The Silver Dart was early aircraft designed and built by the Aerial Experiment Association, formed under the guidance of Dr. Alexander Graham Bell and partly funded by Bell’s wife. After many successful flights in Hammondsport, New York, it was dismantled and shipped to Baddeck, Nova Scotia. It was flown off the ice of Baddeck Bay, on 23 February 1909, making it the first controlled powered flight in Canada. The aircraft was piloted by one of its designers, John McCurdy and flew 69 km/h for a distance of only 640 meters.
Matthew Alexander Henson was the longtime assistant to Robert E. Peary on each of his eight expeditions to reach the North Pole. Henson was noted for his arctic skills and his ability to communicate with the Inuit. On April 6, 1909, Peary, Henson, and four Inuit men finally reached the North Pole. Henson's role was largely unrecognized for years, until 1944 when the U.S. Congress awarded him one of the joint medals as the co-discoverer of the North Pole.
The Second World War was as much about civilians suffering as military as this photograph shows. Here, a young boy, is receiving medical attention from Lance Corporal W.J. Curtis, Royal Canadian Army Medical Corps, in Colomby France, on 19 June 1944.
Warrant Officer George Vladisavljevic, a member of the 1R22eR from Valcartier, Québec is discussing with a resident of a small village named Otoka, in Bosnia-Herzegovina. This man lost everything during the fighting between Serbs and Croats Forces in Otoka between 1992 and 1995. The only thing he has left is his 17 year old horse. Warrant officer Vladisavljevic is native from Serbia but grew up in Kirklands, near Montreal.
Mary Ann Shadd was an abolitionist, teacher, lawyer, lecturer, publisher and suffragette. Shadd started the first integrated school in Canada and was the first female black lawyer in North America. She was also the first woman in North America to edit a weekly newspaper. Her paper, The Provincial Freeman, was devoted to displaced Americans living in Canada. Born a free woman in 1823 in Wilmington, Delaware, she took on the fight for abolition and education for Blacks, and battled the segregationists in Upper Canada.
Katherine Stinson was born on Valentine's Day, February 14, 1891, in Fort Payne, Alabama. She was the fourth woman in the United States to obtain a pilot's license, which she earned on July 24, 1912, at the age of 21. Initially, she planned to get her license and earn money she earned from exhibition flying to pay for her music lessons. However, she found she liked flying so much that she gave up her piano career and decided to fly instead. She took her flying lessons from the well-known aviator Max Lille, who initially refused to teach her because she was female. But she persuaded him to give her a trial lesson and was so good that she flew alone after only four hours of instruction. A year after receiving her license, she began exhibition flying. On the exhibition circuit, she was known as the "Flying Schoolgirl."
