Alpha Flight began as the dream of one man. Dr. James Hudson who would become the Canadian super hero Guardian. Once he worked for the Am-Can petroleum corporation and met his future wife Heather McNeil but when they sold the suit he developed for exploration to the American military he resigned and destroyed the plans for the suit as well as taking the suits cybernetic helmet, which he made before working for Am-Can, with him. He left the suit, which was not his property, behind. With the help of Heather he took his problem to the Canadian government. The government came up with the solution that Hudson had actually been working for them retroactivley for the past couple of years and so his invention was government property.
Now working for the government James Hudson began searching for super beings in Canada with which to form a team like the Fantastic Four or the Avengers. The first member of this new team was the then feral Wolverine who Hudson found during in the wilds and with the help of his wife Heather brought back to humanity.
With his first recruit he began to form the team that would one day become Alpha Flight. The first team fielded by the Canadian government was code named First Flight and managed to save the world but with grave consequences. It was from this first mission that Hudson came up with the tiered training system of Alpha, Beta, and Gamma Flight. Of course the rest is comic history as Canada's Team went on to greater and better things.