Many years ago Hollywood put out a movie "Those Magnificent Men in their Flying Machines," based on a true story about a newspaper sponsored contest of an early airplane race between London and Paris.

It was a great and at times very humorous movie about the early barnstorming days of flight, but today how many Cranbrookians realize we once had a similar contest here. Well, we did, and thanks to the efforts of former Cranbrook Citizen of the Year Skip Fennessy and the East Kootenay Historical Association, people can learn more about that long ago competition at the newly expanded Canadian Rockies International Airport.

Last week a small crowd gathered at the airport as Fennessy presented airport managing director Tristen Chernove with two elegantly framed black and white pictures commemorating the famous 1919 flight in which Capt. Ernest C. Hoy touched down briefly in the fledgling city of Cranbrook on his way to Lethbridge after taking off from the Lulu Island Airport near Vancouver at 4:13 a.m.

Hoy, a World War I ace, didn't tarry long before taking off at 3:35 p.m. from a field where the Tamarack Mall is located now for his historic flight over the Rockies. But through the Rockies would have been a better term, because his 90 hph. Curtiss JN4 bi-plane, or Curtiss Jenny as it was popularly known, couldn't fly faster than 75 mph. (100 km/h) or higher than 7,000 feet (2,000 meters) and many of the peaks he had to surmount were far higher than that.

So, as recounted in "Come With Me to Yesterday," a column that used to appear in the Cranbrook Courier by Dave Kay and D.A. MacDonald, Hoy, followed the road system as it was in those days through the Rockies (likely the Crows Nest Pass) and landed at Lethbridge at 6:22 p.m. before fueling up again and flying to Calgary by nightfall.

However, Lieutenant Hall, another World War I ace who entered the race sponsored by the Aerial League of Canada and the former Vancouver World and Calgary and Lethbridge Herald newspapers, wasn't so lucky, developing engine trouble on takeoff near Creston and crashed into a vehicle parked near the far end of the dirt strip.

More details of this historic event can be found in the "Cranbrook and District Key City Chronicles 1898 -," a coffee table book put out by The History Book Committee chaired by Fennessy and available at local bookstores and the Cranbrook Public Library.

Fennessy says both Hoy and Hall were true transportation pioneers in every sense of the word. "They were like the other pioneers, the stage coach drivers and the railway engineers. The only difference is they were up in the air, but they still helped people reach their destinations."

Fennessy says true airports in the sense of paved runways, terminals and navigation towers didn't exist in the B.C. Interior when Hoy and Hall made their historic flights. Cranbrook's first airport was built on Industrial Road #1 near the Crestbrook sawmill several years after Hoy's flight and operated there for more than 40 years until the current facility was opened as a federal strip in 1968 and ownership transferred to the City of Cranbrook in 1997.

Fennessy says he was particularly glad to see the two historic photos mounted on a wall in the departure area beside several other sepia-toned pictures of the region because of the loss of a mural marking the same event which was painted over during airport expansion. "They fill the void of not having the mural there anymore and I was determined to see them up there because the event was part of Cranbrook's history and nobody seems to care about that anymore."

Professional sign writer Rick Orza, who painted the original mural of Hoy's flight that graced the terminal wall for many years, says he feels the same way about history. "It's the people in the past that put in the hard work to get us to where we are now. That's how you build a community."

Orza, who operated a sign painting business in the city for many years, says he never understood why his mural was painted over and not stored for future use. However, he adds if he was ever asked to paint another mural at the airport again, "not a problem."

Meanwhile as managing director of the airport, Chernove says he's in favour of more art at the terminal building. "Absolutely. From our standpoint it's an opportunity to establish a sense of place for our customers. It sets an atmosphere, it contributes to local pride and gives our visitors an appreciation of local history."

Chernove says art in the form of painting and sculpture is increasingly becoming a feature of airports around the world. "It's part of our mission statement to establish a sense of place and that's often accomplished through art." The famous Bill Reid sculpture of a Haida war canoe at the Vancouver International Airport has been a hit with air travelers around the world and gives the airport an ambiance "almost like a museum," Chernove says.

Now Cranbrook is doing the same thing with historic flight photographs as well as the "Golden Bear" sculpture by Reg Parsons inside the terminal building and the Ktunaxa Reconciliation sculpture at the entrance of the local strip which is located on traditional Ktunaxa territory.