Sunday, November 15, 2015

Cessna 172 heads to aviation museum in Sault Ste. Marie

Wayne Roulston is shown Friday with his late father's 1966 Cessna 172, which is on its way to the Canadian Bushplane Heritage Centre in Sault Ste. Marie. 



As the book closes on a family's link to a beloved airplane, a new chapter in the aircraft's story is set to begin in an aviation museum in Sault Ste. Marie.

A 1966 Cessna 172 owned for nearly five decades by Milverton's Tom Roulston was being readied by volunteers from the museum for a trailered drive from Stratford municipal airport on Friday to the Canadian Bushplane Heritage Center eight hours north.

It was a bittersweet moment for Wayne Roulston--son of the plane's former owner, the late Tom Roulston--who is partnering with the museum to display the Cessna in the exhibit center on the St. Mary's River in the northern Ontario city.

As he reflected on his dad's love of flying and the role it played in their family's upbringing, Roulston said he also looked forward to the plane's enduring presence at the museum.

"My father's name is going to be attached to it for as long as it exists, and that's the point behind the whole thing," he said.

For their part, two representatives of the museum--who were busy for hours getting the plane prepared for its journey--could not have been happier.

"We are extremely appreciative," said Kim Park, one of the Heritage Centre's directors.

"We're going to get it home, put it back together, and get it all cleaned up.

"We are a museum that allows people to engage with our products. So, people will be able to come up and touch the airplane, and sit in it, and see how all the different functions operate."

The mint-condition Cessna is the first of its kind to go on display at the museum (www.bushplane.com).

Many of the musuem's existing displays focus on the vital role in the north played by bushplanes, particularly in the fight against forest fires.

And that's fitting, because the museum once was the site of the Ontario Provincial Air Service, created in the late 1920s, which later became the Ontario Ministry of Natural Resources' fire and aviation division.

Planes built by iconic firms like Vickers, Grumman, de Havilland and Fairchild are among the nearly 30 craft on site, each displayed with background information on the roles they played in areas including aerial surveying and photography, transport, search-and-rescue and fire fighting.

Particularly noteworthy, said past president George Mersereau, is the collection's Canadair CL-215, an amphibious waterbombing workhorse that could scoop a payload of about 5,500 litres from a lake in just 10 seconds.

Planes manufactured by the Cessna Aircraft Company served a much different purpose in the north, said both Mersereau and Park.

In a role they continue to perform, the aircraft helped get hunters and fishers to remote northern lodges that offered no access by road, they said. As such, they were key to the livelihood of commercial lodge operators.

"The Cessna corporation really made flying accessible to the average working person," Park said.

"This particular aircraft will be the first one in our Cessna story."

The plane they'll be showcasing was a common site at the Roulston home for many years along Highway 119 on the south entrance to the village of Milverton.

Tom and his wife, Dorothy, who lives now at Knollcrest Lodge in Milverton, often could be seen heading off on one of their regular morning flights from their nearby airstrip for a lunch at nearby locales like Goderich, Wiarton, Kincardine and Hanover.

"They went to a lot of different places," recalled Wayne, "just on a whim, at the drop of a hat."

They continued that routine even as Tom entered his 80s, his son said. In fact, his dad, who died three years ago at age 95, continued to fly well into his twilight years.

Wayne, 71, can relate to his father's lifelong attraction to flight. Though he no longer pilots an aircraft himself, he said he enjoyed the activity for many years, including many trips in his dad's Cessna.

His younger sister Lisa and late brother Mike, in fact, "basically grew up" in the plane, he added.

He remembered, too, his brother Doug accompanying their dad on day trips, including a flight to Ottawa for a day of whitewater rafting.

"I was eight years old when I first started getting involved in flying," Wayne remembered.

"I've been doing it all my life. It's just something that gets in your blood, I guess."

- Source:  http://www.stratfordbeaconherald.com

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