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Carberry to unveil flight school memorial

The Brandon Sun - 9/8/2021

When the Carberry Plains Museum unveils a memorial at the site of the town’s former Second World War pilot training school next Saturday, a direct historical link will be present.

The Carberry #33 Service Flying Training School trained 5,902 pilots for the allied war effort from Dec. 1940 until Nov. 1945.

The site where the school once sat is now occupied by the McCain potato-processing plant but the museum has installed commemorative benches and rows of flags representing the different countries from which the Commonwealth pilots came to learn how to operate planes.

As a whole, the British Commonwealth Air Training Plan is described on the Government of Canada’s website as “Canada’s greatest contribution to Second World War victory” and led to Canada being called by then U.S. president Franklin Delano Roosevelt “the aerodrome of democracy.”

This memorial serves to commemorate those who lost their lives while training at the school and those who served overseas and never came home. According to the Manitoba Historical Society’s website, 24 people died training during the war in Carberry.

Now 102 years old and living in Winnipeg, Royal Air Force veteran Ralph Wild will return to the place where he trained from 1940 to 1943 as part of the 1 p.m. dedication ceremony at the museum located at 520 4th Ave in Carberry.

According to a release sent out by the museum, Wild joined the RAF in 1938 and participated in the Battle of Britain — where Nazi Germany and the British Empire battled for supremacy over the skies above Great Britain — in 1939 before coming to Carberry for training.

In addition to Wild, the museum has also found two daughters of former airmen who will perform the ribbon cutting at the ceremony.

Another special guest will be Rick Fall. Earlier this year, the Sun reported on Fall as he travelled through Brandon on a 4,200 marathon from Victoria, B.C. to Sault Ste. Marie, Ont. to raise money for Make-A-Wish Canada and Childhood Cancer Canada.

He’ll be returning to the area for the ceremony because his grandfather was an air trainer at the Carberry school.

Other special guests will include Stephen Hayter, executive director of the Commonwealth Air Training Plan Museum; Judy Kozar, author of a book about Canadian war grooms; other local dignitaries; and local musicians who will play songs from the school’s era.

Speaking to the Sun on Sunday, museum co-chair Gloria Mott said that the memorial has been complete for a few months, but the dedication ceremony was put on hold until public health orders were relaxed enough for a proper celebration to take place.

“It was sort of done in stages,” she said about the memorial’s installation. “The cement work and the benches were last fall, I think ... then the flagpoles, which we had done locally.”

Finding a veteran who trained at the school was “pretty exciting,” she said.

“Judy Kozar, who wrote the war grooms book ... when we got ahold of her, she was the one that said ‘Did you know a veteran is still alive and he works in Winnipeg,’ “ Mott said. “I’m hoping that people will be excited about that too.”

More information on the local efforts to train pilots during the Second World War can be found at the Commonwealth Air Training Plan Museum on the grounds of Brandon Municipal Airport.

» cslark@brandonsun.com

» Twitter: @ColinSlark