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This Community Memories exhibit focuses on the personal histories of the men and women who participated in the British Commonwealth Air Training Plan (BCATP) during World War II in Manitoba.
The Commonwealth Air Training Plan came to life in 1939 to school air and ground crew personnel at bases that were built in Brandon, Virden, Neepawa, Rivers, Carberry and Dauphin. It was a life-altering event for these communities in southwestern Manitoba, for the recruits and for future generations.
By bringing men and women from all over the Commonwealth to these training facilities, the BCATP opened up these Manitoba communities to the rest of the world. They learned about other regions, other provinces, other countries. Many women from the local community married men from other provinces or other Commonwealth countries.
Flight and air travel before the BCATP was uncommon and now the skies were filled with aircraft. The remarkable infrastructure put into place for training in these small communities had an immediate positive effect on local business and a long lasting effect on those communities that continued to use the airports after the war.
As well, the training, education and travel offered by the BCATP had a profound effect on community residents. With men off to war, women were responsible for the war effort and maintaining the economy. Not only did women perform military jobs traditionally reserved for men, they even ran their family farms alone.
By helping to secure victory in Europe, the “Plan” changed the future for all Canadians. Victory in World War II broke the strangle hold of the Depression years so that Royal Canadian Air Force personnel returned to a nation on the cusp of prosperity, ready to put to good use the skills they had learned during wartime.
