Closing Ceremonies at Uplands
-Promise to be Memorable Events
(reprinted from the 22 March 1945 issue of The Uplands News)
No, 2 Service Flying Training School at Uplands has had, since its opening in 1940, a memorable history in the British
Commonwealth Air Training Plan. The closing ceremonies promise to be equally memorable.
At this station on March 29th, the British Commonwealth Air Training Plan will be officially closed. To mark the event, there will be a ceremonial parade, which will probably be attended by His Excellency, the Governor-General, Prime Minister Mackenzie King, the Minister of National Defence for Air, High Commissioners for Great Britain, Australia and New Zealand, representatives of most of the foreign embassies and legations in Ottawa, as well as many other special guests.
This parade is open to service personnel and the general public, and refreshments will be served afterwards in No. 4 Hangar. In this hangar will be a display consisting of photographs showing the general history* of the British Commonwealth Air Training Plan and its various activities, a Link Trainer, our sectionalized Harvard, and many other items of general interest.
No doubt you’ll have noticed by this time, a group of 100 airmen drilling around the station, These men will form the Governor General’s Guard of Honor in tho closing ceremonies.
And before the official closing time of the station arrives, there will be–and already have been–a number of special events, sufficient to suit the varied tastes of almost everyone.
So far there have been the Sergeants’ Mess Dance, the Officer’s Mess Dance, the W.D. Dance, the Airmen’s Smoker and the big Maintenance Wing Farewell Party. At the Officer’s Dance we had the honor of entertaining some former members, notably including G/C W.R. Kingsland and G/C W.R. (Iron Bill) MacBrien, two former commanding officers at Uplands.
The Station Dance takes place on Friday. And next Sunday there will be special Church Parades for all R.C., Protestant and Hebrew personnel.
Tho Wings Dinner and Dance of Classes 121 and 122 will be held on March 26th, and these two classes will hold their ‘Wings Parade on March 28th. Since it is unusual for two courses to graduate together, the dinner will be held in the sergeants’ side of the mess, while the Dance will take place in the Drill Hall, It should be a real bang-up affair.
* history may not be the actual word used in this paragraph, the copy of the newsletter this was Optical Character Recognitioned from has only a few pixels of the original word. I will attach a copy of the original paragraph below, feel free to chime in on what this word was.
