Sergeant Gander Read Free Page B

there was a bear on the runway. Eileen Elms (formerly Chafe), a local Gander schoolgirl, remembers “Douglas Fraser, who landed the first plane here, did say he saw what he thought was a bear on the taxiway and it turned out to be Pal.” 6
    A Brief History of Newfoundland and Labrador
    The territory known as Newfoundland and Labrador is made up of the island of Newfoundland and the area named Labrador, which is located on the continental mainland of Canada. Newfoundland and Labrador are situated on the northeastern side of North America, on the Atlantic Ocean. Originally populated by indigenous people, Newfoundland was also home to several short-lived Viking settlements as early as 986 AD. Rediscovered by the Europeans approximately five hundred years later, it was first claimed for England by explorer John Cabot in 1497, and later by Sir Humphrey Gilbert in 1583. Newfoundland was a British colony up until 1907, when it acquired self-government status and was renamed the Dominion of Newfoundland.
    Hit hard by the Great Depression of the late 1920s and early 1930s, the Newfoundland government asked the British to take back control of Newfoundland in 1934, until the Dominion could become more self-sustaining. Between 1934 and 1949 a six member Commission of Government was responsible for the administration of Newfoundland, reporting directly to London. After the war two referendums were held to determine the fate of Newfoundland. The first, in 1946, was inconclusive, with 44.5 per cent of Newfoundlanders supporting the restoration of Dominion status, 41.4 per cent supporting confederation with Canada, and 14.3 per cent supporting the continuation of the Commission of Government. 7 The second referendum, held in 1949, offered only two choices: restoration of Dominion status or confederation with Canada. With fifty-two per cent of the vote supporting Confederation, Newfoundland became Canada’s tenth province on March 31, 1949.
    Canada and Newfound–land show–ing territorial boundaries as of 1941 (cre–ated in 1915).

Gander Airport to 1945
    Construction of the airport at Gander began in 1936, and it became operational two years later. With four paved runways it was the world’s largest airport at the time, and was known as Newfoundland Airport.
    In 1941, with the war raging in Europe and the German threat growing, the Newfoundland government offered control of the airport to the Canadian government. The strategic importance of this airport had caught the attention of both the Canadian and Newfoundland governments. It was North America’s most easterly land-based airport, making it an ideal refuelling point for trans-Atlantic flights. Its location also gave pilots the greatest range for surveillance flights over the western Atlantic Ocean. However, there were fears that the airport, which had no active defence force, might fall into the hands of the Germans. The Newfoundland governor, Sir Humphrey Walwyn, requested that the facility be turned over to Canada for the duration of the war.
    The Canadian government agreed and Royal Canadian Air Force (RCAF) bombers arrived at the airport in June 1940, followed soon after by soldiers from Canada’s Black Watch, a reserve military unit from Montreal, Quebec. The Black Watch regiment and the RCAF’s orders were to defend the airport from air attacks or sea-based landings, and to patrol the western Atlantic to provide early warning of any enemy attack. The airport was renamed RCAF Gander, and expansion began almost immediately with additional hangars, barracks, and storage being added to the existing facility. The German threat to Canada’s eastern coastline proved to be very real. Not only did German submarines attack and sink Canadian ships, penetrating as far as Rimouski on the St. Lawrence River, but the Germans also laid mines in the waters off Halifax and St. John’s and were able to establish an automatic weather station in Northern