October 2016, Canadian Geographic honours aviation aces
Arthur Roy Brown was 20, Gerald Birks, 19. Andrew Mckeever and Joe Fall, 18. Carl Falkenberg just 17. Their connection apart from their young age at the start of the First World War? Each young Canadian would become a renowned fighter pilot of the conflict. As part of a partnership with Canadian Heritage and documentary makers Sound Venture, Canadian Geographic and its publisher, The Royal Canadian Geographical Society, have helped create a range of materials sharing the stories of these heroic young men. For the magazine, there’s the feature photo essay that will appear in the October issue. It shows members of the Air Cadet League of Canada, aged 12 to 18, re-enacting images of the aforementioned five pilots taken some 100 years ago during the days of the Great War. The cadets, along with volunteers from the Canadian Museum of Flight in Langley, B.C., even built two replica First World War-era Sopwith Pup planes as part of the larger initiative. It’s sobering stuff to see today’s youth in place of those young men who just a century earlier fought for freedom. In the “On the map” section, the focus falls on Vimy Ridge, which is also the subject of a new Giant Floor Map from Canadian Geographic Education (the map was created from charts made during the First World War and is available for educators to borrow). Vimy Ridge is also the topic of a forthcoming hour-long Sound Venture documentary that explores the role of aerial photo-reconnaissance missions over Vimy Ridge, which helped create thousands of maps that were crucial in the Allied campaign to take that critical land. As Remembrance Day approaches, it’s a compelling package of stories about the young men who helped shape Canadian history and cartography.