Item 0017 - Letter, 19 September 1882

Joseph de l'Etoile was born on October 30, 1842, in St-Roch-des-Aulnaies, L'Islet, Quebec.
He was a civil servant at the Department of the Interior in Ottawa and an inventor, working on Canada's only known airline project to the Klondike in the late 1800s. The inventor's ultimate goal was to build an airship that would transport passengers, freight, and mail between Edmonton and the Klondike, nearly 1,900 km to the northwest. In 1871, he applied for a grant from the federal government to build a military flying machine, but his request was denied. In 1882, he presented a paper on his inventions at the meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science held in Montreal. In 1885, just after the outbreak of the North-West Rebellion led by Louis David Riel, he proposed the creation of a military unit equipped with observation balloons. He never received any financial support to realize his plans.

In 1872, he married Grace McCullough (1849–1894) and in 1894, he remarried Rose Delaney (1874–1935). He died on May 23, 1902, in Ottawa, Ontario.