Sixty Years On, We Still Dream of the Arrow

Summary

The Avro Arrow was a beautiful machine. It still would be, if there were any left. Orland French recalls the romance and mystique of the Canadian supersonic superstar that never was. I was 13 when the first Avro Arrow was rolled out for public viewing in 1957. Sharp, clean lines. A magnificent delta-wing design. A dazzling white coat of paint. A futuristic twin-engine supersonic interceptor. It was Canadian. It was acknowledged as the best of its kind in the world. Man, it made us swell with patriotic pride. I soon had a gleaming plastic model of an Arrow on my homework desk. That was probably 40 years before I had my personal Arrow moment. I had travelled to Barry’s Bay to meet an author about the creation of a history book on the Polish community in the area. Her surname was Zurakowski, but I made no connection until she asked me if I knew her husband. “No, I don’t think so,” I said. “Yes, I think you do. Come with me.” She led me to another room where there was a balding, lean man I didn’t recognize immediately, except there was a huge portrait of an Arrow in flight on the wall behind him. I realized with a shock I was in the presence of Janusz Zurakowski, the famous chief test pilot of the Avro Arrow. After the Arrow project was suddenly cancelled in 1959, he retired from flying and he and his wife Anna moved to Kamaniskeg Lake near Barry’s Bay in eastern Ontario, where they built and operated Kartuzy Lodge. Janusz told me he had picked out the site while he was on an Arrow test flight over the area. Janusz and Anna have both passed away. If you are under the age of 50, you may not have a clue what I’m talking about. The CF-105 Avro Arrow was a state-of-the-art twin-engine all-weather interceptor fighter-bomber, designed, built and test-flown in Canada during the height of the Cold War in the 1950s. It was the best of its kind in the world at the time. It really was. It cruised at 1,100 kilometres per hour and topped out at 2,400 kph with full afterburners. It w...