Wallaceburg’s little-known aviation history will be honoured at an upcoming two-day celebration.
Wings Over Wallaceburg will take place on Friday and Saturday at the Wallaceburg Museum on King Street. The event will celebrate local aviation, as well as the memory of the owners, instructors and pilots of the Wallaceburg Airport.
The airport, located just beyond the town limits on Forhan Street, opened in 1959. The airport also served as a flight school beginning in 1964 until the facility closed in 1971.
“Well over 90 per cent of the people I talk to don’t know that airport existed,” said event organizer Ken Wilson. “It was a grass runway, 1,550 feet long, which is relatively short. But the thing is, if you learned to fly on that runway, you were pretty well good any place you went.”
This week’s event will welcome people of all ages with artifact displays, pictures, real aircraft, models, a gyrocopter, a kids’ paper airplane competition, and a barbecue.
The celebration will also feature several flight simulators for veteran pilots or those interested in flying. The computer simulations will include a number of Second World War training bases and training aircraft among others.
“You can come in and sit down at it. If you were a pilot, you can pick the airplane you learned to fly on, and take off and actually fly over Wallaceburg — on the computer, you would be looking down and seeing the [town] of Wallaceburg,” said Wilson.
Wings Over Wallaceburg is open to the public and will run from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. on Friday and Saturday.