Air Canada Back To Future

Air Canada is trademarking its pre-war corporate identity that provoked one of the first battles over bilingualism fifty years ago.

Federal documents show the carrier has revived its trademark for Trans-Canada Air Lines that dates from its founding. The name was changed to the bilingual Air Canada by a 1964 Act of Parliament sponsored by then-Liberal backbencher Jean Chretien. MPs had tried for years to change the name prior to introduction of the 1969 Official Languages Act.

Air Canada declined an interview. Chretien, 80, now counsel with Dentons Canada LLP in Ottawa, did not comment.

“From the earliest days there was no service to compare to Trans-Canada Airlines,” said Renald Fortier, curator of the Canadian Aviation & Space Museum. “It was the national carrier.” Fortier noted TCA had informally used the bilingual moniker in advertising since the 1940s, primarily in the French-language press.

Trans-Canada Air Lines was founded as a Crown agency from its inaugural flight between Vancouver and Seattle in 1937. However the French translation of its name Les Lignes Aériennes Trans-Canada was “cumbersome”, Chretien told the Commons in 1964. “The name Air Canada is certainly bilingual. It has precisely the same connotation and meaning in English and in French”; “It would correspond to the bicultural nature of the country, not to mention the fact that it would indicate the international character of Trans-Canada Air Lines.”

The bill passed the Commons with all-party support. One Conservative MP, Remi Paul from Berthier-Maskinonge-Delanaudiere, Que., called the name change “a wonderful opportunity to do something which would constitute a perfect example of complete bilingualism in this country. That name of ‘Air Canada’ would show to all the peoples of the world, to all foreign countries, that in a bilingual country an expression may be found which can satisfy the different ethnic groups.”

Air Canada applied to trademark the old name for use on memorabilia including golf bags, knapsacks, luggage, pens, playing cards, polo shirts, shaving kits, sports bags, ticket holders, T-shirts, wallets and other souvenirs.

Curator Fortier said the aviation museum’s Ottawa collection includes three vintage TCA aircraft: a pre-WWI Lockheed 10 Electra; 1950s-era Vickers Viscount; and McDonnell Douglas DC-9 from the 1960s.

“We still have visitors say, ‘I remember flying in the Viscount’, or ‘My first flight was in the McDonnell Douglas’,” Fortier said. “It was a big deal for people in the 1950s. Flying was not something you did every day. People wore their Sunday best to take a flight. Now they wear flip-flops. It does not have the same aura today.”