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CYOO

Oshawa Executive Airport, Oshawa, Ontario

Long before the runways, this land was a crossing place between the lake and the north. Then it was a farm, and then a wartime school where about 2,500 young pilots learned to fly. Here's how it became the airport it is today.

  1. Before 1700Wendat, Haudenosaunee and Anishinaabe lands

    The carrying place

    The ancestral Wendat lived along the north shore of Lake Ontario, from the Rouge River to Prince Edward County. Artifacts from two sites in Oshawa show Wendat people living here around 1400 to 1450, and possibly as early as the late 1300s. They later moved northwest, toward the lands south of Georgian Bay.

    The Haudenosaunee came north across the lake. By 1700 the Mississauga (Michi Saagiig) Anishinaabeg, part of the wider Ojibway Nation, had moved south from the Mississagi River area. Together with the Ojibway, they pushed the Haudenosaunee off the north shore and made it their home.

    Through this country ran the Scugog Carrying Place, an ancient north–south route between Lake Ontario and Lake Scugog. Travellers paddled up Oshawa Creek or Harmony Creek as far as the water allowed, then carried their canoes overland. The two branches met near Columbus. The name Oshawa is believed to come from that journey: "that point at the crossing of the stream where the canoe was exchanged for the trail."

  2. 1787 to 2018Treaties

    Promises on paper

    In 1787 the British negotiated the "Gunshot Treaty" (the Johnson-Butler Purchase), named for land reaching as far back from the lake as a gunshot could be heard. Its terms were unclear and inconsistent, and it stood for 136 years.

    The Williams Treaties of 1923 followed investigations that found the Mississauga and Chippewa had never given up their hunting and fishing rights. Those treaties created injustices of their own. In 2018, after legal action by the Williams Treaties First Nations, Canada and Ontario apologized and reached a settlement that included compensation, recognition of harvesting rights and additional reserve lands.

    CYOO sits on the treaty lands and territory of the Mississaugas of Scugog Island First Nation and the other Williams Treaties First Nations.

  3. Before 1940East Whitby Township

    A farm on Lot 15

    Before the airport, this was farmland in East Whitby Township. The heart of today's airfield, Lot 15 in Concession 3, held farm buildings, a cultivated field and two small hills.

    In the fall of 1940 the earth movers arrived. They knocked down the farm buildings and levelled the hills and the field. The federal government finalized the expropriation of Lot 15 on March 20, 1941, by which time new buildings were already going up. More expropriations and purchases followed, until the site reached its present 490.95 acres.

  4. 1939 to 1941Building the school

    Oshawa answers the call

    On December 17, 1939, Britain, Canada, Australia and New Zealand signed the British Commonwealth Air Training Plan. Canada would become the training ground for tens of thousands of Allied aircrew.

    Oshawa wanted a school. Businessman Alexander G. Storie organized the Ontario County Flying Training School with George Hart, Haydon McDonald, Samuel Trees and T.K. Creighton. Charles Robson led the fundraising, and the Brantford and Kingston flying clubs each put in $5,000. Together the clubs established No. 20 Elementary Flying Training School, with Robson as its first manager.

    Crews worked through the winter of 1940–41 on three hard-surfaced runways, each about 800 m long and 46 m wide. At the time, many training fields were still grass.

  5. 1941 to 1944RCAF Station Oshawa

    No. 20 Elementary Flying Training School

    The first aircraft arrived in June 1941. Students flew yellow de Havilland Tiger Moths with civilian instructors from the Oshawa, Kingston and Brant-Norfolk flying clubs. They practised circuits, stalls, spins and forced landings, and made the first solos that sent them on to service flying schools. A relief field at Whitby took the overflow.

    About 2,400 to 2,500 student pilots completed their training here, by the estimate on the 1992 memorial. In 1944 the school won the "Cock of the Walk" trophy. The last class graduated in November 1944, and the school closed that December.

    Not everyone came home from training. RCAF records list Sgt John Clifford Hammond and Edward Voliantine McGuire (April 21, 1942), Sgt Roy Earnest Farnam (June 12, 1942), LAC Truman De Witt Peale (August 11, 1942) and LAC Donald James Folkard (March 15, 1944). That list may be incomplete.

  6. 1945 to 1947From air force to town

    The field stays open

    The RCAF closed the station in the spring of 1945 and handed it to the Department of Transport. The Oshawa flying club opened on September 15, 1945, leasing the old school buildings for $1 a year plus upkeep. In 1947 the Town of Oshawa took over the airport.

  7. TodayOshawa Executive Airport

    Still a place for first solos

    The City of Oshawa still owns the airport, and new pilots still learn to fly here. The Oshawa Military and Industrial Museum and the Robert Stuart Aviation Museum are on the field. On Stevenson Road North, an Argus propeller blade erected by the City in 1992 honours the people who trained here. A plaque unveiled in 1999 marks the BCATP airfield as a national civil engineering historic site.

Sources

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