It began in 1931 in Manchuria. The Fascists won that time. Then it got going again in Abyssinia, and the Fascists won again.” In the spring of 1937, as Canada’s Mackenzie King government joined in keeping Republican Spain under effective embargo during the civil war against General Franco and his coup, the Canadian doctor Norman Bethune made the point as clearly as he could: “the world war has started. In fact, it’s in its third stage – Manchuria, Ethiopia and now Spain.”
In the life of Pierre Jeanniot there are plenty of lessons in how to make something of oneself: how to think clearly, work hard, succeed. Jeanniot came from circumstances that were not desperate per se, but not all that promising, either. Yet as a young technician in Montreal, he invented the “black box” flight recorder and, as president of Air Canada, he instituted computer reservation systems and no-smoking flights. The latter initiative was so successful it’s hard to imagine now that people ever smoked on planes.
