Frederick Walker Baldwin

Frederick Walker Baldwin (January 2, 1882 – August 7, 1948), also known as Casey Baldwin, paternal grandson of Canadian reform leader Robert Baldwin, was a hydrofoil and aviation pioneer and partner of the famous inventor Alexander Graham Bell. He was manager of Graham Bell Laboratories from 1909–32, and represented Victoria in the Nova Scotia Legislature from 1933–37, where he was instrumental in bringing about the creation of Cape Breton Highlands National Park. In 1908, he became the first Canadian and British subject to fly an airplane.

Born in Toronto, Ontario, Casey Baldwin was educated at Ridley College, where he held prominent student leadership roles, won the Blake Gold Medal, and was captain of the cricket team. In 1906, he graduated from the University of Toronto with a degree in electrical and mechanical engineering, and left for Baddeck, Nova Scotia, that summer to visit the home of his college friend Douglas McCurdy and the famous inventor Alexander Graham Bell. On October 1, 1907, with the encouragement and generous financial support of Bell's wife Mabel Hubbard Bell, Bell, Baldwin, McCurdy, and two Americans, Glenn Curtiss and Thomas Selfridge, formed the Aerial Experiment Association (AEA) with the expressed purpose to "get in the air".

Baldwin used his engineering skills to help build the Silver Dart plus several other experimental aircraft. On March 12, 1908 at Lake Keuka, New York he became the first Canadian, and either the third or fourth North American, to pilot an airplane.William Whitney Christmas claimed to have first flown his aircraft on various dates from September 1907 to March 1908 near Fairfax, Virginia. The first two successful pilots were, of course, the famous Wright brothers, but it seems unlikely that it will ever be firmly established whether Christmas or Baldwin was the so-called "Third Man."

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