Wetaskiwin, Hills of Peace.
We visited Wetaskiwin, Alta., in late August, primarily to see the Reynolds Museum and the Canadian Aviation Museum it contains. With us was a friend whose father was a First World War pilot who flew Curtiss Jenny aircraft and later barnstormed at fairs and sports days across Saskatchewan.
The Reynolds Museum has a Jenny, as well as a full-scale model of the Alexander Graham Bell Silver Dart and the ill-fated Avro Arrow.
But the planes that interested me were the ones that used to soar over our farm back in the Second World War years. Reynolds has a Hawker Hurricane, and Cessna Crane and Harvard training planes used in the British Commonwealth Air Training Plan.
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I well remember the day that the son of the Pool agent, David Pratt, flew his Harvard between his father’s elevator and the Federal elevator next door. He scared the living bejabers out of the residents of Tuffnell. Sad to relate, this brilliant young man died in action overseas.
Our farm was located between two training fields, one at Yorkton and one at Dafoe, so there were aircraft overhead nearly every day. I got many a wigging from my father for missing patches with my cultivator because a young pilot in training had flown overhead and waggled his wings at me. What he was driving held more appeal than what I was driving.
The Wetaskiwin museum has an amazing collection of rusty farm machinery and much more awaiting restoration.
The restored equipment is indoors in the museum. It is arranged according to season, planting, haying, harvest and winter.
It’s a first-class presentation.
