Story Me

Stories and More from the People of Kingston and Frontenac County

How we ever stayed in the aircraft, God only knows!

Interview with Betty Calvert

August 30, 2016

Betty Calvert in Perth Road Village tells Margi McKay about the plane ride she and her friend Enid McCarthy.

Betty Calvert in Perth Road Village tells Margi McKay about the plane ride she and her friend Enid McCarthy took on 3 June 1931, at the Kingston Flying Club air meet at the Kingston Airfield (then north of the city limits, west of St Mary’s Cemetery in the area which later became Kingscourt subdivision).

The two friends’ brothers, Harold McCarthy and Claude Fournier, had tickets in a draw for a free plane ride, but when lunchtime came without having won the boys let Betty and Enid have the tickets, little suspecting that their sisters — then aged eight to ten — would convince officials to let them take the prize-winning flight. Both so small they went up squeezed into the same seat, they daringly stood up while in flight to see over the edges of the cockpit.

Below is a 4 June 1931 clipping from the Whig Standard about the flight [shown only in part due to copyright reasons], as well as an earlier photo of the Fournier children taken circa 1928 in the back yard of their Toronto Street home: Claude, Betty, and two younger girls who are probably their sisters Joan and Marjorie.

1931 News Clipping about Betty Calvert and Friends