This might not be easy to discover, but I have always been puzzled by the deployment of all of Canada's fighter aircraft and half of it's bomber force to Calgary in 1938, into a secure and guarded location.
Is it possible this was a response to the actions then being taken or proposed by the Social Credit government of William Aberhart?
Rough time line.
March 31, 1931 - RCAF Stations in Western Provinces reduced to 'Care and Maintenance' status following transfer of responsibility for Natural Resources to provinces, including RCAF Station High River, Alberta.
August 22, 1935 - Social Credit is elected in Alberta.
September 11, 1936 - Department of National Defence announces that a hangar and an airfield will be built in the Sarcee Military Camp (later Currie Barracks).
March 1937 - John Bowen declared Lt Governor of Alberta.
May 1937 - Lt Gov Bowen refuses to grant Royal Assent to bills that would give control of banks to the Province, and another that would put reporting in the press under the control of the Provincial government, believing they were unconstitutional, requesting they be reviewed first.
August 1937 - Provincial Government begins retaliating against position of Lt Governor, stripping his budget, services, etc, and at one point trying to eliminate his position.
July 1938 - Privy Council upholds decisions of Supreme Court that proposed laws are invalid.
Late August, early September 1938, #1(F) Squadron (6 Siskin fighters) and #3(B) Squadron (8 Wapiti aircraft) relocate from Ontario to Calgary, to the airfield built inside the Sarcee Military Camp. This is planned, but by co-incidence occurs during the Munich Crisis in Europe. In November #6(TB) Squadron also re-locates from Trenton to Jericho Beach in British Columbia. In 1939 Canada receives it's first British built Hurricane fighters, in Vancouver via the Panama Canal, and for deployment to Calgary.
The question is, why did the RCAF decide to base most of it's actual military assets in Western Canada, at time of political turmoil and threat of war breaking out, and was this due to the activities of the Social Credit in Alberta, and possibly the rise of the CCF?
The actions and events around the Social Credit government at the time were international news, and closely followed in the USA, for example. The resistance of Alberta daily and weekly newspapers to government demands that they reveal sources of their news stories, for example, led to the award of a Pulitzer Prize to those papers collectively, the only one ever awarded outside of the USA.
Is there any record of why these decisions were made to deploy the aircraft to Alberta, to an airfield within a military camp?
Of course in September of 1939, between the declaration of War by England, and Canada's declaration a week later, the Hurricanes in Calgary and storage at Vancouver were shipped to Halifax, and the seven surviving Wapitis flew across Canada to the Atlantic Coast as well, leaving only the Shark aircraft in BC, but that is another story.
Paul Squires
Wetaskiwin
Deployment of RCAF Fighters and Bombeers to Calgary 1938
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