It began on 29 June 1962, as I stood before the main gates to the entrance of the Canadian Army's Currie Barracks, in Calgary, Alberta. To the guard, I uttered the simple words "I want to join the Canadian Army…

When I was eleven years old, there existed a holiday in my hometown that, for me, rivaled Christmas or Halloween or Firecracker Day, which is what we called Victoria Day. This holiday, this special day…

There are places in this world that are imbued with a spiritual power beyond their utility. Most are grand. Westminster Abbey for instance contains the…

Despite researching material over the past five years for the nearly three hundred stories, albums, features and missives of Vintage News, I am still in awe of the historical, emotional and visual matrix that is…

The Alberta landscape is one of undulating and verdant beauty in the spring. To the west, on the distant horizon, stands the saw-toothed, snow-capped permanence of…

The Canadian North is not for everyone. With its hard winters and boondocks spirit, it is a place that can easily break a soft, city-dwelling, smart-phone addicted metrosexual. It is however a place that pulls …

Here in the United Kingdom, it has been raining for months now, after a long, dry winter. It is almost as if tears are falling in remembrance….

The internet changed everything. It certainly changed me. I have been writing stories about aviation history for about nine years now. It is not something I thought I would ever do, but by my estimation I am beyond 2.5 million words at the time of this writing.

When I was a child, we lived at the very edge of the city, the outermost ripple of the postwar suburban tract home malaise. We lived in a sweetly named, Mayberry-esque development called Elmvale Acres, a former farmer's hay field,…

Vintage Wings of Canada dedicates all of its aircraft to famous and no-so-famous Canadian airmen whose lives are inextricably connected to the aircraft types which bear their dedication panels. One particular aircraft,…

The Second World War was a time of powerful stresses on nations, on ethnicities, on families, and on economies around the globe. Hundreds of thousands of families, in every corner of the world, would offer up, …

There are many things that make up the recipe for the heady cocktail that is powered or unpowered flight – history, technology, speed, brotherhood or perhaps the extreme test of human reflex …

At the start of November, Vintage Wings of Canada hosted the Third Annual Members Gala. It was the best yet, and Carolyn Leslie and her crew are to be commended for an exceptional soirée enjoyed by all…

I hear voices. The voices of brave men. Gentle voices, creaking with age and weariness, soft and humble after a long life. I hear voices. The flinty voices of warriors at peace with themselves….

Remembrance Day is the one day Canadians and other nations set aside to remember, with some degree of sadness and plenty of dignity, the sacrifices of our men and women and their families in conflicts from …

On the afternoon of 19 December 2012, Chris Hadfield, member of the Board of Directors of Vintage Wings of Canada and one of its senior Squadron Leader Fern Villeneuve Hawk One F-86 Sabre pilots, will lift off the vast, sparse …

From the bizarre appearance in the Egyptian desert in April of a Kittyhawk that looks an awful lot like ours, to Chris Hadfield's end-of-year rocket ride to the International Space Station (ISS), 2012 turned out to be the busiest and best year for Vintage Wings…

Eating and excreting are mankind’s two most basic biological functions and yet the vast majority of military historians, when writing about the people who fought the battles and used the war machines, seem to neglect or forget …

If you were to ask devotees of Second World War aviation history what the words Furious, Glorious, Indomitable, Courageous, Indefatigable, Formidable, Audacious, Illustrious, Implacable,…

Every Tuesday and Thursday morning around 11:30 a.m., rain or shine, winter or summer, former fighter pilot Tim Timmins wheels his car into the parking lot at Vintage Wings of Canada. As the wind sweeps hard …