N. Kent Beckham N. Kent Beckham

LIVING THE DREAM

I was commuting to Ottawa that early Friday morning. Pete Spence had slipped his beautifully restored Harvard II into my backyard, which so happens to be a grass runway, and was giving me a lift to Gatineau, PQ, a two hour blue sky downwind dash…

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N. Kent Beckham N. Kent Beckham

ON BEING THREE

I sat there - in the Harvard cockpit, exhausted but satisfied after shutting down on the grass. Not a soul in sight, just me and the sounds of gyros winding down, metal clinking and clanking with different rates of contraction as it cooled….

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Edward P. Soye Edward P. Soye

HARVARD HERITAGE FLIGHT

Over the past two years, Vintage Wings of Canada has travelled from coast to coast using the Yellow Wings program to tell the story of the British Commonwealth Air Training Plan (BCATP). In terms of scope, the BCATP was by far…

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Dave O'Malley Dave O'Malley

MAGEE — The Boy Hero and the Poet Legend

On 18 August 2016 it will be 75 years to the day since a teenager named Pilot Officer John Gillespie Magee Jr. lifted his Supermarine Spitfire Mk I from the aerodrome at…

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History & Heroes Dave O'Malley History & Heroes Dave O'Malley

The High Flight Harvards

A few years back, we put together a story about the portraits of Royal Air Force fighter pilots by the outstanding Second World War artists Cuthbert Orde and Erik Kennington. One of those hundreds of portraits stood out from the...

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Dave O'Malley Dave O'Malley

MAGEE – Un jeune héros et poète légendaire

Le 18 août 2016, soit 75 ans jour pour jour après qu’un adolescent, le sous-lieutenant d’aviation John Gillespie Magee Jr., aux commandes de son Supermarine Spitfire Mk I a décollé de l’aérodrome Llandow de la RAF, au Pays de Galles, et a grimpé vers le soleil…

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