By Liz Millward
On December 4, 1915 Joseph Gorman of Ottawa graduated from the Stinson Flying School at San Antonio, Texas, and returned to Canada in order to sign up with the Royal Naval Air Service (RNAS). He was the first graduate for twenty-one year-old Marjorie Stinson, the instructor who taught him to fly in the record time of two weeks (totalling about four hours of flying time). Some years later Stinson reflected that “perhaps I might never have begun teaching men to fly had it not been for a group of youngsters who feared the war would be over before they could get into a fight.”[1] Unable to get sufficient hours in at the Wright Flying School at Dayton, Ohio, Gorman and three other Canadian men wired Stinson “asking if I would take them on. I wired back a ‘yes’ and down they came before I was quite ready for them.”[2] Stinson’s story, which will make an appearance at the War in the Air exhibition curated by John Maker at the Canadian War Museum in 2016, provides a fascinating glimpse into the excitement and sense of possibility generated by the confused scramble of wartime regulators to make sense of new technologies.
Katherine Stinson (sister of Marjorie) and her Curtiss airplane. Wikipedia
Together with her sister Katherine and brothers Edward and Jack, Stinson was a member of what came to be described in the press as the “Flying Family.” Katherine was the first member of this family who learned to fly, in 1912 under the tutelage of Max Lille. In May 1913 she incorporated the “Stinson Aviation Company” to manufacture aeroplanes, with capital stock of $10,000, herself as president and her mother, Emma B. Stinson, as secretary and treasurer. Within a month Katherine had bought a Wright model “B” biplane to develop her flying skills and the company began to grow.[3] The following year Marjorie asked her mother for $450 and travelled by train to take lessons at the Wright School. After 4.5 hours in the air she earned her Aero Club of America Pilot’s Certificate No. 303 (dated August 12, 1914), performed some exhibition flights, and then became the main flying instructor at the new branch of the family business, the Stinson School of Flying. Her first graduate was Gorman, who gained Certificate No. 371. That only 67 other people (all men) had earned their licences between Stinson and Gorman gives a sense of how much aviation at the time operated on the principle of the newly minted pilot teaching the next one in line how to fly. Marjorie also taught both of her brothers: Edward in December 1915 and Jack in January 1916.
As anyone who has ever done archival research knows, there are moments where things can get incredibly dull. To get over this, we all try to find little things that keep us going. When I was in the midst of reading every issue of the Moose Jaw Times between 1931 and 1934, for example, I very much enjoyed following the daily exploits of Little Orphan Annie. Most days nothing noteworthy happened – in fact, some strips were simply announcing that she was changing locations – but it all worked together as a serial and, every couple weeks, something exciting happened that made you glad you had followed the story all the way through. When compared to today, where people binge television programs, the long-term connection and slow unfolding of story lines over the course of weeks and months seems to have been lost.
