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Continuing from where part 2 ended, we continue our cross Canada examination of the Canadian airline industry in the 1960s. We first look at the Boeing and their inability to win a major order for their narrow body aircraft in Canada as they were trumped by McDonnell Douglas and their DC-8 and DC-9 jets. Both Canadian Pacific and Air Canada operated the DC-8, with Air Canada also taking the DC-9 as their short to medium haul replacement of the Vickers Viscounts and Vanguards.

With the rise of French Canadian nationalism in the 1960s, many corporations moved their Canadian head offices from Montreal to Toronto, and so did follow the air traffic of the day. In the 1950s Montreal was the biggest city in Canada, but that changed in the 1960s, so we travel back in time to the mid 1960s to check out the airline scene at Toronto Airport. Air Canada with their Viscounts, Vanguards and DC-8s represented most of the YYZ traffic, but we are also treated to BOAC 707, American Airlines BAC One Eleven and other neat airliner movements.

The close of the film takes us back to a very busy Montreal Dorval in the late 60s and early 70s, which still maintained the upper hand on foreign airline traffic of the day, with LOT Polish IL-62, British Airways 707s and 747s and other neat types earning their keep at YUL. We close the decade of the 1960s and open the decade of the 1970s with the introduction of Air Canada’s Boeing 747.

This documentary film “Airlines in Canada 1960s” by Henry Tenby charts the colourful airlines operating in Canada through the decade of the 1960s and was produced largely from NFB film sources. It streams exclusively at JetFlix TV.