Arrow Through the Heart: The Life and Times of Crawford Gordon and the Avro Arrow

270 Pages·1998·16.091 MB·English

by  Greig Stewart

THE LIFE AND TIMES O.F
CRAWF'ORD .·GORDON
..... .
iTl;IE AVRO ARROW
GREIG ST. _· �RT
AUTHOR OF SHUTTING DOWN THE NATIONAL DREAM
.Arrow
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[i
he argument persists whether Crawford
Gordon was one of the greatest industrial­
ists and business minds this country has
produced or whether he was just a canny
political cowboy who herded the imagination of
an entire country into his corral of schemes and
moneymaking junkets. Unfortunately, Gordon
was in many ways like the project of his life -
the ill-fated, now almost legendary, Avro Arrow.
Both rose quickly, promising great feats, and
both met their ends quickly and tragically,
much too soon for the rest of us to determine
their true potential.
Still, no one can deny that in his short life, Gor­
don's accomplishments were considerable:
• At 21, he was comptroller of finance at
Canadian General Electric;
• At 28, he was C.D. Howe's Boy Wonder at
the Ministry of Munitions and Supply during
World War II;
• At 32, he was president of the English Elec­
tric Company;
• At 36, he was top man in the Department of
Defence Production;
• At 40, he held directorships in nine of the
largest corporations in Canada;
• At 42, he was at the helm of A.V Roe Canada
when it rolled out the Arrow, the most
sophisticated piece of aviation design and
technology the world had ever seen;
• At 52, he was dead.
When Crawford Gordon led A.V Roe in the
1950s, it was the third largest company in
Canada. And when he laid off almost 15,000
workers in February 1959 in response to the
Diefenbaker government's decision to scrap the
Arrow, this was an unprecedented and shocking
move. Was this a calculated attention-getting
(continued on back flap)

AND THE AVRO ARROW

THE LIFE AND TIMES.OF
CRAWFORD
GORDON
AND THE AVRO ARROW
GREIG STEWART
AUTHOR OF
SHUTTING DOWN THE NATIONAL DREAM
fm
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Copyright@ 1998, by Greig Stewart.
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ISBN: 0-07-560102-8
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 TRI 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 0 9 8
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Canadian Cataloguing in Publication Data
Stewart, Greig
An arrow through the heart: the life and times of Crawford Gordon and the Avro
Arrow
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0-07-560102-8
I.Gordon, Crawford, 1914-1967. 2. Chief executive officers -Canada - Biograph
y.
3.A.V. Roe Canada - Biography. 4. Businessmen - Canada - Biography. I. Title.
HC112.5.G66S74 1998 338.092 C97-932430-0
Publisher: Joan Homewood
Production Coordinator: Jennifer Burnell
Editor: Ron Edwards
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Printed and bound in Canada