Today, my old neighbourhood is considered “central”, but back then, it was far from it. My parents’ home was brand new-standing far, far out on the very edge of the first stumbling attempts at suburbanization. I was a lucky young fellow, for I lived just two miles from RCAF Station Rockcliffe, one of Canada’s oldest and most legendary military airfields, and four miles from RCAF Station Uplands, one of the biggest bases in the land. They opened up two linked, but different, worlds for me-the world of aircraft and the world of birds. Grasping their pebbled grips in my young hands and training them on a distant subject, they enabled discovery in a whole new way. These binoculars were the greatest gift of my youth-solid, heavy, German-made, and optically precise.
In 1959, when I was 8 years old, I was given a pair of Carl Wetzlar binoculars for Christmas by my parents. Artist Jeff Krete, a sculptor of both avian and aviation subjects, pays powerful artistic tribute to that passion in all of us and the short history of manned flight. We cannot speak of aviation history without addressing the long-held desire in our souls to leap into the air and play upon the invisible waves like a bird. While this is not a story of aviation history, the world of aviation is filled with passion, ideals, emotions and the longing for the freedom of flight. From Icarus to Otto Lilienthal to New Zealand’s Richard Pearce to Ohio’s Wright Brothers-man has long sought and found the ability to fly like a bird, and in particular the long-duration soaring birds of the oceans. While the discussion is still ongoing as to which came first-the chicken or the egg, it is certain that the bird was the source of inspiration behind the airplane.
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