Part 1:
In 1968, Saint John made aviation history as the starting point for Canada’s first skyjacking: an Air Canada Vickers Viscount passenger plane headed for Toronto. This was the first of several acts of air piracy during the golden age of skyjacking in Canada. We begin our episode by discussing the golden age of commercial aviation in Canada, when passenger travel was associated with glamour, passenger comfort and convenience. Relatively expensive compared to later decades, air travel from the late 1950s to the early 1970s was not a mass phenomenon and the typical passenger was a male business executive. Female flight attendants, who tended to be young, were specially trained to look after passengers. Security was minimal; there was no screening of passengers and baggage; departure lounges were not controlled spaces and airports did not have protective fencing. Canada, with its low levels of crime, political violence and handgun ownership, seemed even less worried than the United States about airline security.
The episode next examines the golden age of skyjacking, a global phenomenon that peaked in the late 1960s and early 1970s and was heavily reported in the media and made an impact in pop culture in terms of humour, editorial cartoons, books and movies. Dozens of U.S.-based flights were hijacked, with many skyjackers demanding to be taken to Havana. Many on the political left regarded Cuba under the Castro regime to be a socialist haven from American capitalism, racism and imperialism. The skyjacker was often viewed as a new type of social rebel produced by the tensions of the 1960s, but not all of them were politically motivated. Some were fleeing the law, others demanded ransoms, others were thrill seekers or hungry for publicity and a few were mentally ill. Airlines and governments resisted implementing expensive and intrusive security measures until actual violence threatened aircraft, passengers and crews. Canada experienced several skyjackings, only one of which was successful.
We move on to the background of the skyjacker of Air Canada Flight 303, a young African American from Texas, Charles L. Beasley, who had been involved with the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) in Dallas. By the mid-1960s SNCC, which had taken part in the freedom struggles in the U.S. South, was morphing into an all-Black organization tied to the anti-Vietnam War and Black Power movements. Beasley’s name appeared in secret files of the FBI, which was monitoring political activities by Black activists. According to a later interview, Beasley became radicalized after the assassination of Civil Rights icon Dr. Martin Luther King in 1968. Whatever the reason, he took part in an armed bank robbery in the small Texas community of Ladonia in August of 1968 with at least two other men but escaped arrest. Wanted by the FBI, he fled to Canada. The episode ends with Mark and Greg speculating why and how Beasley ended up in Canada, and more specifically, Halifax, Nova Scotia, which he left in the early hours of Sept. 11, 1968, carrying an .22 calibre revolver and heading for the Saint John airport.
Part 2:
In this episode, we return to Sept. 11 1968 and the early moments of the first skyjacking in Canadian history on board Air Canada Flight 303. The flight had arrived from Moncton, New Brunswick to pick up passengers at Saint John with a final destination of Toronto. In addition to pilot, Ronald Hollett, and second officer, Ronald Bromley, the crew consisted of flight attendants Christine Waud and Beverley Atkinson. Christine and Beverley were the first people on board to realize that a hijacking was being attempted.
According to a list released to the press by Air Canada, the passengers who boarded the Vickers Viscount at Moncton were Judie Peterson of Ajax, Ontario and her Moncton-based grandparents, George and Lilian Peterson; Mrs. B.W. Smith; restaurant owner and boxing promoter Fred Smith of Chatham and Rene Durelle, Canada light heavyweight boxing champion of Baie St. Anne. Rene was accompanied by his father and trainer, Placide, brother of the famous New Brunswick boxer Yvon Durelle, the “fighting fisherman”; Francine Levy of Toronto, and her 20-month old son Phillipe; Mrs. J.W. Sabina and Mrs. P.R. Sabina of Winnipeg; Camille Chanard of Downsview and Gerard Hennigar of Toronto. The passengers who joined the flight at Saint John were Susan Pridham, 21-year old Gary Newman, a member of the Canadian armed forces; Berta Peacock; Mike Wennberg and “Mr. Garvey,” who had arrived by automobile from Halifax.
The episode, which includes clips from recent interviews with three passengers who boarded Flight 303 at Saint John, as well as flight attendant Christine Waud and Air Canada passenger agent Charles “Bud” Cavanagh, recounts what happened once the flight was in the air and how it was diverted from its original destination to the airport at Dorval, west of Montreal. This was after “Mr. Garvey,” whose real name was Charles L. Beasley, produced a loaded revolver and demanded to be flown to Cuba. Beasley explained that he was a Black Power activist who was on the run from the Central Intelligence Agency. We next examine the peaceful outcome of the incident, the legal consequences for Charles Beasley, and its short-term impact on airport security. We conclude with a brief examination of the legal changes and security measures that eventually ended- for the most part- the Golden Age of skyjacking in Canada, but not before an incident in 1971 on another Air Canada flight led to the first successful act of aircraft piracy in Canada.
Sources:
Clayborne Carson, In Struggle: SNCC and the Black Awakening of the 1960s, With a New
Introduction and Epilogue by the Author (Harvard University Press, 1995).
Ward Churchill and Jim Vander Wall, Agents of Repression: The FBI's Secret Wars Against the Black Panther Party the American Indian Movement (Black Classic Press, 2022).
Bret Joel Edwards, “Bumpy Landing: Airports and the Making of Jet Age Canada,” (University of Toronto, PhD thesis, 2017).
Nina Hadaway, The Golden Age of Air Travel (Shire: 2013)
David G. Hubbard, The Skyjacker: His Flights of Fantasy (Collier Books, 1972)
Brendan I. Koerner, The Skies Belong to Us: Love and Terror in the Golden Age of Hijacking (Crown 2014).
Bob Mitchell, In Plane Sight: Before 9/11:An Untold Story (CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform, 2019).
Peter Piggott, Air Canada: The History (Dundurn Press, 2014).
D. Porat, “Plane Hijackings between Cuba and the United States and the Opportunity for
Diplomacy (1958–1973),” The Historical Journal, vol. 67 (3) (2024):561-582
J.M. Sharp, “Canada and the Hijacking of Aircraft,” Manitoba Law Journal, Vol. 5, no. 2 (1973): 451-64
Victoria Vantoch, The Jet Sex: Airline Stewardesses and the Making of an American Icon
(University of Pennsylvania Press, 2013).
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