The Manitobans Reached Space in 1959

Bristol Aerospace of Winnipeg have been constructing versions of their reliable Black Brant rocket since 1959 and are presently up to the Black Brant XII.  NASA fires off about a dozen of the suborbital sounding rockets per year from Wallops Island, White Sands, Poker Flats in Alaska, or Andoya in northern Norway, oftentimes with the Black Brant as part of a three or four stage launch vehicle.  In September 1959 the Canadian Armament Research and Development Establishment began to test the Black Brant at Fort Churchill, Manitoba, on Hudson Bay, and quickly exceeded an altitude of 100 km, the unofficial edge of space.  Hence the shock in 1989 when the headquarters of the new Canadian Space Agency was placed in Montreal.