The Lost Airmen of the Empire memorial is on Hospital Hill, Mills Road, on the north side of the Victoria International Airport.
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For King and Country these airmen of coastal defence and trainee aircrews gave their lives without ever coming under enemy fire, while thousands of miles from the war zones of Asia and Europe. They were killed in crashes while learning to fly at a time of blackouts, in extremes of weather and over some of the wildest terrain on the continent. Some of them have never been found.
That was when Patricia Bay (today’s Victoria International) Airport was part of the British Commonwealth Air Training Plan which trained thousands of Canadian, British, Australian and New Zealand airmen.
Previous to the new airport memorial, the Commonwealth War Graves Commission dedicated a Cross of Sacrifice at Royal Oak Burial Park. One of only 26 such Crosses placed by the Commission in North America, and the first to be placed in Canada since 1969, it joined the 58 graves of airmen in Section ‘D’ of the Burial Park that are under the care of the Commission.
A press release at the time noted that “Many of the dead buried in this section lost their lives while flying from Pat Bay Airport doing air training or coastal defence and anti-submarine patrols on the west coast of Canada during the Second World War.”
Only war’s end brought an end to the carnage — too late for the 179 Allied airmen recorded as killed and missing ‘in friendly skies’ while flying out of Pat Bay, 1939-1945 (there were almost 300 fatalities in all of B.C.), and it has been estimated that at least 1,713 aircrew students and instructors paid the supreme sacrifice in Canadian skies.
To put their numbers into historical context: By March 31, 1945, when the British Commonwealth Air Training Plan came to a close, it had produced 131,553 aircrew for the air forces of Canada, Great Britain, Australia and New Zealand. (72,835 RCAF, 9,606 RAAF, 7,002 RNZAF, and 42,110 RAF which included 2,600 Free French, 900 Czechs, 800 Belgian and Dutch, 577 Norwegians, 448 Poles and 5,296 trainees for the Naval Fleet Air Arm).
Of these, 10,000 trainees “passed through” Pat Bay Station in five years, the third largest airbase in Canada which could train 3,500 students at any one time.
Total complement of Pat Bay peaked around 5,000, which included 321 RCAF airwomen, eight Nursing Sisters and 112 civilians. Among the support staff were the personnel who manned a fleet of crash boats — so necessary as it turned out.
Although Canada is better-known for its naval role of shepherding convoys in the Atlantic that were the lifeline for Great Britain, historian J.L. Granatstein has termed the BCATP “the major Canadian military contribution to the Allied War effort” in the Second World War. Of the total cost of $2.2 billion for the program, Canada contributed $1.6 billion and forgave a further $425 million debt owed by Britain at war’s end. Almost ironically, the building of airfields and flight schools across Canada has been described as an economic godsend to communities that were still suffering from the effects of the Great Depression.
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For years after war’s end, rows of unused aircraft were parked in fields alongside the Pat Bay Airport. Upon being declared surplus, most were sold for scrap. Several Cansos were converted into water bombers, Grumman Goose amphibians became an RCMP, provincial government and forest industry workhorse, and two-seat Harvard trainers were bought privately for recreational purposes.
The late George Maude purchased and barged a Kittyhawk fighter (now said to be one of the best preserved P-40s in the world), and a Bristol Bolingbroke bomber, to his Salt Spring Island property. He donated the two-engine bomber to the RCAF in 1964.
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Twenty-four different types of aircraft were flown out of Pat Bay during the war years including the Handley Page Hampden torpedo bomber, of which 37 accounted for the majority of the airbase’s mortality rate. Originally known as the ‘Flying Suitcase’ because their four-man crews were so cramped, as the death toll mounted they became known as ‘Flying Coffins’.
Losses of this aircraft became so alarming that they were sent up with just a pilot — often a trainee airman — which undoubtedly contributed to the ultimate toll, in part because of their tendency to “yaw and lose stability while banking,” as authors White and Smith grimly noted in Wings Across the Water: Victoria’s Flying Heritage 1871-1971.
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In 2016, the Lost Airmen of the Empire Memorial was erected on Mills Road on the north side of today’s Victoria International Airport at the site of the wartime Royal Canadian Air Force hospital.
“The memorial,” Victoria Edwards of the BC Aviation Museum informs us, “was selected by the Victoria Airport Authority and a working group to increase the awareness of the proud military history of the airport. The names of the lost airmen were water-jet cut into 25 Corten steel Cooper’s Hawk feathers.
“The Cooper’s Hawk is a predator known for its extraordinary agility in flight and ferocity in hunting. Symbolically, the feathers create an allegorical narrative about the spirit of these fighting men who were training to be Canada’s airborne warriors. The eight-feet-high feathers were arranged chronologically in a military matrix with some removed, representing the randomness and divergent accident locations...
“There are three civilians listed, including one who was an American citizen and resident.”
The approach to the memorial is flanked by the original gateposts of the hospital and red maple trees on both sides. A seating area which includes a time capsule is made from bricks salvaged from the airport’s original administration building.
Designed by Victoria sculptor Illarion Gallant, the memorial was dedicated in June 2017 with a military band and a flypast of vintage and modern military aircraft, including a PBY Canso that served at Pat Bay during the war.
(*The BC Aviation Museum has compiled biographical and crash details, as well as burial sites of each of the names memorialized.)
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Paul R. Jordan helps to keep their memories alive, as does the B.C. Aviation Museum in Sidney with its Memorial Room. Kaatza Station Museum in Lake Cowichan now has a custom-made model of a Lockheed Vega Ventura such as the one that went down on Mount Bolduc, April 25, 1944. Because one square mile there is formally designated as a grave site and is un-logged, you can still see where they hit the trees.
The crew: Flying officers John Ernest Moyer, 27, from Vineland, Ont. and Ambrose Moynaugh, 22, from Souris, P.E.I.; Warrant Officer First Class Lawrence Kerr, 21, Miller, Alta.; Warrant Officer Second Class Brimsley George Henry Palmer, 21, Saskatoon; Sergeant Harry Arthur Maki, 18, Lockerby, Ont.; and Leading Air Craftsman Murray Thomas Robertson, Pat Bay, B.C.
Their burned remains are buried on-site in a common grave at this crash site west of Cowichan Lake. Several years ago, I attended an on-site Remembrance Day ceremony with members of the Mesachie Lake Fire Department and RCAF from Comox airbase. A low overcast day with a light mist was so in keeping with the solemnity of the event.
The highlight was a spine-tingling rendition of 'Amazing Grace' played by an RCAF piper, followed by a volley of shots fired by hunters on the road below. It was something never to be forgotten. Others have made Remembrance Day on Mount Bolduc an annual pilgrimage, such as that described in an email from Paul Jordan: “We have now performed 2 memorial tribute runs this year with the Cowichan Valley ATV Club to Mount Bolduc.
“One on April 21, 2019 to commemorate the 75th Anniversary of the crash, and one on Sunday, Nov. 10th for Remembrance Day. They were all well attended and a service was held by Pastor David Sterling of Royal Canadian Legion Branch #210. In November 50 people listened to a piper who played 'Amazing Grace' in the still of the forest and a 2-minute silence was observed to honour the crew and all RCAF personnel who died in WW2.
“We have recently concluded extensive research on the crash, and with the aid of official reports have reconstructed the last flight of Ventura 2218,” and further visits to the site were planned in association with the Vancouver Island Military Museum.
In another email he wrote: “We are also considering a memorial display for our local museum [Kaatza Station] in Lake Cowichan to honour the crew and to include accurate models of the 2 aircraft which set out on the Navigation Training Exercise from 115 Squadron in Tofino on the evening of April 25th 1944.
“We are therefore looking for photographs and as much information as possible on the 6 aircrew who lost their lives and would like to hear from any surviving family members....”
In October 2021, Darrell Ohs, former president of the Nanaimo Historical Society, “placed four more portraits of the Ventura crew on [Mt.] Bolduc, to add to the existing one of Sgt. Harry Maki. I sourced these from The Canadian Virtual War Memorial which is an ongoing database by Veterans Affairs. It’s much like the Canadian Letters and Images Project started at VIU in 2000.
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This light-hearted poem by RAF P/Sgt. Alec W.F. Fear (with his “apologies to Lewis Carroll”) appeared in The Patrician, the base magazine, in November 1942. Fear never made it back to “Blighty,” or even off Vancouver Island, the “distant Isle” of his poem.
On Sept. 17, 1943, he matched “a halo with his wings” when his Hampden bomber crashed and burned while trying to land at Pat Bay airbase.
YOU’LL GO HOME WHEN YOU GET YOUR WINGS!
“The time has come,” the Groupy said,
To think of other things,
Of cockpit checks and faster kites,
To fly with brand new wings.”
And so we left our service schools,
Our hearts and heads were high,
For we were really pilots now.
And we could truly fly.
Nine weeks we dwelt on distant Isle,
Where spuds and girls abound,
The spuds were good, so were the girls,
Too good for us we found.
“The time has come,” the wool-woof said,
To think of other things.
Of grass that’s free and kites that fly,
And chiefy’s crown and wings.”
And so we left that lovely Isle,
Its maids still sweet and pure,
For though we did our level best,
|Those girls were much too sure.
“The time has come,” the mountains said,
To think of other things,
The man who can’t fly now, will match
A halo with his wings.”
The time’s not come for our next trip,
We sit around, we gloat,
Believing fondly it will be
Aboard a “blighty” boat.
