Subject: Re: Avro Arrow

From: [email-masked] (Martin Burger)
Date: Sun, 17 Dec 1995 06:10:25 GMT

[email-masked] (Koh) wrote:

>[email-masked] (Steve Ranta) wrote:
>>
>> It's getting tiresome to hear laments about something that happened
>> more than three decades ago, while current Canadian science and
>> technology is suffering from cutbacks and takeovers by transnational
>> corporations.

>I don't disagree with your last sentence, but the Arrow story has moved
>from being a piece of unpleasant technological history to very possibly
>of a genuine mythic order.

>It manifests several archetypical elements: first there is the heroic
>dimension of the creativity and unbounded self-confidence of Canadian
>design achievement given free rein, full R&D funding and official
>sanction, which for a brief moment in time produced a high performance
>tech artifact that was the very best in the world. At the very moment
>of success, this achievement was aborted by our own political class for
>reasons to this day have not been adequately explained (other than
>undisclosed pressures by the US gov't of the day).

Archetypical is both insightful and accurate here,
but clearly the material loss was more than
Hibernia and the Alberta Tar Sands combined.  The
test blocks of the Tomahawk engine program alone
made GE plants in the US billions.  Its also fair
to say that we would have been positioned enviably
like a West Germany economically speaking as
opposed to the banana republic we presently are.

It was an immeasurable loss and we could finally
bury this ghost once and for all if we could just
actually do it right for once.  

The country's propensity for snatching defeat from
the jaws of victory is a pathetic embarrassment.  
How can semi-intelligent people endowed with a
whole Continent of resource riches get it so
messed up. 

Bring in a professional management team from Hong
Kong balance it with a few Scandinavians for their
expertise in social programs, add to this a few
Aboriginal elders, Canada would be paradise.

>Second, aborting the Arrow was not simply shutting down a project the
>sponsors have lost interest in...it was obliterated in a manner that
>evokes uniquely 20th C. Orwellian horrors; the destruction of the
>beautiful Arrow prototypes resonates with the Disappeared under
>numerous totalitarian regimes, a concerted effort by the state to
>assert the non-existence of objects, people and entire cultures even.
>Official concealment and denials always generates aprocryphia.

Who really knows what went through Dief's mind in
making the Hyde Park agreement.  When the program
was canceled, the engineers were in a stupor from
the shock.  They kept coming into the office
taking their places at desks and drawing boards
even when there was nothing left to do.  

The green coveralls came in rolling garbage
containers emptying the desks and drawers, every
memo was gathered up and burnt.

To their horror next they heard crews with torches
in the assembly plant cutting up the production
line jigs.  37 Avro Arrows were in various stages
of completion, six fully built and two of these
already certified for their airworthiness.  

They could have easily sold these, or left them
rot on the tarmac, but no, they cut em up along
with the self esteem of a nation that had just
made an unequaled industrial engineering
contribution to stopping Hitler's rampage in
Europe.  

They didn't just scrap these birds, they cut them
up in tiny pieces.  

>The Arrow has become a paradigm for thwarted creativity and political
>failure that has played out a thousand times since. It is unfinished
>business in the Canadian psyche. It is a myth which has a potency that
>could never be manufactured by propagandists or the entertainment
>industry.

Three subsequent engineering feats of Arrow
proportions have been offered up by Mr. Barry V.
Davis for his country and all to no avail. 

How many Avro Arrows is it going to take for the
country to wake up?

The new Davis Turbine (a simple device for
generating electricity from the world's oceans) is
now also slipping over the border to offshore
interests.  Gone with this one is a low cost
proprietary energy device with the lightest of
ecological footprints.  (US $30 trillion market)

With 98 remote BC communities still relying on
diesel power and some 50,000 MW of tidal power (5
times the existing grid) available in a clean low
cost sustainable alternative and not have a single
unit in place is like having all that oil and gas
available in Alberta but for the obstruction by
special interests with out an single oil well in
place.

???????

Its just sickening to know the truth of this
situation, and even more sickening to know that
EVERY provincial and federally elected official in
the country knows this to be true as well.   These
so called leaders could stand up for the good of
the country, but they simply don't have the
courage.  

The way this country treats its innovators is
despicable.  Go away with your inventions, they
are too much trouble in our system and its much
better to be seen looking for solutions than
risking the ire of the constituency by actually
implementing one.  

Solutions are simply not welcome in Canada.

Thank God for Globalization.

Martin Burger, Managing Director
Nova Energy Ltd. The Blue Energy Company

Its time to use tidal power now!

Website:  http://www.3dvisions.com/webpages/nova.htm