It was the place we always wanted to go to on long Sunday afternoons when nothing else was going on at home and when my dad was as eager as the rest of us to go for a drive. Once there we’d make a beeline for our favourite exhibit, wait patiently for others to exit, and then pile in, fighting for a turn at the controls. We'd press buttons that didn’t light up anymore, pull levers that did nothing, and examine the motionless gauges on the control board.
To me, the youngest of five, it was a giant toy. I had no idea of its significance, though when I was about nine years old I examined the exterior more closely. I studied what it was and what it wasn’t.
“How come it looks like this, Dad?” I asked.
“It was an important plane in the war, Boots. They just saved this part so people could go through it…you know, to see what it was like.”
I had other questions to ask before we left the airport, but watching my dad quietly drift away to stare out the massive windows, I instinctively knew to keep them to myself.
Boots was his pet name for me, because as a kid I liked shoes and boots. I'd comb the catalogues regularly and just as regularly harass my mom about getting a pair of either. If she said no, I’d wait till my dad got home and was fed and relaxed, then I’d sidle up to him on the couch and show him the advertisement. His eyes would twinkle in amusement and he very often said yes. Then he'd settle back to read the newspaper.
My dad died when he was only 55 of his fourth and final heart attack. I was 12 and although I felt his absence terribly, it wasn’t until I was an adult that I totally got the fact that I’d never heard stories from him. I didn't know what he went through because he wasn't forthcoming about his life experiences, whether it was growing up on a farm in P.E.I. or his time overseas during World War II. It was as if there were a trunk of memories in his head that he kept safely under lock and key.
In later years, I learned that both my father and my uncle had been crew members in a Lancaster, one of the most successful heavy bombers used by the Royal Canadian Air Force in World War II. My dad was a navigator and my uncle an observer. With this discovery I thought back to our frequent visits to the local plane exhibit when I was a child, and understood the serious connection it had for my dad.
My stirred curiosity led me to reading everything I could find on the plane. But it wasn't until recently, when I watched “Lancaster,” a documentary that interviewed surviving crew members who were then in their 90s, that I gained some appreciation of their experience.
These men spoke of the regular night raids that were so instrumental in helping win the war, and about their roles in the tight quarters of the plane. They also told of their ambivalence: on one hand, their belief that this was the only way to rid the world of Hitler’s regime, and on the other a terrible guilt that innocent civilians were collateral damage as a result. They talked about often losing crew members and friends in raids, and their practiced acceptance of death before heading out on missions.
My dad lost his brother in a mission over the North Sea, just one of the thousands of planes that were shot down. Dad likely lost many friends too.
I’m in my 60s now and living in a place where one of two remaining airworthy Lancasters is flown regularly by a local man—a Fonthill resident in fact. It circles the peninsula on a route from Hamilton to Niagara Falls, flying low over Pelham. When I hear its distinctive thunder I run out to my backyard, but the trees do such a good job of hiding so much of the sky that it’s only when planes are off in the distance that I can sometimes catch a glimpse. People will say, “Yup, that was a Lancaster this morning” and I’ll give an inward sigh that I’ve missed it yet again.
Then comes Remembrance Day. My sister texts me that the Lancaster should be flying over soon. At 11:11, I wait on the back porch, the morning clear and cool, looking through the trees, listening for the familiar sound. Nothing.
Dejected, I fetch my jacket so I can stay longer just in case. It’s so quiet now that I can hear the rustle of fallen leaves in the woods beside the house. I turn to go in again when I hear the rumble.
This time I hustle to the front lawn so I can catch it no matter what direction it comes from. In seconds it's flying just above me, and it's massive. The sound penetrates to my core as I stand in awe, thinking about where it’s been, and what it accomplished, and what the world might have been like without it.
Living in Canada, I’ve always had to dig deep to wrap my head around what war was and my father’s experience in it. As I watch the plane disappear behind the trees, all I can feel is gratitude for this remaining piece of history and my dad’s connection to it.
The Lancaster is the one tangible link to him that remains, and so I'll keep watching the sky.
