Last Christmas, Faye astonishingly and generously gifted me a flight on the Canadian Warplane Heritage Museums’ C-47 Dakota. My dad flew C-47s in World War II. The C-47 was a transport plane so my dad flew cargo and paratroop drop missions. He served in North Africa, Sicily, Italy, flew paratroopers for D-Day and flew more missions in Northwest Europe afterwards.
I recently took advantage of Fayes’ gift. Here’s a photo of the magic carpet I rode in; this specific plane did drop paratroops on D-Day. I’ll post more photos over the next few days.
Faye and I took a quick trip to the Hamilton/southwestern GTA horseshoe, the first time in COVID time that we have felt pretty safe doing so.
We viewed the Canadian Warplane Heritage’ (CWP) collection of aircraft which includes a C-47 Dakota, the type my dad flew in WWII. And an Avro Lancaster, which Faye visited as a youngster when it was mounted on a pylon at the Goderich airport, and is now one of only two flyable examples in existence.
We visited MEC for a couple purchases and Lee Valley Tools which is always a great place to browse. The River Trading Company was well worth browsing and I look forward to returning. Faye bought a cookbook; I bought a book about Sir Francis Drakes’ circumnavigation of the world.
Instead of bombing the 401/403 expressways up and back, we largely kept to two lane provincial and county highways and roads. We made good time with the emphasis being on ‘good’ driving on roads where you have time to look around and enjoy the scenery, as opposed to ‘time’ as in minimising time spent getting from A to B.
The weather was a bit dreary so we decided to leave hiking and waterfall viewing for our next visit.
I have no photos from this trip – these two are from a visit to the CWP several years ago.
My dad flew the C-47 Skytrain troop transport airplane in World War II. I had the great good fortune to ride in one the other day. The experience gave me the opportunity to experience a tiny sliver of how he spent about 2 1/2 years of his life.
previouslytexan 