This fonds consists of records created/accumulated by Philip Smith in the course of researching and writing a book on the history of Air Canada.
More specifically, the material consists of two types of records which were gathered
by Smith in the course of conducting his research and writing the history of Air Canada,
published in 1986 under the title: It seems Like Only Yesterday: Air Canada - the first 50 years (McClelland and Stewart). These record types are: Documentation created by him and documentation gathered by him,
The first type of records includes transcripts of interviews with many current/former staff of the. company, including senior managers, engineers and maintenance personnel, pilots and stewardesses, as well as airplane manufacturers and government ministers responsible for aviation policy (e.g. Pickersgill transcripts amount to 29 pages). Nearly 100 persons in Canada, the U.SA. and Great Britain were interviewed and the transcripts range from a few pages, excerpted from one or two hours of recordings, to as much as 90 pages of typed text.
(For some, the recordings of the interviews are available in whole or in part.) Added are biographical notes on the interviewee and questions to be asked. Some interviews were conducted by a research assistant rather than Mr. Smith himself. Additionally, there is a manuscript of the book, including complete first draft, comments, cuts and revisions; a manuscript of memoirs of Gordon R. McGregor, as well as a copy of McGregor's privately printed book, The Adolescence of an Airline, together with comments on McGregor's book which Smith requested from a number of persons connected with Air Canada.
Many of the interviews Smith conducted are valuable not only for studying the history of Air Canada but also of aviation in general, the manufacture of planes (including the Avro Jetliner and the Arrow) the development of the infrastructure, the political policies of the various governments, etc. Thus the interviews constitute a unique source of
information, some of which is not available anywhere else in any form.
The second type of record is research notes. These are chiefly (annotated) copies of
documents from the archives of Air Canada as well as from the archives of government
agencies, cabinet ministers and others held by the Library and Archives Canada, the
Provincial Archives of Manitoba, and elsewhere. These include information on government policy as that was presented/pursued by the eight cabinet ministers who have been responsible for civil transportation policy and Air Canada / aviation policy during the first 50 years of its existence, information on and from senior managers of the corporation, and records on subjects which include the full range of matters that concern the operation of the company (including about 10 cm on Winnipeg and the location/ relocation of facilities there).
