Civilian Forces
A plumber, not a pilot, my family was transferred to MH.
In this world of easy access to information – this trend wasn’t always so readily available. Before the world wide web was populated, that daunting set of encyclopedias was where I found my information. Britannica, Americana and Collier’s Encyclopedias were the three major English-language general knowledge encyclopedias I had access to in my school years. Unfortunately, not all the questions I had could be answered within those pages. “What does your dad do?” An elementary school question on many occasions with the direction to draw a picture of my dad at work. I learned my dad was a plumber and he worked at the “base”. How does a child draw that?! I wasn’t sure what a plumber did and I didn’t know what the base was in my early school years. When I figured out what to do with a dictionary, many of my queries were answered by definition, noun, verb or adjective. Understanding what a plumber did was a bit of a shock, but over the years I learned to appreciate all he did to keep the water running or flushing. The “base” was a mystery for many years as I must have been ten years old before I realized my dad worked at CFB Gimli. I had to ask what the CFB meant – of course it meant “Canadian Forces Base”. We were not a military family. My dad was a civilian employee, the maintenance plumber at the base, looking after all the buildings and PMQ. There was nowhere I could look up what PMQ was but I tended take more interest and ask more questions by junior high school. Private Military Quarters became a common term of reference where household plumbing was concerned. Only after CFB Gimli closed in 1971 and my dad was transferred to CFB Suffield in 1972 did I do some research on why my family was uprooted and moved out west. September 1946 the British Commonwealth Air Training established No. 18 Service Flying Training School. By 1950 jet aircraft training was added. From 1943 to 1968 it was known as RCAF Station Gimli. From 1968 to 1971 it was known as CFB Gimli – the only name I knew but growing up there, it was just the “base”. My dad worked there as a maintenance plumber/pipefitter for over ten years, then had a similar position at CFB Suffield for a number of years. On June 29th, 1971 a Silver Star T-33 jet fighter was presented to the town by the CFB to commemorate many years of cooperation and friendship. The monument is known as the CFB Gimli Memorial, now a designated historic site in Manitoba. CFB Suffield has hosted the largest live-fire training exercises in Canada since 1972. The base operates its own sewage and water treatment systems, landfill and fire services to residents and rural neighbors. It makes sense my dad’s skills were required at CFB Suffield and my family moved from Gimli, MB to Medicine Hat, AB. In my eyes, my dad was a superhero. I am sure he could a been a pilot and a plumber. I probably could have drawn an airplane in elementary school. As for the Gimli Glider Air Canada Boeing 767 aircraft story – perhaps another time.
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