The Commonwealth Air Training Plan Museum located at the Brandon Airport always has their sites on restoration projects for their vintage aircraft that dates back to the Second World War.
"The challenge is finding enough volunteers, enough money and the space to do it," says Executive Director Stephen Hayter. "And at this present time for the most part we are looking to the future what we're actually going to be doing is protecting and bringing some BCATP (British Commonwealth Air Training Plan) aircraft from Winnipeg to our site here at our museum."
"They tell our story and we'll be looking at future restoration of some of the aircraft that we bring," he adds. "It's always wonderful when we can ensure the preservation of our story with some of these aircraft that we're going to be bringing to the museum."
Hayter explains, "The British Common Air Training Plan is the story of training young men and women for the RACF (Royal Canadian Air Force) during the Second World War and of course, our museum is a National Historic site because we are preserving a hangar from that era."
He adds that Brandon's Municipal Airport used to be #12 Service Flying Training School.
"There were 14 training sites in Manitoba but there are approximately 200 clear across the country and a lot of community airports owe their existence to the infrastructure that was put into place back during the Second World War, and so it's a story that touches communities all across this country." he explains.
"And it's a story that we can be very proud about," shares Hayter, "because the British Commonwealth Air Training Plan was actually termed the aerodrome of democracy and we were making it possible that Commonwealth countries could come to Canada, even individuals from the United States, could come up and train so that we could get a sufficient Air Force up and running and combat the Nazis, who had begun to invade other countries. And so, the Second World War needed Canada to produce the bombers and the bomber crews and get them over to Europe so they could help win the battle."