Needs Must

[Mechanic]

The other night with my wife Pat we watched a TV show called Cold Case. The theme is detectives investing and solving old murders etc. This particular episode was based on US Women's Army Air Corps. This reminded Pat, who is Canadian, of the  Ferry Command in Canada in WW2, where civilian pilots flew planes from Dorval in Quebec to Prestwick in Scotland. Before the US entered the war, war planes were being manufactured in the States, but it was illegal to fly the planes from the States to the UK. The manufactures got around this by flying the planes to North Dakota pushing them across the border into Manitoba Canada, where they were dismantled, taken by rail to Montreal and sent by cargo ship to England where hopefully, if the ship wasn't sunk on the way across, reassembled. Due to the high loss of shipping and the valuable cargo civilian pilots, many from the USA, were employed to fly the planes to Prestwick via either Goose Bay Labrador or Gander Newfoundland.

I relate this story as it reminded me that when Castro came to power in Cuba and the USA made it illegal to trade with Cuba. Cuban owners of  US built Linotypes had a problem. The solution, order your parts and supplies from Canadian Linotype. How much the trade was worth I have no idea. I don't know of anyone who was asked to go down and install a Linotype.