Getting Started: Transport Canada 1936 - 1946

"Many...services have been affected by the changes incident to reorganization, entailing in the case of certain branches removal to other quarters and the dislocation of established routine, as well as increase in duties."

Sound familiar? These words actually were written almost 60 years ago to describe the difficulties encountered by management and staff of the new Department of Transport during its first year of operation. Changing the size, shape and mandate of government organizations apparently was a major challenge even then.

C.D. Howe

With the indomitable C.D. Howe at the helm, however, the job was done and, in 1936, the long-established departments of Marine, Railways and Canals, along with the civil aviation branch of the Department of National Defence, were brought together under one federal government roof to form the Department of Transport. By August 1937, the Department of Transport had 6,543 employees on its roster, with an average monthly salary of about $85. Within two years, the department would be called upon to make a massive contribution to Canada's war effort.

The outbreak of hostilities in September 1939 had an immediate impact on the activities of the department's civil aviation division, which was tasked with building airports and training schools for the British Commonwealth Air Training Plan. By 1941, the division had completed 75 training sites and, at the end of the Second World War, 149 new airports had been built and 73 existing facilities expanded.

The department's meteorological division was equally challenged to meet the huge demands placed upon it during the war. The division not only supplied weather forecasts for civil aviation, air and naval forces and for agriculture, which was so vital to the war effort, it also trained hundreds of meteorology instructors for the Commonwealth air training plan schools.

Herculean Wartime Effort / Highlights