page_title: Lilian Bland
section_title: Later life
hierarchical_section_title: Lilian Bland / Later life
caption_attribution_description: English: White sign with blue edges, writing "Welcome to Lilian Bland Community Park"
context_page_description: Lilian Bland was an Anglo-Irish journalist and pioneer aviator who, in 1910–11, became one of the first women in the British Isles, and maybe even in the world, to design, build, and fly an aircraft – the Bland Mayfly.
context_section_description: Bland's flying had been a source of some concern to her father, who saw it as unsafe as well as unseemly for a young woman. Around the end of the year, he persuaded her to give up the Mayfly in exchange for buying her a Model T Ford motor car. By April 1911 she was running a car dealership in Belfast, Ireland, but in October 1912 gave up the business to marry her cousin Charles Loftus Bland (born 21 October 1881). Charles was a lumberjack from British Columbia and had returned to Ireland to propose to Lilian. The couple married on 3 October 1911 and soon emigrated to Canada where they built their own farm on virgin lands. Charles and Lilian had their first and only child, Patricia Lilian Bland, on 13 April 1913. Patricia died of tetanus in September 1929, at the age of 16. The couple separated soon after, with Lilian moving back to England and Charles going on to marry his second wife, Mary (who was a cousin of both Lilian and Charles). 
  Bland returned to the United Kingdom in 1935, settling in Kent. She became a gardener and gambled her wages on the stock market in the hopes of getting more money. She also wrote a memoir about her life during this time, which is yet to be published. By the 1950s, Bland had retired to Cornwall. In 1971, at the age of 92, Bland was quoted by the Belfast Telegraph for saying that the only excitement left to her was gambling. She died soon after on 11 May of the same year.
  Bland was commemorated by an Ulster History Circle blue plaque at the family home in Carnmoney, County Antrim and Mayfly was presented to the Dublin Club. Glengormley Park in Newtonabbey was renamed Lilian Bland Community Park in August 2011; at the same time a stainless-steel sculpture of the Mayfly was unveiled.
caption: The Lilian Bland Community Park
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