Text and photos: Shirley Mäntylä
“Space: the final frontier…. to seek out new life and new civilizations; to boldly go where no man has gone before!” actor William Shatner as Captain Kirk said in the TV show series, Star Trek.
We “earthlings” have always been fascinated by the planets, galaxies, and space travel.
The Artemis II project brings back memories to the 1960’s Apollo space missions and the new era of passenger transatlantic flights. In the sixties the race was on which country would land a man on the moon first. The Soviet Union successfully launched a manned rocket into space first, but NASA’s Apollo 11 mission was the first successful moon landing on July 20, 1969. With three astronauts on board, Michael Collins stayed on board while with bulky space suits on, Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin would climb out of Columbia’s space capsule and be the first earthlings stepping onto the moon’s surface. Around the world we listened to the radio or watched on TV to hear Neil Armstrong’s voice “That’s one step for a man, one giant leap for mankind.”
My memories of that historical day were flying over the Atlantic Ocean in a new Finnair jet returning from Finland to Toronto International Airport.
The 1960’s brought in a new era of commercial flights. Every day working people were able to afford to fly on transatlantic planes in comfort. In 1969, Finnair inaugurated scheduled services from Helsinki–Vantaa Airport to New York.
With so many Finnish immigrants in Canada summer charter flights from Toronto to Helsinki-Vantaa sold out to eager travelers visiting their home country. Many brought their Canadian born children to visit mummo and pappa, and others left behind when emigrating across the Atlantic.
Our family, like many Finnish Canadians, were able to fly with Finnair to visit Finland. We never were able to fly altogether as a family, but one parent and child would fly over to visit relatives over the years. My mom in the early years in Canada cleaned homes and tucked away that money with the baby bonus monthly cheque she received from the government to buy airplane tickets.
Flying on Finnair in 1969 is a very memorable event for me. It was my turn with my mom to fly to Finland. We would no longer travel on propeller aircraft with extra stops for fuel.
In June 1969, my mother and I traveled in style onboard a charter non-stop Finnair flight from Toronto to Helsinki-Vantaa. With so many Finns from Sudbury on the plane, a bus was chartered from Sudbury to bring us to Toronto International Airport , now known as Pearson International Airport. At that time, only Terminal One existed, having been built in 1964. It was very modern looking, circular in design with a parking structure in the middle. It was easy to navigate, spacious and sparkling clean. As the airport grew, Terminal One was demolished and replaced with a much larger terminal, and currently there are two terminals at the busy airport handling over forty-six million passengers per year.
There were other young children on board. Like adults we were dressed in our Sunday best outfits. The flight attendants treated us well. We ate on real china dishes and used real flatware. We were given colouring books and little plastic airplanes. We were seated near the front with plenty of legroom. What a difference to today’s air travel, crowds, leisure clothes, disposable utensils, and plastic food trays.
After a six week stay in Finland, on the flight home, the Finnair captain came on the public address speakers to announce the successful landing of Apollo 11 on the moon. The plane erupted with applause from the passengers.
For residents in Sudbury, the Apollo missions continued to be of interest. Sudbury was known for its lunar landscape as the nickel and copper mines had cut all the trees for their metal production in the early years and the sulfur pollution from the production of minerals killed all the remaining vegetation. Sudbury has a geological significance as it was formed by a large celestial impact that created the Sudbury Basin.
Much engineering, testing, and training go into any lunar mission launch. Each event costs millions of dollars and the astronauts’ safety is crucial, unfortunately some astronauts have perished during a launch. Sudbury was chosen as a testing site for Apollo 16 and 17 missions to study geological conditions, like shatter cones and other fragmented rock formations that resembled the Moon’s surface. While in Sudbury the astronauts practiced walking on the rocky terrain with space suits on.
Apollo 17 was the last manned space mission and the program ended in 1972. In April 2026, Artemis II rocketed four astronauts into outer space, one Canadian, Jeremy Hansen, a woman, and two other males in tight quarters of the Orion capsule. They successfully launched into space and completed a lunar flyby. The successful navigation sets up for future exploration in establishing a fixed lunar gateway/terminal for deeper space travel.
With the news cycle overshadowed by grim news, I followed the space mission, recalling memories of flying with Finnair. Personally, I hope Finnair’s reintroduction of non-stop charter flights from Toronto to Finland makes it easier for travelers to visit the “Happiest country in the world.”
