In the summer of 1885, Alexander Graham Bell was visiting Baddeck to escape the summer heat and humidity of Washington, DC, where he lived with his wife and two daughters. Bell immediately fell in love with Cape Breton’s countryside, which reminded him of his native Scotland; of the hamlet’s 100 people, a large proportion were Scottish, further cementing Bell’s feelings toward Baddeckers.

Walking along the high street on day, Dr. Bell happened to glance through the window of the Cape Breton Island Reporter newspaper office where he noticed a man struggling with his telephone. Bell entered the office and offered to help. He dismantled the phone and pulled out a dead fly. When Bell returned the phone, the astonished gentleman asked him how he had so expertly repaired the device. In his soft Scottish accent, Bell replied, “My name is Alexander Graham Bell and I invented it”. Arthur McCurdy—his telephone restored—was the father of J. A. D. McCurdy and soon became good friends with Bell. The next year, 1887, when Bell returned to Baddeck, he persuaded Arthur to become his personal assistant.

Bell constructed a beautiful home called Beinn Bhreagh on the peninsular overlooking the hamlet of Baddeck and it was here that he built a laboratory to carry on his scientific experiments of flight. As a young boy, McCurdy could be found at Beinn Bhreagh helping Bell with his glider and kite experiments. He met many famous scientists and inventors drawn to Baddeck because of Dr. Bell’s worldwide reputation.

Having lost two sons in infancy, Bell wanted to adopt my grandfather, so strong was the bond that developed between the two. However, Bell did become a godfather to my grandfather and, in 1893, Dr. and Mrs. Bell took my grandfather, age seven, to Washington where he spent a very happy year as part of their family.

McCurdy was scarcely sixteen when he entered the School of Mechanical Engineering at the University of Toronto, graduating in 1906. He returned to Baddeck with his best friend F.W. Casey Baldwin, a fellow U of T engineer. One dark and rainy night in September 1908 Mabel Bell came into the living room of Beinn Bhreagh with some hot coffee, watched the conversation between McCurdy, Baldwin and Bell for a few moments.

“Now Alex, you have some pretty smart young engineers here,” she said. “And they’re as interested in flight as you are. Why don’t we form an organization?’ Thus, the Aerial Experiment Association was born on October 1, 1907. Not only was the original suggestion that of Mrs. Bell, but it was she who insisted upon financing the AEA. The five group members called themselves “Associates”: Alexander Graham Bell, J. A. D. McCurdy, Casey Baldwin, Lieutenant Thomas Selfridge, and Glenn Curtiss. The Aerial Experiment Association was formed with one purpose in mind: “To get a man into the air”.

“We breathed an atmosphere of aviation from morning till night and almost from night to morning,” said Bell. “I may say for myself that this Association with these young men proved to be one of the happiest times of my life.”

Two of the most notable and lasting achievements of the AEA were the development of the aileron and the tricycle landing gear. Ailerons are used to generate a rolling motion for an aircraft and are small-hinged sections on the outward portion of a wing that allows a plane to bank to the left or to the right. In a 1949 CBC interview, my grandfather said of the aileron: “This is the system used universally to this day, and I consider it to be Canada’s outstanding contribution to aircraft development.” Incredibly, 110 years later, the aileron and the tricycle landing gear are still used on aircraft worldwide.

The first of the four aeroplanes built by the Aerial Experiment Association at the beginning of 1908, called the Red Wing, crashed on its second flight because the pilot, Casey Baldwin, had no lateral control. The inventive minds of the AEA went into action to devise some method of meeting this instability challenge. The result was a hinged controllable arrangement of moveable wing tips called “little wings” which, when built into the White Wing, (the AEA’s second aeroplane) proved their worth from the beginning. The June Bug and the Silver Dart, the AEA’s third and fourth aeroplanes, had ailerons installed and the White Wing was the first to be fitted with the tricycle landing gear.

McCurdy flew the earlier aircraft, which were constructed at Hammondsport, New York, to take advantage of Curtiss’ machine shop, throughout 1908. In January 1909, the Silver Dart was shipped by rail from Hammondsport to Baddeck for its historic flight.

This is how my grandfather described that historic day, February 23, 1909:

“The whole scene is still very vivid to me. It was a brilliant day in more ways than one. The sun was glaring down on the ice of Lake Bras d’Or, which is near Baddeck. The town had turned out in a festive mood, done up in mufflers and heavy fur hats. The town, by the way, consisted largely of very doubtful Scotsmen. Most of them were mounted on skates—the kind you strap to your feet. They didn’t say much—just came to wait and see. The aeroplane, or aerodrome as Dr. Bell referred to it, was surrounded by people.

“During the early afternoon it was wheeled into place. The propeller was cranked and with a cough, the motor snorted into life. I climbed into the pilot’s seat. With an extra snort from the motor, we scooted off down the ice. Behind came a crowd of small boys and men on their skates—most of them still doubtful that I would fly. With a lurch and a mighty straining of wires we were in the air. It was amusing to look back and watch the skaters—they seemed to be going in every direction—bumping into each other in their excitement at seeing a man actually fly.

“In taking off I had to clear one old Scot, so doubtful I would fly, that he had started off across the ice with his horse and sleigh. I think they both had the daylights scared out of them. I travelled three-quarters of a mile at a height of about thirty feet before coming to the surface of the ice. I will say the doubting ones overcame their feelings in short order.”