From combat to casting call, Alberta heritage airplane takes flight on the air
Some of the best fun I've had in my years as a journalist has been covering the ongoing saga of the Canso Crew, a group of farmers and friends from Fairview who spent years rescuing and repairing a Second World War-era airplane.
Their journey to return the 78-year-old craft to the skies has been nothing short of a Canadian epic in both geography and audacity, taking the group from the fields of northwestern Alberta to the tundra of the Arctic to the coast of Newfoundland — and now to the airwaves of big-budget television.
I've often thought the Canso's story could be worthy of its own movie someday, or at least one of those Heritage Minutes on CBC.
That hasn't happened yet, but the restored plane is nonetheless getting a taste of Hollywood treatment this week as a featured player in an episode of DC'S Legends of Tomorrow (airing Wednesday at 8 p.m. on CTV Sci-fi).
This is a story entirely about history, so let me give you at least a little.
Canso 11094, as it was known during the war, was one of hundreds of amphibious patrol bombers built in Canada to protect Allied convoys in the North Atlantic. In peacetime, the plane, like many others, was converted into a cargo hauler and later became a water bomber for fighting forest fires, which was its duty when it crashed into Sitidgi Lake, near Inuvik, in 2001.
The plane could still be there today if it were not for the determination of Don Wieben, a farmer and vintage airplane enthusiast who signed up a band of friends and neighbours in
2008 for a daring rescue mission. They succeeded in hauling the plane back to Fairview through a combination of pluck, elbow grease, and the charity of Canadians — often strangers — who donated their time, expertise and equipment to the cause.
That same recipe was then used over the next nine years to repair the plane.
I was in Fairview in 2017, when the first official flight of the restored Canso took place, an event that attracted a number of aviators, including war veterans the crew had met as word spread about their project.
Now a much bigger audience will get to see the near-octogenarian aircraft, though in the fictional world of Legends of Tomorrow.
The show about time-travelling heroes needed an amphibious plane for an episode set in the 1940s, written to honour women in the war effort.
Since fewer than 20 Cansos are still flying worldwide, this was no simple order. Producers initially hoped to use a plane based in Victoria, but it wasn't mechanically ready. Fortunately a retired pilot who works with the film company knew of the Fairview Canso.
“We were always looking to get a real plane in,” said production designer Anand Ray. “To scale (model) the whole thing would have been impossible, so that was never an option.”
The Canso happened to be in Saskatoon at an aviation event in late August when the call came in, Wieben said. A deal was struck with the production company, and the Canso was flown to a hangar in Boundary Bay, B.C., that was made up to look like a wartime aircraft-production facility.
Upon arrival at the film set, the first order of business was to get the plane temporarily repainted from its “peas and carrots” orange and green colour scheme — emblematic of its firefighting days — to a battleship grey with U.S. Navy insignias.
(The plane had to portray a Catalina, essentially the American version of a Canso).
Ironically, Wieben described the repainting as one of the most emotional parts of the experience, whereas the actual film shoot was more often “like watching paint dry,” due to the time required for setup and teardown.
Nonetheless, he said the theme of the episode was personally meaningful, given that his dad was a test pilot for a factory that built military planes in Thunder Bay, Ont., while his mom worked in the hangar office and his aunt worked on the factory floor.
“If it comes out right, (the episode) will be a nice tribute to the work women did in the factories.”
All told, the Canso was in B.C. for more than three weeks, of which there were about four days of filming.
“It's basically one of the main characters in the episode,” said Vladimir Stefoff, co-executive producer on the show. “I'm so glad were able to work out a deal. It was great to financially help this (Fairview) restoration society that has been trying to raise money to keep these wonderful planes in the air.”
As to that future for the Canso, Wieben, 78, said the money and exposure generated from the show should assist the plane's durability, which will soon require younger people to join the crew to learn the ropes as pilots and technicians.
Longer, cross-country adventures are on the tentative agenda in the years ahead. This potentially includes a grand ambition of Wieben's to fly it to the North Pole, to drop a weighted Canadian flag through the ice to lay on the seabed beside a Russian flag planted there in 2007 by a pair of submarines.
“To use a 1943, Canadian-built Canso to do that instead of a submarine, I think that might be a good statement,” Wieben said.
That may be the crew's most audacious dream yet, but given the obstacles they've already conquered, even the sky is no limit for their ambitions.