In Praise of Volunteers and Craftmanship

I never cease to be amazed at the skill, dedication and patience of volunteers who are involved in the restoration of aircraft for Canadian museums. Having visited more than a dozen aviation museums from Vancouver Island to Newfoundland, I have seen the same undying interest by volunteers who contribute to the collections of aircraft that preserve history and share it with visitors to museums.

As well as the volunteers, I admire the work done by skilled craftsmen who work under contract not only to restore aircraft but also to re-create in exact detail components of aircraft that are missing and can’t be located.

In the past few weeks, I have been made aware once again of the ongoing work by volunteers and commercial shops in preserving our heritage. At the Bomber Command Museum of Canada in Nanton, AB, on June 25, a large crowd was present to celebrate the de Havilland Mosquito in displays, books and a talk by David Briscoe, whose father flew the “Wooden Wonder” during the Second World War.

While there, I checked the progress of the Mosquito being rebuilt in the museum’s shop. Volunteers from Calgary and area are there every Saturday to take the warbird to static display with running twin Merlin engines. Progress continues during the week when workers are available. The Mosquito is in its 10^th year of restoration since being rescued by the Calgary Mosquito Society.

At the same time, the Nanton museum’s curator, Karl Kjarsgaard, was off the coast of Sweden aboard a ship with divers working to recover more components from a sunken Halifax bomber destined for restoration in Nanton. Meanwhile, at the shop of Knox Tech Inc. in Ottawa, workers were building new replacement parts for wings and the fuselage of the Halifax.

Two days later, I was in Wetaskiwin, AB, at the home of Historical Aircraft Services Inc., where proprietor Byron Reynolds is under contract to The Hangar Flight Museum in Calgary to restore an RCAF CF-100 Canuck to static display.

On display outdoors for decades, the aircraft had suffered from the effects of weather, corrosion being the most notable evidence. In some cases, it was necessary to repair or replace metal areas, and in other cases, complex, new metal components had to be made from scratch.

Here in my hometown of Edmonton, at the Alberta Aviation Museum, work continues regularly by volunteers in restoring a Bell P-39 Airacobra single-engine fighter. During the war, vast numbers of them were flown through Edmonton from the USA in the American Lend-Lease Program en route to Fairbanks, Alaska. They were then passed on to Russia in support of that country’s wartime efforts.

In early July, a half-scale V-1 rocket replica built by volunteers at the museum was suspended from the ceiling of the wartime British Commonwealth Air Training Plan hangar that serves as home for the museum. The V-1 is appropriately “flying” alongside the museum’s Mosquito, named for the late Russell Bannock, whose victories as a Mosquito pilot during the Second World War included bringing down a number of V-1 rockets aimed at London.

I have learned that in aircraft restoration, there is no definite timeline, no expected firm date of completion. The job takes as long as it takes by tireless and patient workers whose goal is simply to finish the project, not meet a deadline. The aforementioned examples are only four instances of the type of projects that are underway across our country in our aviation museums. In the next issue of this newsletter, I will illustrate those projects in an article about them.

Each museum in Canada proudly displays the stunning results of thousands of hours of work by volunteers, whose priceless labour contributes greatly to what we see when we walk through the doors of our aviation museums. The Canadian Aviation Historical Society newsletter welcomes stories from our aviation museums, many of which are Museum Members of the CAHS. Send your stories to editor Katherine Simunkovic.