Aviation pioneers honoured
Museum shows people, planes from earlier era
WINNIPEG — Only a few generations ago, northern Canada was largely unknown and unmapped. As the era of flight dawned, a few brave pilots took to the skies with little more than a wing and a prayer, hauling goods and people to remote, frozen communities.
The derring-do era of the bush pilot is celebrated at the Western Canada Aviation Museum, an 8,500-square-metre trip back in time that sits near Winnipeg’s international airport.
The planes on display at the museum seem a long way from today’s planes. There’s a Fokker Super Universal aircraft, built in the 1920s, whose 420-horsepower single engine would cruise at only 160 kilometres an hour. The aircraft at the museum was used to bring mail, supplies, prospectors and even mail-order brides to Yukon.
Nearby, there’s a Vickers Vedette, a wooden flying boat, able to take off from water with a very rapid rise — an important attribute for pilots relying on small lakes or rivers.
There is an early helicopter from the 1930s, made with parts from automobiles and farm machinery by three Manitoba brothers.
There is an Aero Avrocar — a flying saucer developed in the 1950s that was shelved after proving unstable in wind tests.
And there is a Canadair CL-84 — a tilt-wing plane developed in the early ’60s that could take off vertically with its propellers facing upward.