Billy Bishop Airports Go to War

I kept checking the date on this article. Still, there it is. 2009.

 It is perhaps a testament to the reputation of famed Canadian fighter pilot Billy Bishop that he is set to have an airport named in his honour – again.

The Toronto Port Authority plans to announce Thursday that it will rename the City Centre Airport on the island as the Billy Bishop Memorial Airport, sources tell The Globe and Mail.

The news came as a surprise 200 kilometres northwest of Toronto in Mr. Bishop's hometown of Owen Sound.

The small city is filled with tributes to the First World War pilot, including its own airport: the Billy Bishop Regional Airport.

“You can't have two Billy Bishop airports,” Owen Sound airport manager Barry Lewin said, who hadn't heard of the TPA's plan.

The article goes onto suggest that the proposal to rename the Toronto City Centre Airport (known commonly as the Island Airpot) is a ruse, to distract attention from some abrupt personnel changes. The small regional airport was originally named after George VI. Publius' humble suggestion would be to change it back to its original name. Modern Canadians can't tell the difference between George VI and George III, so that's probably a no go. The choice of Billy Bishop, one of the leading Allied fighter pilots of World War One, as a namesake is an inspired one. 

So inspired I was shocked by it. Billy Bishop is very Old Canada, pre-1960s. Bishop didn't engage in peacekeeping and we're fairly certain he was a White Anglo-Saxon Protestant. He was never discriminated against, except when British officers made fun of him for being Canadian. The British used to do that a lot back then. We just returned the favour by making fun of them. Perhaps Bishop could have filed a human rights complaint, had such things existed back then. 

Billy Bishop was something modern Canada has half forgotten. An ordinary man with extraordinary skill and courage from small town Canada. He was one of the very best in the world at doing a very dangerous, very new and very important job. Here was a Canadian who was, in the current phrasing, completely world class. Surely a world class city needs a world class hero, even if he was born and raised in Owen Sound. He lived much of his life in Montreal. During a CNE air-show in the 1920s he buzzed the crowd so closely women fainted. He wasn't invited back the following years. I suspect he would have been thrown in jail for years had he tried that stunt today. Risk taking is very unCanadian. So is causing a stir and not being offensive to the neo-puritans. Billy Bishop was the best of yesterday's Canada. Honouring him again is a small way of bringing the best of that Canada back.

Comments

[The Monarchist]

Well said. The Nanaimo Airport on Vancouver Island is named after Ray Collishaw (The Collishaw Airport), who was our second greatest ace, 60 kills to Billy Bishop's 73.