Finding History in My Own “Backyard”
In the evening cold of January 19, 1945, an empty passenger train waited on a siding at Pearce, Alberta. At seven o’clock, it began boarding over 400 men and women who, for the previous two years, had served with the Royal Canadian Air Force at RCAF Aerodrome Pearce, home of Number Two Flying Instructor School of the British Commonwealth Air Training Plan (BCATP).
With the end of the war in sight, this school (and most of the 106 schools for Commonwealth aircrew across Canada) had been ordered shut. All personnel from Pearce, except for a small maintenance crew, were being transferred to other assignments or sent to demobilization centres to return to civilian life. Station Pearce, with a wartime population of more than 1,000 student aviators and support staff, was being abandoned.
Debert, Nova Scotia, was the location of another BCATP school, Number 13 Operational Training Unit. This school operated as a British Royal Air Force (RAF) school and specialized in training crews composed of graduates from pilot, navigation, wireless air gunner and flight engineer schools in long distance flying. These crews were dispatched with aircraft built in the United States and Canada for the long and dangerous flight to England by way of Newfoundland, Greenland and Iceland. After the war in Europe, Debert served as a collection point for Canadian-built Lancaster bombers returning from England.
Ray Goeres joined the RCAF early in the war and graduated as a pilot from the BCATP. He completed one tour of 31 missions over Europe as an RAF Lancaster pilot and served an additional year as an instructor with 6 Group, the RCAF bomber command in England. He was repatriated to Canada by sea and sent to Debert, where, for his last operational flight as a RCAF wartime pilot, he was ordered to fly one of 20 Lancaster bombers to Pearce, where they were to be placed in storage.
When I was 14 years old, my brothers took me along in Dad’s old grey Plymouth “to look at airplanes.” We travelled west from Lethbridge along Highway 3 through Coalhurst and Monarch then turned onto a gravel road at Pearce. Dust from the road, mixed with the scent of the summer prairie, drifted through the open windows as we cruised north. Soon we could see the disintegrating runways of an abandoned airport and the cement floors of what were once massive hangars. Not one building remained.
In a small pasture sat several derelict airplanes. We stopped the car and walked through tall grass among these giant relics of the war. The years had not been kind to these bombers. Vandalism and the elements had taken their toll. Still, they were remarkably complete. Many had little bombs painted on their noses indicating the number of times they had carried their young crew through the hostile skies of Nazi-held Europe. Flight charts for the pilots and navigators were still on board and earphones hung from hooks in the cockpits. I sat in the pilot’s seat of one of the Lancasters and, with the summer wind breezing through the old bomber, dreamed of flying.
The only part of this chain of circumstances that involved me, until just recently, was my long-ago visit to see the Lancasters at Pearce. But because of that experience and the impression those aircraft made on me, I began developing an interest in the history of World War II, particularly wartime aviation. Over the years I have built a collection of books on the subject and I’m researching the history of the BCATP. The microfilm copies of once-secret daily diaries of all the training schools are provided courtesy of the National Archives. That’s how I learned there was a train parked on the siding at Pearce and who its passengers were all those many years ago.
This interest also provides a good reason to talk to people who served during the war. Ray Goeres, who lives near Canmore and next door to my sister, gave me several hours of his time last summer to take me through the log books that document his life in aviation. Ray recounted the details of the flight of the Lancasters to Pearce. During our discussion, I learned about Debert and a bit more about the bombers I had sat in as a boy. The illustration of the Lancaster included here is from Ray’s wartime logbook. In his logs, he had drawn detailed illustrations of each of the aircraft he had flown.
My fascination with this slice of history provides me with a great deal of enjoyment. My interest began during a casual look into my own “back yard” many years ago and has since taken me to other interesting places either in fact or through reading and listening to the experiences of others. An ever-expanding back yard continues to beckon as I learn more about aviation activities in Canada during the Second World War.
It’s a big yard—and it’s full of wonderful things to explore.
In the evening cold of January 19, 1945, an empty passenger train waited on a siding at Pearce, Alberta. At seven o’clock, it began boarding over 400 men and women who, for the previous two years, had served with the Royal Canadian Air Force at RCAF Aerodrome Pearce, home of Number Two Flying Instructor School of the British Commonwealth Air Training Plan (BCATP).
With the end of the war in sight, this school (and most of the 106 schools for Commonwealth aircrew across Canada) had been ordered shut. All personnel from Pearce, except for a small maintenance crew, were being transferred to other assignments or sent to demobilization centres to return to civilian life. Station Pearce, with a wartime population of more than 1,000 student aviators and support staff, was being abandoned.
Debert, Nova Scotia, was the location of another BCATP school, Number 13 Operational Training Unit. This school operated as a British Royal Air Force (RAF) school and specialized in training crews composed of graduates from pilot, navigation, wireless air gunner and flight engineer schools in long distance flying. These crews were dispatched with aircraft built in the United States and Canada for the long and dangerous flight to England by way of Newfoundland, Greenland and Iceland. After the war in Europe, Debert served as a collection point for Canadian-built Lancaster bombers returning from England.
Ray Goeres joined the RCAF early in the war and graduated as a pilot from the BCATP. He completed one tour of 31 missions over Europe as an RAF Lancaster pilot and served an additional year as an instructor with 6 Group, the RCAF bomber command in England. He was repatriated to Canada by sea and sent to Debert, where, for his last operational flight as a RCAF wartime pilot, he was ordered to fly one of 20 Lancaster bombers to Pearce, where they were to be placed in storage.
When I was 14 years old, my brothers took me along in Dad’s old grey Plymouth “to look at airplanes.” We travelled west from Lethbridge along Highway 3 through Coalhurst and Monarch then turned onto a gravel road at Pearce. Dust from the road, mixed with the scent of the summer prairie, drifted through the open windows as we cruised north. Soon we could see the disintegrating runways of an abandoned airport and the cement floors of what were once massive hangars. Not one building remained.
In a small pasture sat several derelict airplanes. We stopped the car and walked through tall grass among these giant relics of the war. The years had not been kind to these bombers. Vandalism and the elements had taken their toll. Still, they were remarkably complete. Many had little bombs painted on their noses indicating the number of times they had carried their young crew through the hostile skies of Nazi-held Europe. Flight charts for the pilots and navigators were still on board and earphones hung from hooks in the cockpits. I sat in the pilot’s seat of one of the Lancasters and, with the summer wind breezing through the old bomber, dreamed of flying.
The only part of this chain of circumstances that involved me, until just recently, was my long-ago visit to see the Lancasters at Pearce. But because of that experience and the impression those aircraft made on me, I began developing an interest in the history of World War II, particularly wartime aviation. Over the years I have built a collection of books on the subject and I’m researching the history of the BCATP. The microfilm copies of once-secret daily diaries of all the training schools are provided courtesy of the National Archives. That’s how I learned there was a train parked on the siding at Pearce and who its passengers were all those many years ago.
This interest also provides a good reason to talk to people who served during the war. Ray Goeres, who lives near Canmore and next door to my sister, gave me several hours of his time last summer to take me through the log books that document his life in aviation. Ray recounted the details of the flight of the Lancasters to Pearce. During our discussion, I learned about Debert and a bit more about the bombers I had sat in as a boy. The illustration of the Lancaster included here is from Ray’s wartime logbook. In his logs, he had drawn detailed illustrations of each of the aircraft he had flown.
My fascination with this slice of history provides me with a great deal of enjoyment. My interest began during a casual look into my own “back yard” many years ago and has since taken me to other interesting places either in fact or through reading and listening to the experiences of others. An ever-expanding back yard continues to beckon as I learn more about aviation activities in Canada during the Second World War.
It’s a big yard—and it’s full of wonderful things to explore.