Glidepath The quarterly newsletter of the Canadian Museum of Flight Issue #102 Fall, 2009

Ed Zalesky 1929 to 2009

Ed Zalesky, who died on Sept. 3, was one of that second generation of true pioneers who contributed so much to the history of flying in British Columbia. Everyone connected with aviation in those days knew him. Museum of Flight members from its Crescent Road days can never forget him. Newer members should know of the legend who was primarily responsible for our existence.

Too young for the war, Ed quickly joined the ranks of that important post-war generation of BC aviation enthusiasts. Born in Alberta, raised in Abbotsford, from an early age he was an enthusiast and soon an Air Cadet.

In 1951 he and his beloved Rose, whom he had married in 1950, both got their Private Pilot Licenses at Art Seller’s Langley flying school (she went solo before he did!). In 1952 they formed Pacific Wings at YVR to sell light planes. They sold the first imported aircraft after the war time ban was lifted, and became also a flying school, overhaul shop, Piper dealership and air charter service. But Ed’s enthusiasm outran harsh commercial reality and in harder times in 1963 he sold out, managing to break even.

Ed and Rose then formed Western Aviation Sales. Its used part division became a thriving North America-wide supplier of parts and aircraft sales, and its Sports Aviation Supply a significant provider of ‘home built’ parts and equipment. By 1970 Ed was as usual looking for new opportunities and the company was sold to two employees, Gogi Goguillot (later to become a Museum Manager at Langley) and Doug Henderson.

Then came thoughts of retirement. But Ed and others had become concerned about the drain of Canadian historic aircraft out of the country. So in 1970 to -at least- reduce this, Ed and Rose, together with Bill Thompson, Ron Stunden and Barry Jackson formed the Canadian Museum of Flight and Transportation, based on the family farm on Crescent Road in Surrey. (The original vintage car interest never took off and efforts were soon concentrated on aircraft; although only many years later was the official title changed).

With Ed and Rose now on the job full time and the driving force, the collection of aircraft, whole, in parts, wrecked and of artifacts grew. In 1977 the CMFT was officially incorporated. Ed’s enthusiasm and continual chasing of new ideas, realistic as well as sometimes fanciful, was carefully balanced by Rose’s efficient administration and the site was soon covered with exhibits, some complete, others in various stages of disrepair and three barns, small hangars, were full. The ‘office, in fact the old farmhouse, groaned under the weight of paper and books and other artifacts. Collection, refurbishing, rebuilding by volunteers was fully under way. When old enough, active parts were played by Ed’s daughter April and son Mark (amongst other jobs, Mark did major work on Dr. Jack Pickup’s Waco which now flies with us). All the time Ed was cajoling and encouraging and criticizing, not afraid to upset people from time to time by his frankness and outspokenness and occasionally crazy-ideas which he often happily left to others to bring to fruition.

In 1985 the blow struck: Surrey Municipality, as part of a major plan for the north shore of the Nicomeki River, expropriated the site. Ed and Rose led the fight, supported by many members, to at least remain as part of a tourist attraction but to no avail. In 1995 Surrey finally evicted the museum which found a new home on Langley Airport.

It broke Ed’s heart and sadly he withdrew completely from Museum affairs. Anyway his restless mind was probably, as ever, looking for something new. In the meanwhile he was busy sorting out the many artifacts and sectioned aircraft that had been his personal property, not the museum’s. The allocation was amicable although there was later some muttering from members not fully in the picture. Ed then set about starting slowly to dispose of his share, almost going back to his Western Aviation sales days.

Meanwhile Rose had had a fall which affected her memory and Ed was concerned about her. He also had his own health problems. Thirty years earlier he had been diagnosed with a severe form of cancer. With typical determination and refusal to accept what he did not like, assisted by some unorthodox treatment. he had overcome it and returned to normal life. That was just typical of the man who knew what he wanted and drove inexorably past problems to get it, was not concerned with the past, and was never short of new ideas- particularly with the automatic assurance that someone else would sort out the details. Unfortunately, just as his museum had finally had to admit defeat and move, so when recently the cancer did after all reappear he had this time also no alternative but to acknowledge defeat.

At a well attended Celebration of his life on September 15th, at the Crescent Legion, there were many glowing and affectionate personal tributes.

Ed Zalesky was an exceptional and unconventional man, an entrepreneur, always full of initiative, never dull, always enthusiastic, always busy, always a friend, much loved and appreciated by so many. As a founder of the Canadian Museum of Flight, a director and leader for its first 25 years, his work must always be recorded as part of our history.

by Jack Meadows

The Canadian Museum of Flight

Bringing British Columbia’s Aviation Past into the Future

Honourary Patron
- The Honourable Steven L. Point, OBC,
  Lieutenant Governor of British Columbia
Board of Directors
- Gord Wintrup President
- George Miller Vice President
- Paul de Lange Treasurer
- Matt Offer Secretary
- Bruce Bakker Director
- Carol Bellavance Director
- Vic Bentley Director
- Colin McDonald Director
- Capt. Bill Thompson Lifetime Director
Museum Staff
- Terry Brunner
- Douglas Tait
Museum Coordinates
- Telephone 604 532-0035
- Fax 604 532-0056
- e-mail tbrunner@telus.net
- Website www.canadianflight.org
- Address Hangar #3 5333-216th Street Langley, BC V2Y 2N3
Museum Hours:
- daily from 10:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m.

Membership Benefits! •

New Partnerships! Members are now entitled to visit, free of charge:
- Flight Museum in Seattle
- West Coast Rail Museum in Squamish
- Mining Museum in Britannia Beach ⚫
Discounts in the Gift Shop increased from 10% to 15% •
Adrian’s Restaurant offers, with proof of membership, 10% off your food bill

Choo Choo’s Restaurant Contest

This issue’s winner is Murray Williamson, #3712. He will be receiving a certificate for dinner for two at Choo Choo’s Restaurant in downtown Langley. Congratulations!

The Canadian Museum of Flight is always looking for new volunteers. We are always in need of aircraft restorers, gift shop volunteers, facility maintenance helpers, and history and aviation enthusiasts of all kinds. No experience is necessary as training is available for all positions. We invite everyone, from young students to retirees, to join the team. If interested, please contact the Museum General Manager, Terry Brunner, at 604-532-0035.

From the Museum Executive …

The Prez Sez,

Having had the honor to serve as president, Canadian Museum of Flight has been a challenge to say the least, but definitely an honor.

As you no doubt have heard, we are among the lottery funding cuts and received no funding this year.

The board has donated generously and is planning a few events to help soften the financial blow.

For those of you in a position to help, your donations would be greatly appreciated.

We haven’t forgotten about the new building. We still are attempting to secure a new facility and your board is exploring other opportunities. While we have our work cut out for us, I’m sure we are up to the challenge.

I would like to thank all the volunteers for their devotion and assistance and wish you all a very Merry Christmas and Happy New Year.

Sincerely, Gord

Having the honor to run the Museum is similar to being a captain of an airliner or a ship. There are times when the vessel will run into stormy weather and it is the captain’s responsibility to either avoid the danger or steer the vessel safely through the troubled waters. No doubt you are aware that the majority of the Cultural and Arts Grants were cancelled this year by the Government. Unfortunately we were caught in the middle of the voyage without the aid of any Government funding for 2009.

Our Board of Directors came forward and financially contributed to our general operating fund. We are now asking the general members for their support. If it is financial we are able to offer income tax receipts for your contributions. If you would like to have your contributions earmarked for a special fund or project, that can be arranged and you can still have a tax receipt issued. If you feel that we are sailing in the right direction we ask that you support us financially.

This is the last edition for 2009 and we have done something a little different with this edition. As you know, this Museum does not run by itself but is made up of many people doing many things. Hope that you enjoy it.

Terry Brunner

Those Virtuous Strannies, The Bachelor, and the One That Got Away

by Carla Deminchuk

Many logbooks ago, a small Richmond-based airline acquired some WW2 flying boats known as the Canadian Vickers Stranraer or Stranny for short. The name of the airline was Queen Charlotte Airlines or QCA, also known as that “Queer Collection of Aircraft.” This had nothing to do with the sexual orientation of a few spirited QCA pilots…..but more about that later.

QCA Strannies at Sullivan Bay (circa 1950s) CF-BXO on the right. (Photo courtesy dispatch every Thursday night: a foggy of Harbour Publishing)

As biplanes go, the Stranraer lacked the kind of lines that would steam-up the Ray Bans of most red-blooded aviators. While her comely pair of double D-cup Pegasus engines might have seduced the airplane passions, her hulled fuselage was more gangly than beautiful. But as the indomitable QCA founder Jim Spilsbury wrote in ho AV, a good read for flyers, sailors or landlubbers alike “….you’re hanging up there over Hecate Straits, 250 miles of the roughest water on the Pacific – all that open water….in case of engine failure, in case of anything else, what sense does it make flying around there with landplanes? Spilsbury was quick to point out their seaworthiness – a good ploy in the late 1940s when the idea of over-water flying in a wheel plane gave many of those potential ticket buyers the jitters and a very dry mouth.

Spilsbury’s hunch paid off, and five Stranraers were soon hauling cargo and passengers under the QCA banner. Their bevy of flying boats were not the best-looking girls on the beach, but they were soon kicking sand in the face of the competition vying for the bustling northern route while endearing herself to passengers and pilots alike.

But it was the unmarried pilots who were partaking in another kind of fringe benefit: those lonely fish wives and lumber molls dotted along the coast. Many of QCA’s pilots were ex-RCAF who paid heed to their own kind of scheduled service outside the cockpit. “I’ve never seen anything like it” lamented Spilsbury. “Flying attracted a special group of people because it promised escape and excitement.” One particular pilot really had that special something. Women from up and down the coast would show-up at his Vancouver doorste “Here I am!” It would have been the perfect fodder for a 1950s reality show: The Flying Bachelor. Those rabbit ears on the new black and white Motorola would be tuned to another Casablanca-like wharf, the Stranny bobbing in the background, a farewell single-stemmed rose, tears, and a one-way trip back to Bella Coola. Bye-bye.

A Stranraer delivers a load of hay. (Photo courtesy of Harbour Publishing)

Those Virtuous Strannies

Unfortunately, most of the QCA Stranraers which plied our coast also met with a tearful fate. All but one met a watery grave or burned to the water line. In 1983, a contingent from the Canadian Museum of Flight, headed by lifetime member Captain Bill Thompson, made an expedition to Belize Inlet where Stranraer 915/CF-BYJ crashed Christmas Eve of 1949.

After she was plucked from the shoreline, CF-BYJ was stabled in the museum’s hangar barn awaiting restoration. But, alas, airplanes are like high- maintenance lovers; sometimes you just have to let them go. It was a hard loss for the Canadian Museum of Flight, but we sincerely hope the museum in Shearwater Nova Scotia will meet the challenge of restoring her back to glory.

The only physical reminder of a Stranraer left in British Columbia is a lilliputian replica of 920/CF-BXO, The Alaska Queen, which sits in a quiet corner of the Canadian Museum of Flight hangar, painted in the yellow and black livery of Queen Charlotte Airlines.

The life-sized CF-BXO is now part of the permanent collection at the Royal Air Force museum in Hendon, England. When Jim Spilsbury visited Hendon, he was dismayed that any trace of her British Columbia heritage had been erased. Spilsbury later wrote, “I visited her there in 1984, all painted in RAF colours as if she had never been built for the RCAF in Montreal or had a glorious career flying for QCA at all. I tried to bring this to the attention of the museum officials but they obviously didn’t believe a word I said.”

Let’s hope it never happens again because it is always about more than the airplanes. Behind every square inch of fabric wing or metal rivet is a human face with a story to be told.

We can make it happen with the passionate support of those dedicated to preserving our aviation legacy.

So, the next time an airplane brimming with unique regional significance lands on our doorstop, we can give voice to that human story and it will shout “Here I am…..and I’m here to stay!”

Stranraer model at the Museum of Flight, displaying the Queen Charlotte Airlines livery.

RCAF SUPERMARINE STRANRAER SPECS.

Manufacturer:
- Canadian Vickers
Crew/Passengers:
- Crew of five: pilot, navigator, radio operator & two gunners
Power Plant:
- Two 810 hp Bristol Pegasus X radial engines
Performance:
- Max Speed: 165 mph (265 km/h)
- Cruising Speed: 110 mph (177 km/h)
- Service Ceiling: 20,000 ft (6,096 m)
Range:
- 1,140 mi (1,834 km) or 1,750 mi (2,816 km) with 130 Imp gal (5911) external tanks
Weights:
- Empty: 12,534 lb (5,690 kg)
- Gross: 19,900 lb (9,035kg)
Dimensions:
- Span: 85 ft 0 in (25.81 m)
- Length: 54 ft 6 in (16.61 m),
- Height: 21 ft 9 in (7.64 m)
- Wing Area: 1,457 sq ft (135.35 sq m)

Around the Museum News and Events

The Barn

A massive effort organized and led by Colin McDonald has accomplished a transformation of the Museum’s off-site storage site, The Barn. The objectives of this project were to better document our collections, permitting informed strategic planning, while controlling storage costs. After many hundreds of hours of effort by a total of 43 volunteers, the progress is evident in the photo on the next page.

Flight Operations

What a year this has been for Museum Flight Operations! Celebrations, nation-wide, of the 100th anniversary of powered flight in Canada, certainly did generate much excitement for aviation enthusiasts from coast to coast to coast. The Canadian Museum of Flight (CMF) is very proud to be a part of this excitement and to be able to share the flying aircraft with the aviation community.

CMF aircraft insured for the 2009 flight year included the Harvard, Waco Cabin. Tiger Moth and SE5a. Aircraft maintenance and airworthiness requirements were completed during the winter months and, by April, the flying machines and their crews were ready to take on the busy flying schedule.

The Waco Cabin, Harvard and Tiger Moth, as chronicled in the Glidepath newsletter #101, Summer 2009, played major roles in the Back- to-Baddeck flight relay. This event included the 1937 Waco Cabin’s memorable seven day flight to Alberta and back-a journey whereby she showed what a great aircraft she is.

George Kirbyson and Bill Findlay on departure for the 2009 Abbotsford Airshow. Photo by Chris Smallenberg.

Participation in airshows was a major component of this year’s flying schedule. The prime airshow commitment was to the three-day Abbotsford International Airshow. The four CMF aircraft stayed on site at Abbotsford where they flew daily and were also on static display for spectator viewing. This show is a wonderful opportunity to demonstrate these classic aircraft to the tens of thousands of aviation enthusiasts in attendance.

Big smiles on the last day at The Barn for 2009: artifacts documented, pallets labelled and shelved. From left Doug, Matt, Colin, and Frank.

Other single-day flying events included Qualicum Airport Appreciation Day, Boundary Bay Airshow, Hope Flight Fest, Princeton Airshow, Pitt Meadows Airshow, Chilliwack Flight Fest, Battle of Britain Parade and Remembrance Day flybys. The aircraft performed well and the crews did a great job of providing aerial displays to help “bring BC’s aviation past into the future”.

Hampton

Step by step. piece by piece, the snow-storm damaged port wing of the CMF Hampton is coming back together, stronger than before. A team of recent graduates of the University of Fraser Valley aircraft structures program including Kent Clemas, Peter Davidson. Brian Black, Adam Saad and Kyle Morton is bringing energy and enthusiasm in addition to their newly acquired aircraft maintenance skills to the task, and the Museum is very lucky to have them.

Kent Clemas ticks off one more detail on the Canuck fuselage as it is prepped for Its fabric covering.

Fleet Canuck

The focus this fall has been on recovering the fuselage and empennage of the Canuck. The fuselage now looks better than factory new with much finicky work on the black-painted frame by Chris Ryan, and installation and varnishing of wooden stringers by Ray Fessenden.

Fleet Finch

Our Fleet Finch looks like an airplane again, proudly displaying its fully rebuilt Kinner engine.

Social Events

The Museum hangar facility was used by Canadian music superstar. George Canyon, to launch his cross-Canada flight to raise funds for children with diabetes. George gave a mini concert in the hangar to an enthusiastic crowd of children and their families prior to taking off for the flight in his Flight Design CTSW aircraft. A recent album cover and the George Canyon website include a number of photos using Museum aircraft to highlight his association with aviation.

The CMF Member’s Day was well attended and the Harvard. Waco Cabin and Tiger Moth were kept busy providing flight experiences for a good number of people. The Round Engine Roundup fly-in and Museum Hangar Dinner/Dance was another chance to get together to socialize with family and friends. Thanks to all the volunteers and staff who give so much of their time to help make these events happen.

Dave Beales and Bill Findlay (Doug Moan behind) ease the engine on to the Finch.

The Glidepath Newsletter is published quarterly by the Canadan Museum of Flight; Editor Bruce Friesen. Contributions in the form of articles, news items, letters and photos are always welcome, as are comments and suggestions, although no payments are made for manuscripts submitted for publication in the Newsletter. Please feel free to contact Terry Brunner at the Museum by calling 604-532-0035.