Editorially speaking…
I see that Victoria’s Royal Oak Burial Park is marking its 100th anniversary.
I said Victoria’s, although it’s in Saanich. Burial park or cemetery, it has never allowed upright headstones with all their artistry, so, other than for some of its more fascinating occupants, it has never really appealed to me as much as its predecessor, Ross Bay Cemetery.
An exception—and deservedly so—is the standing marble memorial to some of the airmen who died while flying out of Patricia Bay Airport during the Second World War, a subject of special interest to me.
Well over 100 Canadian, British, Australian, New Zealand and, if memory recalls, an American airmen or two, were killed in the line of duty while training at Pat Bay, 1939-1945. Think of it: they didn’t even make it overseas but, as in the case of the Ventura crew interred on Cowichan Lake area’s Mount Bolduc, “died on some bloody mountain in the middle of nowhere”.
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I’ve been researching, off and on, the lost airmen of Pat Bay for 20 years, a motivation for my third visit to the B.C. Aviation Museum, Sidney, last week. Then on to, for the first time, the new memorial on Mills Road, on the opposite side of Victoria Airport.
I can’t recommend the Aviation Museum highly enough.
This isn’t a museum with most exhibits behind glass. The aircraft—real aircraft—on display are on the floor or hanging from the ceiling. Most of them you can—but probably shouldn’t—touch. Some, you can even go inside!
If you desire you can have a guided tour of about two hours—our friendly guide, a former bush pilot, was full of fascinating information and ‘trivia’ above and beyond the information given on posters identifying each exhibit.
What makes the Aviation Museum even more remarkable is the fact that it operates without any form of government assistance. It’s entirely volunteer financed and operated. I don’t know how they manage it, the overhead obviously is pretty high.
But they even rebuild historic aircraft, such as the rare Lancaster bomber now in the shop—which is open to close-up view, too, by the way.
One of the very few Lancaster bombers still in existence is being totally rebuilt and you can walk right up to it. I’ve read a lot about the Lancaster since I was a kid—but never got to touch one until last week!
In short, the B.C. Aviation Museum is one of the best bangs for the buck (it cost us $29 for two) that I know of. I can’t recommend it highly enough-and I’ll be making a fourth visit when time and circumstance permit.
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I mentioned the Lost Airmen of the Empire memorial on Hospital Hill, Mills Road, on the north side of the Victoria International Airport.
Each of the rusty feathers records the names of air crews who died in the line of duty.
Those feathers record the names of 179 young men who never made it overseas, who were killed in crashes while learning to fly at a time of blackouts, in extremes of weather and over some of the wildest terrain on the continent.
Some of them have never been found.
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Heads-up to readers who enjoy TV: Tonight, CBC offers the premiere of Cowichan Sweater: Our Knitted Legacy, a documentary by the award winning Indigenous filmmaker, Mary Galloway.
The famous water-shedding Cowichan sweater. Famed singer-actor Bing Crosby had one. —www.pinterest.com
I shouldn’t have to explain Cowichan sweaters to any Vancouver Islander; suffice to say, they’ve been around more than a century and have achieved world-wide fame. So famous, in fact, that they’ve been counterfeited in countries such as Japan.
If you don’t know about the Cowichan sweater or would like to learn more, that’s tonight on CBC Gem and tomorrow night on CBC-TV across B.C. and Alberta.