This week on our ACL spotlight, (Arts-Culture-Lifestyle) we meet a man with a passion. That passion is for a truly unique machine, a WWII era Lancaster bomber.
Craig Brookhouse runs an automotive repair/restoration business but has fallen in love with this big plane.
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Most Canadians, and most people around the world, inundated with Hollywood movies, simply do not know that during the Second World War, Canada was a major and vital supplier of men and materiel to the Allied war effort.
Canada supplied critical food stuffs, raw resources, building materials, and fighting men of course.
But Canada also built warships, cargo ships, torpedo boats, tanks, armoured vehicles, artillery, trucks, millions of rifles, machine guns, pistols, billions of shellls, radios and electronic equipment, the greatest aircrew training plan in history, and of course planes,
That vast contribution comprised, single and twin engine training planes, patrol craft, Canso amphibians (PBY) Hurricane fighters, Mosquito fighter bombers, and over 100 Lancaster bombers.
Of the vast number of Lancasters built, one of the most recognizable bombers of the Second World War, only a couple of dozen remain, and only 2 are airworthy.
One of those two.is the result of many years of very hard and dedicated work, mostly by volunteers at the Warplane Heritage Museum located near Hamilton in southern Ontario.
Craig Brookhouse is an automobile technician, had long admired the big plane and became involved in its restoration and maintenance somewhat indirectly.
Since then he has fallen in love with the aircraft and become one of the many dedicated people who keep this heritage machine airworthy as an active reminder and tribute to the ten thousand Canadian aircrew who never returned from the war.
He is one of a large group of dedicated volunteers who help maintain the aircraft in flying condition. An increasingly difficult task given that parts have to be sourced from among the few remaining around the world, often through investigative work like detectives, and many parts now have to be fabricated from scratch, a difficult and expensive task.
On this edition, a lengthy interview with Craig Brookhouse about the aircraft and why it has become such an important part of his life.
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