Wing Walkers: The Rise and Fall of Canada's Other Airline. Rev. ed.

Gordon C. Shaw is professor emeritus in the Faculty of Administrative
Studies at York University.

Wing Walkers relates the history of Canada’s “other airline,” from
its beginnings as Canadian Airways (a bush pilot operation that served
the Northwest Territories in the early 1930s), to its 45 years of
Canadian Pacific ownership, to its final incarnation as Canadian
Airlines International. This revised edition contains a new last chapter
that describes the financial vicissitudes of CAI and its takeover by Air
Canada in 2000.

The first three of the book’s nine chapters deal with the Canadian
Airways period, while the next four chapters describe the Canadian
Pacific era. Around 1940, the railway purchased a number of small bush
pilot operations and consolidated them to become Canadian Pacific Air
Lines (CPAL). For the next 45 years, CPAL waged an unequal struggle with
the government-owned Trans Canada Air Lines, establishing itself as a
major transcontinental and international carrier. While it achieved this
goal in the 1980s, it never produced an adequate profit. In 1986,
Canadian Pacific sold CPAL to Pacific Western Airlines, and the merged
operation became Canadian Airlines International. The final chapters
deal with the CAI period and CAI’s eventual takeover by Air Canada,
the by then privately owned successor to Trans Canada Air Lines.

Wing Walkers contains detailed anecdotes concerning operations and
personalities that, while interesting, detract a bit from the flow of
the commercial history. Overall, the book, which includes a good
bibliography and copious reference notes, is a solid a contribution to
the history of Canadian commercial aviation.