Wings Over Wallaceburg celebrates history of Wallaceburg Airport

WALLACEBURG – The little known aviation history of this community on the north edge of Chatham-Kent increased over the weekend.

Hundreds of people came out to Wings Over Wallaceburg to celebrate the former Wallaceburg Airport with an event held Friday and Saturday at the Wallaceburg and District Museum.

Back in 1959, local home builder Robert Warwick teamed up with his friend Albert DeRidder to build an airport on a farm field DeRidder owned off Forhan Street, just outside the town limits.

Warwick teamed up with Murray Ward of Chatham to create Seneca Air Services, which soon became a driving business at the airport.

Many people learned to fly out of the Wallaceburg Airport, including Isabelle Warwick, wife of Robert Warwick, becoming the first female pilot to graduate from Seneca Air Services.

Isabelle Warwick, 95, recalled doing the books for the business and operating the driving restaurant at the airport when she decided to learn to fly.

“They wouldn’t pay me,” she said. “The only way I could get payment was to take flying lessons.”

Although she quickly became skilled at piloting a plane, Warwick said it took quite a while to officially earn her pilot’s licence, “because I didn’t want to do that solo (flight).

“I had kids at home and I had no business up there by myself flying around,” she added.

Warwick’s son, Bruce Warwick, remembers being 12 or 13 when his mother took him up for flights in a Piper Colt aircraft.

He said his mother went on to earn his commercial licence, float license and night-rating as a pilot. He added Isabelle learned to fly on an Aeronca Champ, which is tail wheel airplane plane before flying a Piper Colt, with a tricycle landing gear.

Bruce Warwick, who also earned his pilot’s license at Seneca Air Services, said his mother last flew his airplane a few years ago.

When asked she has enjoyed about flying, Isabelle Warwick said, “Just looking down at all the beauty that was underneath you.”

Many people earned their wings at Seneca Air Services.

Roy Sager recalls being a 17-year-old high school student when he went to the Wallaceburg Airport and introduced himself to co-owner Bob Warwick.

Sager said they went up for about 20 minute “familiarization flight” that day.

“I came back regularly and worked until I got my private license and went on and worked on my commercial and night rating and twin rating,” he said

Sager said he eventually got his instructors rating and went to work at the Sarnia Airport for a year-and-a-half before heading overseas to work as a commercial pilot in England.

He worked for small airline called Skyways Coach Air, which primarily bussed passengers from London to the south coast of England. He added there was a little airport in the south of England that the airline flew passengers to Beauvais, France, which was about 30 kilometers from Paris.

“We had 27 round trips a day from London to Paris.”

Sager credits the skills acquired on the short 1,550-foot grass runway at the Wallaceburg Airport for serving him well as a pilot.

“It was a great place to learn to fly, because you learned on a short runway,” he said. “You knew where you had to touch down and it did give you more skill.”

He added it required being more precise on approaches to the runway and all the runway was used on takeoff.

Those attending Wings of Wallaceburg were able to experience what it was like to fly in and out of the former airport thanks to a computer flight simulation created by Grant Smith.

Smith, who has built simulations for the Canadian Warplane Heritage Museum in Hamilton, as well as several museums across Canada, only learned about the Wallaceburg Airport when he was asked to create a simulation.

“It’s similar to the airport I that learned to fly from, it’s a small country airport with a grass strip,” Smith said, adding it also had the same aircraft.

His simulation the facility along with photographs and some old film is all that is left of the airport that accidentally caught on fire in 1966 when a plumber was working the bathroom, which destroyed the terminal building, classroom and full-service restaurant.

Bruce Warwick wonders what the little airport could have evolved into if it wasn’t destroyed by fire.

“This school was always training about 20 to 25 to 30 people all the time,” he said.

A significant revenue generator for the airport was moving parts for local manufacturers, he added.

He said they bought twin engine airplanes to transport parts for the Ford Motor Company, the glass factory, brass factory, North American Plastics into the United States.

His father and Ward approached the Wallaceburg council at the time stating they would be willing to rebuild, but wanted some financial assistance, but were turned down.

Warwick said they went on to operate the airports in Chatham and Sarnia, which continue to exist, and the Wallaceburg Airport went back to being a wheat field.