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Four hours later, AVRO, in a move that was intended to embarrass the government and force the issue to a head, announced over its P.A. system that 14,000 employees—virtually everyone associated with the Arrow—were being laid off. The government responded by forbidding AVRO to spend another cent on the project. Within a few days, crews with cutting torches were in the Malton hangars, slicing up the Arrows for scrap.
    The cancellation turned into a political scandal of huge proportions and brought anguish and economic hardship to many of the 14,000 employees at AVRO. But there was a bright side, if you happened to be Bob Gilruth and desperately short of talent. Four thousand engineers who had designed the most advanced supersonic airplane of its day were suddenly looking for jobs.
    Jim Chamberlin, head of design for the Arrow, had visited Langley a few years earlier. It had been during the flying saucer craze, and Chamberlin, who had designed a real flying saucer, a pancake-shaped thing with jets, went down to Langley to talk about it. When the Arrow was canceled, Chamberlin thought of the Space Task Group and talked to his chief engineer, who got in touch with the Canadian government. The Canadian government got in touch with NASA, and within a few weeks it had been concluded that some of the AVRO engineers would spend two years working for the American manned space program before returning to AVRO (when, presumably, AVRO would have new work for them). This would be good for the United States, which needed the talent, and good for Canada, whose engineers would return with experience in a new technology.
    AVRO let Chamberlin put together a book with background information on approximately 150 of the best people in his design team to take down to Langley. Gilruth, Donlan, and two other Space Task Group managers flew up to Ontario and interviewed seventy-five of the candidates. They offered jobs to thirty-five of them.
    One of the thirty-five was Owen Maynard. Maynard was interviewed on a Saturday morning. On Sunday morning, he got a call from Gilruth offering him a job and asking if he could please let them know whether he would be accepting the job by, say, 1:00 that afternoon? It didn’t take Maynard that long—not only did he want to help build the Mercury capsule, he wanted to fly it, and he enthusiastically touted his experience with the Mosquito. No, Gilruth said hastily, they weren’t recruiting flight crews on this trip. But they were glad to sign him on as an engineer.
    Others hesitated. “You have to understand,” Rod Rose, one of several Englishmen in the group, pointed out, “there’s considerable prejudice north of the border about coming south of the border. South of the border is a big ogre.” So at first Rose refused the offer, but Jim Chamberlin gave him a two-hour pep talk and persuaded him that his future lay at Langley.
    Twenty-five of the thirty-five accepted jobs right away and another five came along later—in all, thirty men were added to the Space Task Group, which at that time still numbered not many more than a hundred people. Gilruth and his interviewers returned from Canada elated. However improbably, Project Mercury had skimmed off the top layer of talent at AVRO. Tecwyn Roberts, a Welshman, remembered Gilruth laughing about it later. “We thought of taking more of your crowd from AVRO,” Gilruth said to Roberts, “but we figured twenty-five percent aliens in the American space program was sufficient.”
    The Canadians (as they were known, despite the mix of Scotsmen, Welshmen, Irishmen, and even a Frenchman) never gained much public recognition for their contribution to the manned space program, but to the people within the program, their contribution was incalculable. “They had it all over us in some areas—just brilliant guys,” one of the original Space Task Group engineers remembered. “They were more mature and dignified and they were bright as hell and talented and cordial