Canada’s newest aviation museum is taking shape in Winnipeg and it promises to hold some of the most important links to Canada’s rich aviation heritage. For a couple of years, volunteers and staff have been assembling a collection of 90 aircraft and renovating a hangar at Winnipeg’s James C. Richardson International Airport. All of the aircraft are now in the museum and crews are working on the 16 main exhibit areas. The facility is expected to open to the public in the spring of 2022.
“We started with a small group of visionaries and are now proud to have one of the largest aviation heritage collections in Canada,” the museum says on its Web site. The museum’s collection emphasizes the history of aviation on the Prairies and the North, including military heritage. Many of the aircraft in the collection are priceless examples of early bush planes that helped open up the country and established the aviation network that serves the vast territory today. The museum also houses tens of thousands of artefacts, documents and photos.