Air Travel
Of course, operation from a regional lab that was located thousands of kilometers from its headquarters in Ottawa required an unusual amount of air travel. The most used round-trip flights Edmonton-Ottawa (YEG-YOW) were:
Outbound to Ottawa:
Canadian Pacific B737 service non-stop to Toronto (YEG-YYZ)with a short stopover, then Toronto-Ottawa (YYZ-YOW) on any of a variety of (typically) Air Canada ‘Rapidair’ flights. This flight departed Emonton in the late afternoon, around 4:00pm. Flight time to Toronto was about 4 hours. After that, there was a 60 minute layover in Toronto, followed by, typically, a 45min Air Canada flight to Ottawa and another 60 minutes spent retrieving luggage, securing a rental car and driving to a hotel. The heads of weary BNR EDM travelers didn’t often hit their pillows before 1:00am, often much later.
In the Toronto airport, there was a bar famously nicknamed and referred to as Gate 80 located at the western end of the old Terminal 2. The terminal offered high-frequency Rapidair service to Ottawa (YOW) and Montreal (YUL).
Gates 76, 78, & 80 and their holding area were located at the far west end of the Terminal 2 building. Because the adjacent Gate 80 Bar was located very close to the boarding area for Rapidair flights to Ottawa, the area became an iconic congregation spot for business commuters, Federal politicians, their Provincial brethren, aboriginal leaders, athletes, journalists, senior public servants—both Federal & Provincial, lobbyists, entertaners and other frequent flyers waiting for their short-haul flights to the capital. In those years, Mike Duffy, then a CBC reporter (and later a senator of repute) was occasionally seen unsteadily prowling the Gate 80 departure area, before his flight — and later staggering around the business class aisles of his Ottawa-bound flight.
Inbound to Edmonton: A much simpler proposition: AC-143, B767 service, flew non-stop to Edmonton, a flight of about 4 hours. Departure was typically around 6:30pm EST and arrival in Edmonton by 8:30pm MST. This flight originated in Montreal with a brief stopover in Ottawa. Upon arrival, It was not unheard of for certain passengers to make a detour to the Lion’s Head Pub in the Terrace Hotel before finally clocking in at home.
On July 23, 1983 AC143 ran out of fuel (due to a metric/imperial conversion fubar) at an altitude of 41,000 feet over Red Lake, Ontario — and infamously (& miraculously) landed without serious injury to passengers or crew on an abandoned airfield near Gimli, MN . This aircraft became infamous as the ‘Gimli Glider’. This incident took place on a Saturday; no BNR employees were involved . If the accident had ocurred on a weekday, BNR passengers would have been most likely.
Of course, there were many other destinations habitually visited by BNR Edmonton air passengers — Saskatoon, St-Laurent, Calgary (frequently making use of the Edmonton Municipal Airport) and often to both Bell South and Nortel’s offices in Atlanta, Georgia with Northwest Orient Airlines, which usually made connections in Minneapolis.
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