Video by Alex Baumgartner
Multimedia by Matthew Meyer
By Patricia Dolor
The Canadian Warplane Heritage Museum had its first Remembrance Day ceremony in 1997. To commemorate Remembrance Day this year, the ceremony was live-streamed online without an in-person audience, due to COVID-19 restrictions.
The museum is closed to the public, with no veterans in live attendance either.
Traditionally, the event would take place at the museum itself in Mount Hope, Ontario.
The livestream, hosted by CHCH TV, had over 1,400 people tuned in to watch the ceremony take place. At 11am on November 11, 2020 – they did a flyover with the Avro Lancaster, a plane from World War II.
The Avro Lancaster in the Warplane Museum is one of the only two in the world to remain airworthy.
This year’s ceremony also included taped footage of veterans sharing their personal stories about their time in the war.
“This year, we’ve taken a different approach to it because there is not an audience which was part of the service. We’ve gone and pre-recorded a couple of interviews with some of these veterans so that they’re included in the service,” says Canadian Warplane Heritage Museum’s marketing manager, Al Mickeloff.
The museum first opened in 1972 and since then has provided education about aircraft that were flown by Canadians and the Canadian military services from the beginning of World War II to the present.
In this interactive timeline, the history of the museum is explained.
Timeline: History of the Canadian Warplane Heritage Museum. Text continues after interactive.
Although the ceremony had to change this year, it successfully commemorated Remembrance Day, while providing safety and comfort for those who were planning to attend. Due to COVID-19, a lot of varied events had to switch to online streaming, but nonetheless, the impact is the same.
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