at least those books were being written and read, allowing Canadian citizens and newcomers to learn a version of how this country evolved. Moreover, they were reviewed in newspapers, discussed on CBC Radio and sometimes adapted for television documentaries. Some of them sold well over 50,000 copies – more than 200,000 in the case of Berton’s chest-thumping tomes about the War of 1812, the building of a transnational railway or the Klondike Gold Rush. A non-fiction writer could cover research costs and make a decent living from a combination of publishers’ advances, grants from federal and local arts councils and spinoff articles.

Today, in the words of author and lawyer Mark Bourrie, “it’s horrible out there.” Bourrie has written several well-received books on Canadian history, including the Charles Taylor Prize winner Bush Runner: The Adventures of Pierre-Esprit Radisson, which required months of intense research in libraries and archives plus travel to significant sites. He would like to write more. “But I can only support myself because I practise law.” Bush Runner outsold most books of Canadian history published in the past few years, yet total sales were about 25,000 – a fraction of Berton’s.

History is just one category within the larger genre of deeply researched non-fiction that struggles to survive in Canada today. Other types of non-fiction by Canadian writers that require several years of research, including popular science, climatology, biography, business writing and essays, are slowly disappearing from bookstores. These days, our publishers’ non-fiction lists are dominated by personal memoirs – books that may be well-written and illuminating, but rarely involve archives, research trips or fact-checking.

Why is this happening?

Part of the reason is the precipitous decline of our publishing industry. In the 1980s, there was a healthy publishing ecosystem, with several sturdy Canadian publishers plus a readership eager to buy its products. A promising young writer with a good idea could hope for an advance of $50,000 to $80,000 from such publishers as McClelland & Stewart, Key Porter or Stoddart/General. Strong sales justified the advances.

Today, most of those Canadian publishers have either closed or been swallowed by the multinational publisher Random House (now Penguin Random House.) There are still several independent Canadian publishers, including Douglas & McIntyre/Harbour, Greystone Books, ECW, House of Anansi or Dundurn, but most are very small and kept afloat by government grants. And their market is dwindling. In 2000, one in five of the books sold in Canada were published in this country. Today, it’s fewer than one in 20. When Canadians shop for books, they buy American.

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So there is much less money around to cover the costs of writing in-depth, non-subjective non-fiction. The average advance from the more established independent publishers to reliable authors, according to one agent, is $5,000 to $7,500; “unknowns” are looking at a pittance. That is not going to keep a writer alive, let alone cover the costs of research and travel needed for a book on climate change or Indigenous archeology, or the biography of an IT pioneer.

The multinationals (we’re down to three – Penguin Random House, Simon & Schuster, HarperCollins) can pay much bigger advances, especially for celebrity authors such as Chris Hadfield, Elliot Page or Peter Mansbridge. But multinationals are minimally committed to Canadian writers or literature because the Canadian government has not given to its writers the protections from foreign competitors that, for example, our dairy farmers enjoy, and because the multinationals make their profits on U.S. or U.K. titles. Most first-time Canadian non-fiction authors who are lucky enough to get a contract from one of the big three will be offered $20,000 to $30,000. Again – not enough to cover extensive research costs.

Canadian non-fiction has a tough challenge even getting noticed. At Chapters Indigo, which dominates the bricks-and-mortar book trade, you have to fight through baby toys, blankets and candles to find any printed material. Readers today like to shop online, so can’t browse new releases so easily or chat with helpful staff eager to promote good Canadian books in neighbourhood bookstores. Crime and fiction titles have muscled out researched non-fiction in the dwindling number of newspaper review pages. What’s left? Literary awards and book clubs, and it’s hard to build a career on their serendipitous choices.

Like many writers of heavily researched books, I used to turn to the Canada Council for financial help. I received a grant of $10,000 for my second book, Sisters in the Wilderness (1999); for my ninth book, The Massey Murder (2013) I was eligible for an “established writer” grant of $25,000. However, since then the Canada Council has skewed its grant system toward personal memoir and away from those who don’t write about their own experiences. Grant applications from writers like me are rejected. I am lucky to have a partner with a steady income, which allows me to spend three to five years on each book.

Ken Whyte, the publisher at Sutherland House, which publishes only non-fiction, writes a must-read weekly newsletter on his industry called SHuSH and calls the Canada Council’s pivot away from fact-based non-fiction “bonkers. … We need investigative journalism, history, biography, politics, current affairs, science and health books if we’re going to understand ourselves and our times.”

A few Canadian non-fiction authors writing about Canada rather than themselves can buck these discouraging trends, particularly if they can sell in the U.S. Books about mental health, hockey or celebrities find their audiences. So do well-written popular-science books. Vancouver writer John Vaillant’s most recent book, Fire Weather: The Making of a Beast, about the 2016 Fort McMurray, Alta., wildfire, was described by Publishers Weekly as “an engrossing disaster tale with a potent message” and is selling very well. This fall, quantum physicist Shohini Ghose will publish Her Space, Her Time: How Trailblazing Women Scientists Decoded the Hidden Universe, a collection of essays on high-achieving but underrecognized women scientists, including some Canadians. However, Vaillant already has a glittering track record of bestsellers and awards, and Ghose has a day job as a professor of physics at Wilfrid Laurier University.

Dan Wells of Biblioasis, a bookstore and publishing company in Windsor, Ont., says that, as a bookseller, it would be easier “to build a section of Australian or East Indian history … than it is for me to build a Canadian history section” from the catalogues of multinationals. “There are more new books available to me on the U.S. Civil War or American neocon political posturing than Canadian equivalents.” Only the far smaller, undercapitalized Canadian publishers can take on Canada’s past.

So the supply of deeply researched Canadian non-fiction has been severely squeezed. Is demand down too?

There is no simple answer to that question, but it is particularly critical for those of us who write about Canadian history, which has no traction beyond our borders. Only Canadians are likely to pick up a volume about Louis Riel, Canada’s role in 20th-century wars or our postwar embrace of immigrants – books that help explain why Canada is unique as a country and how it became this way.

Established writers of popular history have found themselves cold-shouldered by publishers who have done well with their previous books. Ted Barris, the author of 20 books, insists that, judging by the number of talks he is invited to give, public interest in military history – his forte – is growing. “Yet when I gave HarperCollins a solid proposal for my next book, there was little interest,” he said. “Yet my last three books were bestsellers for them.” So he turned to Whyte’s Sutherland House, which meant a much smaller advance but, he hopes, more support. Barris rails against a publishing ecosystem that contributes to a “historically illiterate population” and an education system where Canadian history is not even a core subject in most provinces. “If we don’t know about our own past, we’re a lesser community and are more likely to make bad decisions about the future.”

Sean Livingstone, an Oakville, Ont., high-school teacher, discovered a healthy appetite for naval history when he published a book in 2014 with an independent Canadian publisher. When he took a solid proposal to the same publisher last year, however, he was asked if he would cover most of the costs of publication and buy a certain number of copies in advance. “I was shocked,” he said. “I’m not interested in going the self-publishing route. I’ve got a good story that deserves to be told, and I deserve to be paid for all the hours of research and writing.”

Some topics still appeal to publishers if told in the right way. Andrew Stobo Sniderman, a lawyer and former Rhodes scholar, spent five years on the archival research, interviews and crafting of his first book, Valley of the Birdtail, which describes 150 years of racism dividing a First Nation reserve and a town of Ukrainian immigrants in Manitoba, and the communities’ recent efforts at reconciliation.

After two applications for a Canada Council grant were rejected, Sniderman spent all his savings pursuing his ambition to describe “with accuracy and respect the stories of both communities, which explain how Canadian society became so unequal.”

Initially, he was the sole author, but he quickly realized that he needed an Indigenous co-author. He invited Douglas Sanderson, a member of the Opaskwayak Cree Nation who teaches at the University of Toronto Faculty of Law, to join him. The two authors received a contract and a five-figure advance from HarperCollins, and when the book came out last year it was shortlisted for or won several awards. But Sniderman reports that he has been on a “non-stop hustle” to promote the 10,000 copies sold so far, with little support from his publisher. “There is no way to make economic sense of the process,” he said.

One writer in her 30s has a different take on the problem. After Melissa Gismondi received a doctorate in history from the University of Virginia, she hoped to write a researched non-fiction book but failed to find a publisher. Today she supports herself with jobs in radio, but this leaves her little time or energy for research, and she has begun to wonder whether the slump in interest in Canadian history isn’t just the old cliché – “it’s boring” – but rather our inability to tell diverse stories in compelling ways. Gismondi suggests that perhaps the sense of a cohesive Canada that Berton and his generation tried to promote was always an illusion.

“The complexity and nuance of Canada was never addressed in those old narratives.”

The old narratives no longer appeal to literary festival audiences either, especially if they never learned much history in school. Sean Wilson, who runs the writers festival in Ottawa, notes little interest in “the First or Second World wars, brave heroes, Canadian prime ministers or books that the status quo is okay. … Given the dumpster fire that reality has become, the past doesn’t intrigue me unless it is seen through a lens that questions our assumptions.” He says his audiences look for books like a new graphic novel about the FLQ in Quebec or the recent bestseller The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity by David Graeber and David Windrow that challenges received wisdom about the origins of human civilization. “The next generation doesn’t care at all about the triumphalist history that I was raised on. That’s a 1-per-centre world view.”

Meanwhile, a handful of authors such as Stephen R. Bowen doggedly continue to pursue an interest in Canadian history; Bowen’s new book, Dominion, to be published in October, tells the story of the CPR and includes the Indigenous experience.

But there is no enthusiastic new generation of writers tackling deeply researched non-fiction, particularly a more inclusive Canadian history. John Pearce, an agent with Westwood Creative Artists, suggests that, “for the most part, today’s academics aren’t looking for popular audiences, and aspiring non-academic historians may have turned away from a subject where there is so much conflict.”

So today’s immigrants are offered an out-of-date guide to citizenship that takes the history of this country no further than 1999 and devotes only a brief paragraph to Indigenous history. (A new version of the guide has been promised for several years but has been dogged by controversy.) Canadian citizens who enjoy learning about the past can find few original treatments of ancient or recent historical events or vigorous investigations into the historical and political controversies that have consumed this country in the past or the present.

What can halt this gradual slide into homegrown ignorance about Canadian politics, scientific achievements and history? Granting councils can reconsider the damage to non-fiction writers who want to explore this country’s culture in depth. (Sutherland House was recently turned down for Canada Council and Ontario Arts Council grants.) The federal government can offer more protections, through subsidies and regulations, for Canadian independent publishers. Provincial education departments can kindle an interest in this country by building more time for Canadian content into their curricula. Without such interventions, argues Bourrie, “we’ll soon be culturally integrated with the United States, and we’ll have lost our own history.”