ME AND MR. JONES
“If I can walk, I can fly.”
Gordon said this to me when I visited him this past August, as he sat in his easy chair, swollen legs elevated, a warm blanket covering him, still looking like a king, a member of aviation royalty, granting me an audience. Sadly, I could see his flying days were behind him.
When I arrived, I came bearing a lasagne, a fruit crisp, and a kiss on his forehead. “No pie?” he asked.
“No, no pie.”
His mouth displaying a disappointed grin, he raised his eyebrows up quickly then let them drop.
The first day I met Gordon face to face, I brought him a lemon meringue pie. Little did I know how much he liked pie. Over the past two years and dozens and dozens of interviews, driving from Calgary to High River, Alberta and back, I discovered how much Gordon liked fresh homemade baking, how his mother made him pies when he would come home on leave as a student pilot and then from his instructor duties with the RCAF during the Second World War. His daughter, Mary-Ellen, told me, “Anne, when you brought that first pie, you were ‘in’!”
Gordon would call me up as the months progressed and say, “Anne, I’ve got another story to tell you.” And down I would go, laden with cookies, cheesecake, or brownies and cinnamon buns, or a lemon loaf... but his preferred dessert was a pie... any pie would do, although he had his favourites.
One of the last times I visited with Gordon was just after he had been moved to the Okotoks Hospice. I brought a berry pie. “I’m not all that hungry,” he said. Later, I was told he had a few bites in the afternoon, telling the nurses happily, “It’s Saskatoon! It’s Saskatoon!”
Baking for Gordon and collecting his stories became a comfortable routine. I was on the hunt for tales for a fictional story I was writing about a boy from a small town in southern Alberta who became a pilot; the backdrop: The Great Depression and the Second World War.
I first saw Gordon Jones—actually his airplane—in July 2011 at the Claresholm, Alberta airport. (At the time, I didn’t know Claresholm had an airport. I had no idea there were so many little airports across the country because of the Canadian war effort.) There were the five yellow airplanes parked there, all part of the Vintage Wings of Canada Yellow Wings Tour that summer which had flown over the Bomber Command Museum in Nanton a few hours earlier. I hit the brakes, and with my mother, aunt and two of my children with me, put my SUV into reverse, backed up and drove into the parking area. I couldn’t believe my good fortune.
As my children and I milled around the old aircraft, one pilot from Vintage Wings asked my daughter, “Would your mother like to sit in my airplane?” What a thrill! My children also had the opportunity to climb into the aircraft for a photo op.
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My aunt and my mom, in the meantime, were reminiscing about these old airplanes; they grew up in the 1940s east of Carstairs, Alberta. The aircraft used to come in flying over their farm, the distinctive sound of the engines heard before they were seen. After further discussion, I found out my eldest aunt was a stenographer at No. 4 Training Command Headquarters (TCHQ) Administration Unit for the British Commonwealth Air Training Plan (BCATP) on the 6th floor of The Hudson’s Bay Company department store in Calgary!
We posed in front of a few more airplanes, then saw the pilots and planes readying for departure.
One particular airplane caught my eye. I watched as a man, who must have been at least 80, climbed into the cockpit, then watched him fly away, my daughter capturing its takeoff on her new iPad. I thought the man was too old to be flying and he looked like a farmer. I joked with my family: “The headline in tomorrow’s Herald is going to read: Senior Absconds with Vintage Aircraft—Lands Safely in Airdrie.”
I contacted Nanton a few days later and asked who that elderly pilot was. Matter-of-factly I was told, “Gordon Jones,” like I should know. I asked if they thought he might talk to me about his experiences for a story. “Absolutely!”
I cold-called Mr. Jones on a Wednesday, talked with him for an hour, and by Saturday, I was in his living room, interviewing him and his wife, Linora, about their wartime experiences.
It was on this day I had the privilege of riding with an 88-year-old pilot, a former BCATP Pilot Officer from the Second World War in his Tiger Moth, one he flew as a nineteen-year-old instructor out of No. 5 Elementary Flying Training School (EFTS) in High River!
It was the beginning of a relationship and journey, learning about a chapter in Canadian history I knew nothing about. I had no map to help me along the way, but I had found a guide who took me by the hand and walked me through his life—as a teenager to being a 90-year-old who still flew an airplane.
Directors at the Bomber Command Museum of Canada caught wind of my interviews, and approached me to write a book about Gordon. The fictional story had to take a back seat.
Gordon’s biography, Wings Over High River, captured the interest of many people—from within his own community of High River, straight across Canada, into the United States, over to England, Pakistan, Slovakia and Australia. His story found its way into online features, newspapers, magazines, and was broadcast on CTV and CBC, including The National with Peter Mansbridge, with Gordon up in the skies flying Tiger Moth 1214.
Gordon continued to call. “I remember another story.” So I loaded up my camera, tape recorder, notepad, and baking. I started to wonder if it was not the baking bringing out the stories! I enlisted the help of my friend, professional photographer, Don Molyneaux, to take pictures of the Jones’ photo collection, plus come up with originals, making Don an integral person to the telling of Gordon’s story.
One bright and early morning in October 2011, Don and I drove down to High River. Gordon was waiting, raring to go. We made our way out to the High River Airport and set up the equipment just as the sun was rising. We pulled Tiger Moth 1214 out from its hangar and Don started working his magic. “Turn this way. Turn that way. Chin up, chin down.” Gordon obliged. “Put your hand in your pocket, on your hip.”
I teased Gordon afterwards, “Well, to your resumé of pilot, farmer, rancher, businessman, and politician, we can now add: model!”
By November 2011, Gordon’s military records arrived by post from Ottawa. “Boring,” he said, after a luncheon at the Aircrew Association at Calgary’s Mewata Armoury. They may have been boring to him; to me, it was anything but, as I was soon to discover.
Gordon told me many tales; I knew there were others he was not going to share. He only told me what he wanted me to know. He was a man of few words, really. His eldest son said, “Dad trusts you.” I felt honoured.
Gordon invited me to the High River Legion a few times, as well as brought me to a couple of Flying Farmer functions and a fly-in, introducing me as his girlfriend, his blue eyes shining with that cheesecake smile to go along with it. He had other nicknames for me: secretary, biographer, “the woman writing my story”, and social coordinator.
He set me up with many aviation enthusiasts, too, unbeknownst to him. In order to confirm his record of flying a Tiger Moth for seventy years, I talked to people across Canada. In researching the BCATP, I encountered special interest groups relating to vintage aircraft as well as RCAF memorabilia collectors. And the most wonderful thing about it? They wanted to help. If they did not know of someone who had the answer, they referred me to someone who might and often did.
Interviewing more veterans of the Second World War, I learned about the type of airplanes they piloted or flew as crew members in: the Harvard, Spitfire, Lancaster, Stearman, Stirling, Mosquito and the Tiger Moth, plus I met one Merlin engine mechanic who witnessed D-Day action. For good measure: a couple of sailors, all because of working with Gordon.
By listening to their stories, I was able to glean a better appreciation of what Canadians did during the war. I read books, realizing how the BCATP affected Canadian families in some capacity, whether it was sending their sons, nephews, uncles, fathers, fiancés or husbands overseas, or helping with the war effort here at home.
Heading to Ottawa for research at Library and Archives Canada, I delved into some of the men’s files—those who never returned. They were part and parcel of the stories I heard. When I came home and shared what I discovered with two of Gordon’s friends, they said, “Anne, I’ve been waiting seventy years to find out what happened.”
I travelled to Victoria to interview Gordon’s friend, Bob Spooner, gaining further insight into the life of an instructor, gathering up a few more stories along the way about Gordon and his buddies at No. 5EFTS. When we were discussing accidents, Bob said, “The bottom line: they were not doing what they were supposed to be doing.” Ah... and the lucky ones? They got away with their lives and not just overseas, but here in Canada, too!
Travelling with Gordon and Linora and their cousins to Hanover, Ontario, Gordon was the recipient of the Canadian Owner Pilot Association (COPA) Award of Merit. He had the option of receiving the award closer to home, but he said, “I want to be where there are the most people.” His pilot’s ego was coming through, even at 89 years of age.
After the book was published in December 2012, I teased him, “I am not done with you yet.” His homework included signing his name on the inside cover of the book beside his picture. I had hoped, too, to ask him his opinion and insight into the new projects I had started: letters of RCAF personnel during WWII and an Accident Proneness Report, amongst others. Regrettably, that did not come to pass. Gordon’s health was starting to fail.
Mr. Allister Gordon Jones opened up a new world to me.
Having now immersed myself into the vintage aviation culture and WWII pilots, I want to learn more about their experiences as individuals, not only as a group of pilots, navigators, wireless operators, gunners and mechanics. What did they think about, feel, experience? I have only scraped the surface, but I have been welcomed and encouraged by many, Gordon being the conduit to this multi-layered area of aviation history in Canada.
Me and Mr. Jones...
Thank you, Gordon, from the bottom of my heart.
On 10 September 2013, at the age of 90, Allister Gordon Jones passed away. An estimated five hundred people came out to pay homage to Gordon ten days later at the Bomber Command Museum of Canada in Nanton, Alberta where Gordon’s Celebration of Life was held. The Canadian Legion also participated in their touching Tribute, laying poppies on a cross, commemorating Gordon’s time in the BCATP and the RCAF as a pilot instructor.
When I visited him in the hospice, a week before he died, I held his hands and told him I might have the opportunity to fly in a Harvard—his favourite airplane. He whispered, “Do it!” His eyes as blue as ever seemed to take on a little bit of extra light, as he remembered his love affair with flying.
As Gordon’s funeral procession made its way up the QEII Highway from Nanton to the High River Cemetery, a restored Tiger Moth followed along, after it had thrilled those still at the BCMC on 20 September, with a few flypasts. Pilot Doug Robertson, from Black Diamond, honoured by the request to accompany a fallen fellow aviator, continued on above the cemetery, for a fitting tribute. “Gordon Jones has flown west.”