2024 CAC Spring Outing to the Canadian Warplane Heritage Museum

It was a wet start to our annual Citroën Autoclub Canada spring outing on May 25, but that didn’t deter some members from participating and kudos to them! Besides, the rain subsided by 1 PM and the drive home gave everyone ample opportunity to dry out our cars.

This year we revisited the Canadian Warplane Heritage Museum in Hamilton, ON where over 40 aircraft now reside including one of 2 flying Avro Lancaster bombers from WWII. In the summer of 2014, the Museum undertook one of its biggest ventures, flying the Lancaster across the Atlantic to England to join the RAF Battle of Britain Memorial Flight’s Lancaster for a two month tour. The tour of two Lancasters was witnessed by millions of people throughout England as well as Scotland, Northern Ireland and the Channel Islands. The entire trip was filmed for a documentary, “Reunion of Giants”, that was released on DVD. We arranged for guide tours splitting our 30 people into 2 groups.

View a photo galley of the event here: https://flic.kr/s/aHBqjBs5MU

We began the day at McDonalds — 590 Martin Street, Milton, ON L9T 3H6 [Hwy 25 just south of the 401]. After coffee and muffins we took a 90 minute drive on the scenic backroads of the Niagara escarpment going from Milton to Ancaster. From there it was short jaunt on a country road to the museum.

One of our new Club members, Clayton Seams who has yet to own a Citroën managed to attend the outing in his Ford Maverick. And since Clayton’s girlfriend Anais, who was born in France but has never been in a 2CV, got her wish to ride with John Meurs in his 2CV. We had a number of other guests on the trip; Clayton’s friend Nick Maronese drove his 1971 Plymouth Valiant along with 2 friends. Roland Voegele brought along his brother and sister visiting from Germany. And Eric Haugen had 3 friends accompany him in his DS23.

Upon arrival, we posed the Citroens and their owners by the CF-104 Starfighter pointed to the sky just outside the museum. Along with the admiring crowd, we met our 2 tour guides , Mike and Lee , who we had arranged to take us around the museum, splitting our 30 people into 2 groups, to learn about the history and features the aircraft on display. A full list and specs of the museum’s aircraft can be found here: https://www.warplane.com/aircraft/collection.aspx. (And if you would like to see an interesting visualization as to the speed of WWII aircraft, check out this link: https://biggeekdad.com/2024/05/the-speed-of-world-war-two-aircraft/.)

We first visited the museum on our spring outing back in 2004. (You can read about that here: https://citroenvie.com/cac-2004-hamilton-spring-outing-june-5-2004/).

Despite a soggy beginning to the day, the outing turned out to be both a fun-filled and educational event.