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obituary

Roderick Goff pictured in 1983 at the University of Ottawa.

Rod Goff, who bore witness to the wartime transformation and expansion of Newfoundland's Gander Airport and the evolution of transatlantic flight, died on July 27 in Gander, at the age of 99.

Hired in 1940 at the Newfoundland Weather Centre at Gander, Mr. Goff initially assisted in forecasting weather for commercial air traffic flying over the treacherous North Atlantic.

Gander had been a site for airplane passenger travel by companies such as Imperial Airways from the late 1930s and the airport wasn't immediately employed for military purposes at the outbreak of the Second World War. In fact, consideration was given to abandoning it and destroying the runways to prevent enemy access. Then called simply Newfoundland Airport, it had been built by the governments of Britain and the then-independent Newfoundland. Canada took it over in April, 1940, and around this time renamed it Gander. With the fall of France in June, 1940, a neutral United States took an interest in sending an air garrison to Gander. By then, it was the largest airport in the world.

With the subsequent formation of the Royal Air Force Ferry Command, Mr. Goff began providing meteorological support to pilots flying American-made aircraft to the European theatre of war.

The Ferry Command, administered by Lord Beaverbrook, had begun as an experiment, with first ferry flight of seven Hudson bombers departing from Gander on Nov. 10, 1940. All seven planes arrived safely in Aldergrove, Ireland. During the war, nearly 10,000 aircraft were ferried across the Atlantic, most from Gander but some leaving from Goose Bay, Labrador, or flying a southern Atlantic route. Total losses were very low.

But there were casualties, perhaps most famously Frederick Banting, the co-discoverer of insulin, in February, 1941. Mr. Goff was present at the weather briefing that Dr. Banting personally requested half an hour before takeoff and Mr. Goff was one of the last people to talk with the eminent doctor.

Shortly after departure, the plane crashed near Musgrave Harbour and Dr. Banting was mortally wounded. As a witness to the international headline-making tragedy, Mr. Goff stepped in to debunk speculation that the Nobel Prize-winning doctor had been targeted for assassination by the Nazis and his plane sabotaged. Mr. Goff entered into the public record his recollection that the plane had been appropriately guarded and inspected. Mr. Goff kept a photo of Dr. Banting on a coffee table in his living room.

When the war ended, the Americans started to withdraw from Gander in 1945, and the Royal Canadian Air Force in 1946.

Mr. Goff also left, in April, 1946. He went to Pan Am's aviation school at LaGuardia Airport, in New York, and became a Federal Aviation Administration-certified flight dispatcher. He was the first Newfoundlander to receive the qualification and he returned to Gander in this new role with Pan Am. In those precomputer days, he would help map out airplane routes, taking into account headwinds and fuel needs, and designate alternate airports for the flight crews.

In the postwar years, Gander became a hub of glamorous transatlantic flight. Propeller-driven aircraft needed to stop there to refuel en route to Europe – those of BOAC, Air France, KLM, Aer Lingus, TAP, Swiss Air and Aeroflot among them. The revolution in Cuba produced a Havana-Moscow run, which also refuelled in Gander. The TWA flights to Rome were often packed with American archbishops and Monsignori, one of whom arranged an audience with Pope Pius XII for Mr. Goff. He himself liked to travel and from Gander flew as far away as Australia – when he was 75.

The airport lounge was declared "one of the most beautiful Modernist rooms in the world," by The New York Times, with features including a terrazzo floor, Eames chairs and a 72-foot mural by Kenneth Lochhead. Sir Winston Churchill, Frank Sinatra and Ingrid Bergman passed through. Former U.S. president John F. Kennedy, then a congressman, left a generous tip at the Big Dipper bar. Mr. Goff met many of them and had a particularly notable encounter with the movie star Maureen O'Hara. Her husband, Charles Blair, was a Pan Am pilot and they travelled through Newfoundland several times. He died in a plane crash in 1978, and when Ms. O'Hara transited though Gander again and learned that Mr. Goff had known her husband, she sought him out for conversation.

Gander's significance declined with the introduction of long-range jet aircraft for intercontinental travel in 1959. But to this day, its Control Centre still oversees a vast airspace and 1,000 aircraft a day. Its geographic location is still vitally strategic, as demonstrated after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, when U.S. airspace was shut down and 7,000 travellers were stranded in tiny Gander. The warm welcome they received is currently celebrated in the award-winning Broadway musical Come From Away.

Roderick Benedict Goff was born Aug. 16, 1916, in Whitney Pier, Cape Breton, the second son of five boys and two girls of John J. and Annie (née McNeil) Goff. His father was a businessman from Carbonear, Nfld., who opened a tailor shop in Whitney Pier to capitalize on the steel mill boom. When Mr. Goff was eight his mother died and his father took the children back to his hometown of Carbonear.

Even then, aviation exploits were received "like the moon landing," said Roderick's son Gregory. The airstrip at Harbour Grace, where Mr. Goff would see gallant pioneers such as Amelia Earhart, was just five kilometres from their home.

In 1961, Mr. Goff moved to Eastern Provincial Airways – which was headquartered at Gander – and he stayed there until his retirement 1981.

Mr. Goff then studied at Memorial University of Newfoundland and then the University of Ottawa, where he received an honours degree (his third postsecondary degree) in 1991.

When Mr. Goff was 87, he published a memoir titled Crossroads of the World. Though his eyesight was fading, he was undaunted, adapting a magnifying contraption, so that he could see his own writing. A cordial, friendly man, and very fit, he skated until he was 87 and lived on his own until he was 95, still walking to the grocery store every day.

Predeceased in 1978 by his wife Alice (née Curtis), he leaves sons, Gregory and Colin; eight grandchildren; and eight great-grandchildren.

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