Back to Wetaskiwin !

My Dad came for a short visit this past week, and as a result aircraft were on the agenda ! He trained at Napier & Sons in the UK, and then after emigrating to Canada was involved for a short while in aero jet engine design at Orenda, working on the afterburner design of the Iroquois engine being readied for the Avro Arrow. While the few completed Avro Arrow’s were cut up for scrap, there are still two Iroquois engines in existence  - one in Hamilton, and one in Ottawa.

As this year was the 100th anniversary of flight in Canada there were several good exhibits available to visit in Alberta – including the full size Avro Arrow replica in Wetaskiwin, which we visited just over a year ago with my father-in-law Warren, shortly before he passed away.  I previously wrote about that here.  The Avro Arrow replica is on display is at the Reynolds  Alberta Museum and Canada’s Aviation Hall of Fame in Wetaskiwin till September 23rd and (I think) it is well worth seeing – you really cannot appreciate just how big an aircraft the Arrow was till you stand in front of it – the model looks quite good although they obviously had a problem dealing with the weight of the wings and so to avoid them ’sagging’ there are some supports under each wingtip, which I edited out of the photos I took to mark the event. I suppose that’s cheating, but the photos look much better as a result so I really don’t feel too bad !

One of the other places I took him to, was the Lancaster bomber exhibit in Nanton just south of Calgary. This is a real ‘must’ see as it is one of the very few Lancaster’s still in existence that you can actually go inside of, plus currently two of the four engines actually work – they run them several times per year with the next ’showing’ being September 26th.

There is quite a story that goes with how this plane came to be in the middle of Alberta – if you get a chance, check it out as the museum, the exhibits and the aircraft on display are well worth a look.

We finished off the week with a day at the Military Museum , which used to be called the Museum of Regiments and which was just recently reopened after a major refurbishment – it now combines museums representing all the Canadian forces.  Again, lots to see and of course, several aircraft were on display in the naval gallery.

All in all it was a busy week – checking out aircraft during the day, and then relaxing with a glass of wine while sitting on the back deck watching the activity in Fish Creek Park in the evenings. Its a tough life, but someone has to do it !

The Avro Arrow (or “Two Days in Wetaskiwin”)

Of the many really great museums I’ve been lucky enough to visit over the years, one of my favourites is the Reynolds Alberta Museum which is about two and half hours north of Calgary in a place called Wetaskiwin (which among other things is known for its water tower which reputedly is the oldest one in Canada !). On the same site is also Canada’s Aviation Hall of Fame which is also well worth a look see. This weekend was the annual Wetaskiwin Air show and so we took my father-in-law up to take in both the air show, as well as to take a look around the Reynolds Alberta Museum (or as it is often referred to – RAM) which I always find fascinating. The museum focuses on mechanical equipment used in Alberta prior to probably the late 1950’s with many of the finer pieces on exhibit clustered around the early 1920’s through the 1940’s – cars, trucks, planes, motorcycles, tractors, combines etc., as well as the more basic sorts of mechanical household items from the early days, such as milk separators. There is lots to see, but for me personally, I find I tend to spend a lot of time in the area of the restoration shop where you can watch restorers slowly rebuilding the equipment to be put on display – currently they are working on an old 1955 Chevy Nomad. This is quite literally a full ground up restoration effort, with many of the body panels having to be recreated by hand. Beautiful work.

Hidden away in one of the buildings on the museum grounds, is a warehouse stuffed with aircraft and vehicles awaiting restoration, and the one I particularly wanted to see was the full scale replica of the Avro Arrow, built by Allan Jackson also of Wetaskiwin, which was used in the CBC film called simply The Arrow. The folks at the RAM were kind enough to let us take my father-in-law behind the scenes to take a quick look at it, and in doing so made him a very happy man for which we are very grateful. The photo at the right was taken by Chris Gainor who has written several articles about RAM and the Avro Arrow.

The family connection is that both my father-in-law, and also my father worked for Avro on the Arrow back in the 1954 through 1959 time frame till the Arrow project was canceled in 1959 by Conservative Prime Mister John Diefenbaker. While the reasons for the cancellation were many and varied, doing so had a huge impact on high tech employment in Canada, which lasted well into the 1960’s – some would argue even longer. In the immediate aftermath of the project cancellation, roughly 14,000 direct employees became un-employed, together with several thousand indirect employees – or roughly the same number as the total population of the city of Prince Albert in Saskatchewan (about 24,000 in 1961) that Diefenbaker was elected to represent ! However you look at it the negative impact on the high tech segment of the Canadian economy in 1959 was huge. The fact that it has now been almost 50 years since the cancellation, and that people are still talking about it is probably the best indication of just how big an impact that was.

To cut a long story short, as we rolled my father-in-law, who is in his 80’s, up to the full size Arrow replica in his wheel chair, the look on his face was a study in both joy and grief all at the same time. Joy at seeing something that meant a lot to him personally, and grief over its cancellation and all that it might have been. While it isn’t the ‘real thing’, it sure looks real, and it was a very special moment.

The air show was great – but seeing the Arrow was definitely the high point, and more than reason enough to justify a visit to Wetaskiwin again in the future.