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The Arrow
1997 · TV series · documentary · 180 min episodes · 1 season
The story of the people building the AVRO Arrow, an advanced jet fighter-interceptor designed to defend Canada's vast territory during the Cold War. Though the jet was an engineering marvel, cost over-runs, U.S. government pressure from the military industrial complex, and the election of the Progressive Conservative Diefenbaker government, stopped the jet just as it was getting off the ground.
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3 comments on Hacker News
Killing it was the right call for the wrong reasons. But because it was the wrong reasons, it meant that no attention was paid on investing the tech into a new plane or resources.
Diefenbaker being "suckered" by the Americans is not what really happened (the CBC mini-series on the Arrow has some really cringey scenes about that angle, as well as portraying conservative party ineptitude and American arrogance). The more you read into Diefenbaker, the more he comes across as vain and susceptible to overreacting to slights (perceived or real), in over his head on the international stage, and ignorant of cold war realities (despite it being his government that had Canada form NORAD with the US).
It did set the stage for Canada's mercurial relationship with the United States, as Canada tended to over-react and over-compensate our opinions in both directions since then. This still continues to this day.
Canadian Broadcast Corporation (CBC) produced a 4 episode TV mini series dramatizing the birth and death of the Avro Arrow plane (can be found on YouTube)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Arrow_(miniseries)
Your comment reminds me of a friends recommendation to watch The Arrow. “The first two seasons are really bad, but if you stick through it they become ok”
It’s ok to not want to watch a show that sucks originally. We don’t need to watch it to completion in order to pass judgement on something that just didn’t hit the mark.