• There really was a CF-105 Avro Arrow, designed, built and flown by Avro Canada, out of its Malton, Ontario facilities, between 1955 and 1959!  The pages of two of the most prestigious flight-related magazines of that  time gave testimony to the reality of this remarkable Canadian technological achievement in flight. 

• In its October 21, 1957 issue, the prominent air industry's  Aviation Week magazine stated that the Avro Arrow "has given Canada a serious contender for the top military aircraft of the next several years.... The Arrow's power, weight and general design leave little doubt of its performance potential."

• Another  influential magazine, Flight, in  its October 25, 1957 issue, referred to the Avro Arrow as "the biggest, most powerful, mostd expensive and potentially the fastest fighter that the world hs yet seen." 

• At least as of April 2003, visitors to the Canadian Aviation Museum in Ottawa could still see a display of the remnants of a truncated, blowtorched Avro Arrow cockpit and nosewheel section, being supported on a stand, positioned almost at the very rear of the public display area. However, to also see two reclaimed-from-scrap wing tips  of an Arrow (not the entire wings, merely the tips), a viewer would have to  walk about seventy feet over to the right and behind the cockpit/nosewheel display, and then peer behind and over other, possibly much less significant  Canadian and foreign-built aircraft, to get just a glimpse of the very tops of the two wingtips of  an Avro Arrow. 

• There are several hours of archival film footage, as well as hundreds of vintage photos that document the development, production and flight tests of the Avro Arrow. These films would make a fascinating component of a future filmed version of this novel.

• There actually existed in Canada, in the year 2004, a primarily federal government-mandated universal healthcare system that continued to aim at providing free medical coverage for virtually every adult and child in the country.  However, over many years, this health care system has been under attack and has been significantly weakened by certain decisions and actions carried out by elements of the federal, and some provincial governments, and their associated bureaucracies.

• By the early 2000s, the major healthcare companies in the United States reportedly had annual revenues of over $230,000,000,000, i.e., 230 billion dollars, which incidentally, exceeded the combined revenues of the top U.S. aerospace and defense contractors in those years.

• In 2001, the revenue of the largest healthcare  company  in the U.S. nearly matched that of Microsoft, the most successful computer software company on the planet. The reader is invited to closely examine the year-end data provided in American business magazines in order to more truly appreciate what is at financial stake in the intense battle to increasingly privatize the Canadian - and to preserve and expand the for-profit American - healthcare systems. 

• As of 2004 there existed several works, including books, plays and films, presenting non-ficctional as well as fictional material, most of which speculated upon the real reasons behind the shutting down of the Arrow program. The Avro Arrow Manipulation novel, however, is the first to present a fictional hypothesis about a direct relationship between what happened to the Arrow, and what has -and continues to- happen to the Canadian healthcare system. 

In the name of fairness and truthfulness, it should hardly be necessary to state that, of course, most people (including most businesspersons,  politicians, lobbyists, and workers of all sorts) are honest and ethical; that most institutions (including most legislative bodies, insurance companies, hospitals, HMOs, PPOs, and other healthcare-related  organizations) are also honorable, ethical, and aboveboard, and consistently demonstrate that their primary concern is to serve their clients or patients, and that only after putting those clients' or patients' needs first, are they interested in making a profit for their executives and shareholders. 

Similarly, it should be obvious to most Americans and Canadians that most other types of businesses (including energy companies, telecommunications companies, financial  services, media conglomerates, accounting and   pharmaceutical companies) attempt to operate with the highest degree of integrity, and that they exhibit through their corporate and individual executives' actions, that they care at least as much about their clients, customers, and subscribers, as they do about their personal remuneration and their companies' financial bottom lines. 

This novel, published first in 2004, and set  primarily in 2009, involves many fictitious events, circumstances, persons, institutions and businesses who are just as obviously not related to the fine, upstanding  persons, politicians, institutions, and healthcare and  pharmaceutical businesses mentioned above.