Virtual Lecture: “I shot an Arrow in the air:” Canada’s Cold War Fighter Procurement Experiment
08 January 2026
On Thursday 8 January 2026 at 6pm, Russell Isinger will explore Canada’s experiment with producing its own high technology military aircraft during the Cold War. This lecture will be hosted virtually via Crowdcast.
Talk Outline
The early Cold War period was the “Golden Age” of the Royal Canadian Air Force (RCAF). The RCAF was the premier force in the Canadian military – proud of its operational record in the Second World War, allocated nearly 50% of the defence budget in support its significant contribution to continental air defence and Western European collective security, and supplied by a domestic aircraft industry producing excellent fighters. And the RCAF was betting its future on one prestige procurement project, the Avro Canada CF-105 Arrow, intended to be the world’s most advanced supersonic interceptor and the counter to the anticipated Soviet nuclear bomber threat to North America. As one contemporary pundit put it, “For a force for which the sky was the environment, rather than the limit, nothing seemed impossible.” All this came crashing down when Canada’s military and political decision-makers confronted the challenges of a middle-power producing its own modern weapons systems at the dawn of the missile age.
The Canadian government subsequently cancelled the Avro Arrow in 1959 amidst much controversy, whereupon it passed into legend in the Canadian imagination (leaving deep scars familiar to any TSR.2 enthusiast in the United Kingdom). The project’s termination has been condemned in Canadian popular culture ever since, where it is invariably portrayed as a foolish act of defence vandalism by an inept prime minister under pressure from the United States. But it was the right decision.
This talk will explore Canada’s experiment with producing its own high technology military aircraft, as well as the history of the A.V. Roe Canada and its projects and will argue that the Avro Arrow’s cancellation was the largely inescapable consequence of harsh financial realities and dramatic strategic shifts, coupled with a flawed weapons acquisition process driven by an overly ambitious air force.
About Russell Isinger
Russell Isinger, BA (Honours), MA, is the Associate Vice-Provost and University Registrar at the University of Saskatchewan, located in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, Canada. He has also served at the university as a sessional lecturer with the Department of Political Studies, College of Arts and Science, and with St. Thomas More College, and is a Professional Affiliate with the Department of Political Studies. His master’s thesis was titled “The Avro Canada CF-105 Avro Arrow: Decisions and Determinants,” and he has continued to research and write on this topic. His most recent publication (with Donald Story) is “Hubris: The CF-105 Avro Arrow Program and the End of the Golden Age of the Royal Canadian Air Force,” in On the Wings of War and Peace: The RCAF during the Early Cold War (2023). In 2020, he was the co-recipient of the Saskatchewan Book Awards Jennifer Welsh Scholarly Writing Award as a co-editor of the book Back to Blakeney: Revitalizing the Democratic State. As of 2024, he is a member of the Associate Air Force Historian program of the Royal Canadian Air Force.
