2023 Annual Members' Dinner & Presentation

Chartered Engineers Pacific serves members of the ICE, IMechE, IET, IStructE, and CIBSE located in British Columbia, Washington State, Yukon and Alaska.

Please RSVP by Monday January 25, 2023 to reserve your spot; menu orders will be taken at the tables. $75 Prix Fixe Menu will be served to guests. Space is limited; please register early to avoid disappointment.

Please note: Cancellations can’t be accepted after 12pm on February 1, 2023. 

Payment by Cheque (only) payable to "Chartered Engineers Pacific"; payment will be collected at door until 6:30pm.

Dinner will be served at 7:00pm and presentation starts at 8:00pm.

Presentation Abstract

In the wartime Spring of 1940, during the London Blitz, Britain desperately needed aircraft from USA factories delivered by air across the North Atlantic, sea shipment too slow.

The RAF said flown aircraft delivery was too risky, so no go.  The Canadian Pacific Railway in Montreal then scrounged up 44 civilian bush pilots, mainly from war-neutral USA quietly, and with 3 civilian Imperial Airways pilots, trained them to fly light bombers across the North Atlantic to UK, in a matter of a few weeks, with no navigation skills.  They departed Newfoundland during November and December 1940 for Northern Ireland.  No aircraft were lost at sea– 26 arrived safely.

The RAF took over the aircraft deliveries in July 1940, and by War’s end some 10,000 factory fresh warplanes, were flown out of Ferry Command Dorval (Montreal) - East to the UK, North Africa, the Middle East, South Russia, India, Burma and West to Australia and the Pacific. 

Selected examples of the unusual Ferry Command Dorval wartime air mails to and from air-crew world-wide are shown, along with a few examples of aviation related wartime engineering innovations.

Dorval Airport was a key international military air hub in wartime; its cafeteria had seating for 3,000 people.  At War’s end, due in part to Dorval’s global flight expertise, the United Nations set up their I.A.T.A. and I.C.A.O. head-quarters in Montreal (Dorval Airport was close by). Many of the post-war UN staff were former Ferry Command Dorval aircrew and administrators.

Speaker Profile

Mr. Toombs is a retired geotechnical engineer who worked on many earthworks related projects at home and abroad.  In Canada - BC, Alberta, NWT, Ontario, Quebec, Newfoundland. Abroad - the USA, the Dominican Republic, Dominica, Bolivia, Nigeria, Malaysia, Sarawak, Papua Niu Guinea, Taiwan and Russia. He specialized in geotechnical engineering – office and field design, field construction, and construction audit. Work included mill tailings dams; the oil sands dams, hydro power dams; mountain highways; tropical stability assessment; high speed rail earthworks; industrial millsite foundations; and reservoir dredging.