14,000 people lost their jobs in a single afternoon
The Avro Arrow
Built in Malton, just outside Toronto, the CF-105 Arrow was one of the most advanced jet interceptors in the world — until the government cancelled it without warning on a single February afternoon in 1959.
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Just outside Toronto, in what's now Mississauga, sits one of the more painful stories in Canadian industrial history — a genuinely world-class aircraft, killed by a single government decision announced over a factory loudspeaker.
Built in Malton, flown at Mach 1.75
The CF-105 Avro Arrow was a jet interceptor designed, built and test-flown at the Avro Canada plant in Malton between 1957 and 1959 — at the time, one of the most advanced military aircraft in the world. On its final test flight, February 19, 1959, chief test pilot Jan "Spud" Potocki reached speeds of Mach 1.75.
Black Friday (February 20, 1959)
The very next day, Prime Minister John Diefenbaker announced in Parliament that the entire Arrow program was cancelled, effective immediately. That afternoon, an announcement over the Malton plant's loudspeaker told roughly 14,000 workers to put down their tools and go home — on the spot, with no transition period. Counting the program's roughly 650 suppliers and subcontractors, total job losses are estimated at anywhere from 25,000 to 60,000 across the country.
Every plane, cut to scrap
Within months, all five completed Arrows, their advanced Orenda Iroquois engines, and essentially all technical documentation were ordered destroyed — a decision that, six decades later, is still debated and mourned in Canadian aviation and engineering circles. A number of Avro's top engineers, suddenly out of work, went on to join NASA's Apollo program or Britain's Concorde project, meaning some of the talent behind the Arrow ended up helping put a person on the Moon instead.
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Sources
- The Canadian Encyclopedia — The Avro Arrow Is Cancelled
- Canadian Aviation Museum — Avro Arrow Program Cancelled: Black Friday
- CBC — The Avro Arrow, Canada's 'Greatest Plane That Never Was'