A Kitchener landmark has found a new home after nearly 30 years on the top of a Victoria Street North business.
Since 1997, a WWII Spitfire fighter aircraft replica has sat atop K-W Surplus.
After selling his business, owner Ray Whittemore, still wanting to preserve a piece of history, has donated the plane to the Canadian Harvard Aircraft Association (CHAA), a charitable organization dedicated to honouring Second World War Harvard aircraft specifically associated with Royal Canadian Air Force and the British Commonwealth Air Training Plan.
Whittemore, who is a longtime member of the CHAA, purchased the plane in England back in 1996, for $50,000, before bringing it back to Kitchener.
Since December, Whittemore and the CHAA have been working to get the plane to CYTB Airport in Tillsonburg to be restored, repaired, and repainted, as the centerpiece of a new Veterans Memorial Garden.
CHAA, Chair, Public Relations, Terry Scott was a guest on The Mike Farwell Show and said the garden will recognize multiple branches of the military.
“The memorial garden is designed to pay tribute to the Canadian Armed Forces, the RCAF, the Coast Guard, Merchant Marines, and the British Commonwealth Air Training Plan. It’s sort of an all encompassing memorial garden that we have planned in cooperation with a number of other groups and certainly the town of Tillsonburg.”
Association Vice President John Britton said the removal of the aircraft will be quite the display, as a crane and two flatbed trucks are brought in to dismantle the plane.
“We have to have people on the roof as the Spitfire is bolted onto a plate on a pedestal that goes through the building and into the basement, and it will have to be lifted off and supported by ropes,” said Britton. “It’s roughly a 3000 lbs kite, hanging on a wire, so it’s going to be a little precarious.”
Once it’s down, the wings of the plane will have to be removed before being placed on the trucks and driven to Tillsonburg. The plane will then be reassembled and repainted before it’s back out in the public eye.
Britton said they know the landmark is important to the Kitchener community.
“I know it’s going to be disappointing for people in the area to lose that landmark because it’s such a beautiful airplane up on the roof, the way it’s been.”
It will be a brighter yellow when all is said and done, in the colours of the past association president and former Spitfire pilot, Charley Fox.
“We’re really looking forward to putting these memorial gardens together to honour the veterans,” adds Britton. “We want to keep these memories alive; it’s very important.”
The plane is set to be the centerpiece of the new garden which will pay tribute to the Canadian Armed Forces, the Royal Canadian Air Force (RCAF), the Coast Guard, Merchant Marines and the British Commonwealth Air Training Plan (BCATP).
