MOOSE JAW, SASKATCHEWAN — A Prairie Town in the Second World War
If there ever was a heartland of Canada, a place where our traditional pre-electronic age Canadian values of humility, hard work, family, honesty and cheerfulness are alive and well, despite modern consumerism, it is the broad, seemingly endless, wheat fields, dusty roads, massive skies, and small towns of Southern Saskatchewan. It is here that you can find young men from the big cities returning home to help with the family haying, where hockey and football still reign supreme over soccer, where heavy snows, parched winds or fearsome summer storms don’t make the headlines or induce environmental panic. This is Canada’s centre of gravity, a vast open land of farms and farm towns whose harvest is not only wheat, but some of the finest and most principled people on the planet. In Saskatchewan, common sense is always in style.
During the Second World War, the Canadian province of Saskatchewan stood at the heart of the enormous flying training endeavour known in this country as the British Commonwealth Air Training Plan. While every Canadian province was involved, it was the three Canadian Prairie Provinces that shouldered the heavy weight—Alberta to the west and Manitoba to the east, along with Saskatchewan, creating an air training arena the size of Europe, but with the population of Ireland.
Moose Jaw, along with other cities like Medicine Hat, Flin Flon, Porcupine and Yellowknife, was one of those Canadian place names that immediately brought sniggers from Americans and Brits alike, synonymous with the back of beyond, the middle of nowhere, the uncultured wilderness. Moose Jaw was in fact a bustling prairie town. Canadian Pacific and Canadian National Railways both had stations in the city and the town was and still is an economic centre of the breadbasket of Canada. While the distasteful obscenities of total war never came within thousands of miles of prairie towns like Moose Jaw, Estevan, High River and Dauphin, they would feel the impact of the conflict in many different ways.
Many towns across Canada, but especially in the Prairies, had been devastated by dry weather, crop failures, the Great Depression and social stresses from the end of the 1920s through the 1930s. When the British Commonwealth Air Training Plan was signed into existence in 1939, town councils and administrators from Nova Scotia to Vancouver Island vied for the economic action and stimulus a training air base would bring to their faltering communities. The towns in the Canadian Prairies and the farmlands of Southern Ontario had the best shot at attracting the RCAF’s money and investment as they provided excellent weather (most of the year) and suitable made-for-flying topography uninhibited by mountains and rocky land, the best possible sites for pilot and air crew training.
The impact of the war on Moose Jaw and Moose Javians was not one of death and destruction, though there were deaths and injuries associated with the training at the base, but rather demographic change and economic growth. An influx of hundreds of new mechanics, administrators, instructors and the thousands of men they would service gave the restaurants, bars, cafés, hotels, taxis and clothing stores a much needed boost. As well, there were new jobs created for men and women with the construction and operation of the base itself—cooks, servers, carpenters, truck drivers, snowplow drivers and even flight instructors. The economy of every BCATP community roared into overdrive, but the economy and the social structure of Moose Jaw changed not just for the duration of the war, but for good.
Today, Moose Jaw is one of the key bases of the Royal Canadian Air Force, and the bulk of RCAF fixed wing pilots and its top brass commanders today can find Moose Javian DNA in their makeup. Home of Canadian Forces Snowbirds Demonstration Team, training of Canada’s next generation fixed wing pilots still goes on there at full bore on the Raytheon Harvard II trainer.
One Man’s Moose Javian Adventure
Harry Bernard Blakey was born on 13 August 1918, the oldest of four children born to Harry and Alice Blakey in the English industrial town of Preston, in the west English county of Lancashire. Harry senior, a marine engineer, instilled in his first born a sense of curiosity, a longing for adventure and a keen interest in the newly developed science of radio electronics. He also inspired young Harry to take up one of his hobbies and passions—photography.
Recently, Harry’s life, photographs and love of this new land called Saskatchewan came to my attention through his nephew, Robert “Bob” Blakey, who wrote to me inquiring if these photos would be of interest to Vintage Wings of Canada. While we do not really have the ability to curate and properly take care of the actual negatives and prints themselves, I told Bob that I would love to see them. As they began coming though the email one at a time, I realized that they were solid gold. They gave a personal view of how just one man’s life came to be changed by the BCATP, Saskatchewan and Moose Jaw. His photographs were not necessarily of the aircraft, hangars and operation of the airfield, but rather his beautifully ordinary life and how he was able to perceive and capture in images the exquisite beauty of a town unlike his birthplace. Instead of being homesick, he invited his wife and kids to join him and even his brother after the war.
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In these pictures, we see a handsome man with the serious yet dreamy look of a man who sees what is around him and is affected by it. I never knew Harry Blakey, but he looks like a man who would have been quiet and determined, happy with his lot in life. These photographs tell the story of just one man, one of a hundred thousand whose stories have all but vanished. He was not an ace. He did not take the fight to Berlin with Bomber Command. He was not mentioned in despatches. But Harold Bernard Blakey was the very backbone of England’s war effort, the quiet man with an open heart who did his duty. The power of Harry Blakey’s life lies within these photos. In general they tell the story of every man who did his duty, but in particular, they tell the story of the many who came from Great Britain and, in Canada, saw the opportunity, the open minds and open skies of the greatest nation on earth. Harry Blakey, like Archie Pennie, Bunny McLarty and Harry Hannah, felt welcome and saw their futures played out upon the Canadian landscape.
When 21-year-old Harry Blakey joined the Royal Air Force at the beginning of the Second World War, he was inducted, trained and sent to learn his radio technician trade at No. 10 Service Flying Training School at the Royal Air Force airfield at Ternhill in Shropshire, England. He had no notion of Canada or Saskatchewan, a word he likely could not pronounce in the summer of 1940. In the fall of 1940, orders came to pack up No. 10—its equipment, tools, administration and airmen—and move the whole kit and caboodle by ship, through the U-boat infested waters of the Atlantic to Canada... to, what was it?... Sa-ska-cha-wan? And good Lord... some godforsaken wheat town called Moose Jaw! Can you believe it?
When they got there, at this brand spanking new base on the Canadian prairie, the average temperature was well below zero Fahrenheit. The school set up shop after being renamed No. 32 Service Flying Training School and took receipt of their brand new North American NA-66 Harvard IIs. Shortly after that, young Leading Aircraftmen from England began arriving by train in Moose Jaw, after crossing the Atlantic gauntlet—ready to begin their advanced service flying training. Of these sons of Great Britain, most would earn their wings, a few would die trying, many would perish on operations, some would endure prison, all would endure deprivation of some sort, many would survive and some, like Harry Blakey, would love their time in Moose Jaw so much that they would return to become citizens of Canada.
After Harry’s time with No. 10 and No. 32 SFTS, he finally made it to the fight, in one of the most exotic theatres of operation—Burma. There is not much here on that time, but then, this is about Harry’s time in Canada and why he returned. I will let Bob Blakey finish Harry’s story
“After the war, Harry returned to civilian life in England and opened up a radio repair shop in Preston. However, he soon became disillusioned with postwar Britain. He missed the friends he had made in Saskatchewan and saw more job opportunities there. In 1947, he and Jenny and the girls became immigrants to Canada, and never left. He and Jenny had two more children – both boys – Charles and Raymond.
Harry was always close to his next-youngest brother Robert (my father, a British Army veteran), so he persuaded our family to leave England and immigrate to Canada, which we did in the early 1950s. I was five when I arrived in 1952, and like my cousins, have remained a Canadian. With encouragement from my uncle and my father, I spent four years in the Royal Canadian Air Cadets, as did my cousin Charles (Chuck). We became very familiar with that RCAF base that Harry first saw in 1941.
As a career, Harry repaired radios (and, later, TV sets) for Eaton’s in Moose Jaw. Except for a couple of years in Lethbridge, working for Canadian Pacific Air, he stayed in Moose Jaw. His final work before retiring was teaching electronics at the Saskatchewan Technical Institute in the city.
Photography was such a strong interest for Harry, he shot thousands of photos. His children and relatives are grateful that he also preserved the negatives. He always had a black-and-white darkroom in his basement and in his final years did his own colour-film processing and printing as well. For several years after retirement, he did freelance photography work, including weddings.
Throughout his adult life, Harry was active in veterans’ groups, especially the Army, Navy and Air Force (ANAF) Veterans Association. He got involved in lobbying the federal government for better benefits for vets. His whole life he socialized with Second World War veterans and always retained ties with the RCAF base nearby.
In February 1979, Harry died of a heart attack. He was 60. An honour guard consisting of ANAF vets and Legion members attended the funeral and organized the reception.”
Without men like Harry, much of the simple things, the things we take for granted, from those days would slide easily behind the forgotten veils of history.
Harry Blakey, Prestonian turned Moose Javian, Englander turned Canadian, the airman turned citizen, this is for you... your photos for the wide world to finally see.