A second life for a noble, old aircraft
Don MacVicar’s dream for the wreck of a historic twin-engine plane is coming true
It’s where airplanes went to die. Kenneth Gamble Ltd.’s Barn Full of Parts.
And now Mohawk College is where at least one of those airplanes has come to be, if not reborn, then at least given some aeronautical taxidermy, of sorts. The plan is to proudly and permanently display it in its original glory at the Eva Rothwell Centre some time in the future.
You can still see the airstrip shaved into the field at Gamble’s out on Highway 6, Millgrove way. It was cleared there to allow people to fly their no-longer-wanted aircraft onto the property. Kenneth Gamble, now deceased, and company would strip the planes for parts.
From the road, back then, you could see the skeletons of dozens of aircraft, in their sepulchral gloom, squadrons of the doomed and decommissioned, roosting together on the grounds, sinking into the soil and weeds, half fossilized, poor flightless wretches, picked clean and exposed to the elements.
This is where Don MacVicar found the 1956 Piper PA-23 Apache, a plane of no small significance in the history of Canadian aviation.
“I would drive by it (the Gamble barn and field) for 20 years, and sometimes you’d see 300 planes out there,” says Don, founder of the Eva Rothwell Centre and leader — with his wife, Carole — of Inner City Outreach Ministries.
But he never got around to venturing onto the space until last spring when he took a look around. By then, only one plane remained, Cam Harrod told him. Cam now runs Barn Full of Parts as well as other aviation businesses.
That broken-down wreck, corroded and battered, had endured the indignity of squatting raccoons, vermin and birds who made it home and then moved on — talk about Airbnb. Now, after being unceremoniously savaged by time, it is being lovingly salvaged for the future.
Don loved the Piper Apache from the first. He loved it even more when he realized, from its serial number (529), that it was the plane he’d been researching, the very first of its kind — Piper’s new twin-engine light aircraft designed for general aviation — to come into Canada. It was this exact plane that was used to train hundreds of pilots at Central Airways at the Toronto Island Airport. Favoured by bush pilots, the Piper Apache also helped modernize safe local air service in Canada.
“I jumped a foot in the air,” he says of the surprise.
His mind got to working. He
didn’t see a write-off. He saw an opportunity for exploration at the centre. When he mentioned that, Cam gave him the plane for free.
But how to restore it? Enter the aviation maintenance program, Mohawk College. No one can say no to Don, it seems, so David Santi, dean of engineering technology, talked to Blaine Stafford, manager of the program.
Blaine studied the plane, languishing there since 1980, in terrible shape. “I didn’t want anything to do with it,” he says now with a wry laugh. “My advice was to run away from it screaming.”
But his students relished the
chance to work on a plane of this vintage. And so they plunged in, and Blaine’s glad they did. The project has been very rewarding.
They took it apart in the field at Gamble’s. It took two full days, eight hours a day. Later, under the rain recently, I watched as they loaded the disassembled fuselage and wings onto a tractor-trailer and hauled it over to Mohawk campus.
“It’s not often you get to do hands-on on a plane like this,” says Cesar Barquet, Mohawk aviation student.
“The tail screws were so corroded we had to chisel them loose. But we got the wings off intact,” noting that sometimes
salvagers just cut the wings off. Now the real work begins, actually fixing it, which could take a year.
When it’s looking new again, the Piper Apache will go to the Eva Rothwell Centre, where, says Don, it will inspire.
Don says the project is being kindly sponsored by American Iron and Metal Company and supported by Ken Lillycrop of Bryan’s Auction (who provided the truck), Carstar, Demetrius Tsafaridis and others.
We’ll keep an eye on the progress.