Aviation Memorabilia Newsletter

Found in 'Horizons' magazine

Issue dated December 1976

Madcap caper - Toronto to Copenhagen race.

Leave it to Mike Hildred, Public Relations Manager, London, England to come up with a novel way of celebrating the company's tenth anniversary of service between Denmark and Canada.

He herded five Danish press representatives and a photographer "with such a bushy moustache that he looked like a Viking with his helmet pulled down a bit low, on the Great Toronto-Copenhagen Race.

The question had been what to do to mark the anniversary. The answer was to stage a race from the top of Toronto's CN Tower to a check-in point at the downtown Sheraton Centre hotel, race to the airport, climb aboard the same aircraft on which the party had arrived from Copenhagen the previous day, deplane at the Danish city and continue the race to the top of the wooden replica of the Eiffel Tower 100 feet inside the gates of the Copenhagen Zoo. Marks were given for ingenuity in completing all stages of the race and subtracted as minutes from the total elapsed time.

Charts were drawn up, rules established and the odd difficulty thrown ln. One obstacle facing the contestants was that they could not put their feet on the ground between the zoo gates and the Eiffel Tower.

Captain Buck Korol and Second Officer Bill Donaldson on flight 843/28 October 1976 brought the contestants from Copenhagen.

In the photo below we have the participants and organizers of the race are shown at Copenhagen's replica of the Eiffel Tower.

Standing from the left are: Flight Attendant France Pelletier; the Mayor's chauffeur, Jens Christian Hansen; 'Mugge' Hansen on stilts with Birthe Dhryberg standing in front of him; Henrik Ringsted; Flight Attendant Kirsten Rasmussen; Arne Dyhreberg, Zoo Director; Egon Weidekamp, Mayor of Copenhagen; Flight Attendant Linda Chartier; Joergen Kjaersgaard and Erik Bjerg Christensen, Copenhagen Tourist Association.

Front row, from the left, are: Sales Representative, John Hansen; Poul Erik Larsen, Manager, Scandinavia; Dave Blomquist, Airport Customer Service Manager; John Joergensen, Otto Ludwig and Bjoern Anderson.

Keeping Joergen Kjaersgaard's feet off the ground enroute to the tower are, from the left, Flight Attendants Kirsten Rasmussen, Linda Chartier and France Pelletier. 

Issue dated January 1977 

London pushes cargo

Cargo Sales Representative Brun Fillmore, second from right, and Central Region Cargo Support Manager Bob Philips, right, outline the company's cargo product features to Gord Bennett, left, and Gord Brand of Listowel Transport Lines.

Staged in cooperation with London Cartage, Listowel Transport and Great Lakes Airlines, the presentation by Brun and Bob attracted more that 100 key accounts located in the London, Ontario area.

Precious cargo

A 1903 Autocar arrives in Cleveland via company DC-8 cargo aircraft after participating in the 1976 London-Brighton Auto Run, Britain's prestigious antique car run for pre-1904 vintage cars only.

The two-cylinder, ten horsepower vehicle, which belongs to the Crawford Auto Aviation Museum in Cleveland, was driven in the race by museum director, Kenneth B. Gooding.

Watching the arrival of the car are, from the left: Kathy Louie, Crawford Museum; Bob Loomis, Import Manager, Blaser & Mericle, Inc., import-export agents and John McGilvray,  Cargo Sales Representative.