HMCS Venture graduate retired Capt(N) Wilf Lund displays the Venture Book of Remembrance in the Welland Room at Work Point. Photo by Peter Mallett, Lookout Newspaper
Peter Mallett, Staff Writer ~
An unpretentious black, hard-covered book resides in a glass display case in the Welland Room at the Naval Officer Training Centre’s Kingsmill Building.
Etched in gold and white letters on the cover it reads: HMCS Venture, In Remembrance.
The book has 13 pages, each bearing the name of a pilot lost in the line of duty. These are 12 Venture graduates and one staff officer.
The original was a moldy, moth-eaten item forgotten and buried in storage after the closing of Venture decades ago. It contained only eight names and had not been updated since 1968 when the original HMCS Venture closed.
Discovered by Retired Captain (Navy) Ken Scott, the Collier Simulator Manager, in 1999, it was eventually recreated and updated by Retired Captain (Navy) Wilf Lund, HMCS Venture Association historian.
“Having a Remembrance Book that remembers our fallen brothers is very important to us,” says Lund. “There is a cost of serving, even in peacetime there is a cost of serving.”
A year ahead of Venture’s 2009 class reunion, Lund began piecing together the book by reviewing official records and consulting classmates and other Venture pilots close to 13 fallen military members.
His intent was to confirm the data on the original eight and to identity any other Venture graduates killed in the line of duty since 1968.
The job of identifying the fallen and retrieving accurate information on the individual crashes was not an easy one. The task was complicated as naval pilots were dispersed throughout Air Command after integration. But he applied strict historical research procedures to sift the evidence and remained objective in his research. In many cases there was conflicting anecdotal evidence provided and even some discrepancies found in documentation.
“This was the hardest job I ever did as a historian,” he says. “Not only because I had to do detailed and meticulous research on every person, consulting records and people close to each pilot to ensure the information was accurate, but also because two of the 13 pilots in this book were former classmates and close friends of mine.”
THE LOST ONES
The two classmates were SLt Al Alltree and Major Ross Hawkes, who both died in horrific crashes. SLt Alltree died in 1964 near Eureka, California, when a U.S. Coast Guard helicopter he was co-piloting crashed into the side of a mountain during a search and rescue operation killing everyone on board.
Maj Ross Hawkes, a maritime patrol pilot, was severely burned and died a day later in hospital in March 1977 after an Argus marine reconnaissance plane, in which he was riding as a crew auditor, suffered a mechanical failure on landing and exploded into flames on the runway at CFB Summerside, PEI.
Lund can still remember the day he heard about SLt Alltree, comparing it to a moment when you remembered exactly what you were doing when it happened. Lund heard about the crash that killed SLt Alltree on a local radio broadcast, just prior to heading out on a date with his fiancée.
He says Maj Hawkes was the most difficult death to research because he had met with him by chance a year prior to his death. Eight years later he met his widow and children. The daughter had a striking resemblance to her father, and years later she contacted Lund wanting to know more about him because she was an infant when he was killed.
Despite bringing back painful memories, Lund says completing the Book of Remembrance was highly rewarding.
Lund graduated from Venture in 1961 and had a 35-year career in Canada’s navy, commanding warships and submarines. He says his fallen classmates need to be remembered by future generations of sailors because they bravely served their country and died far too early in life.
For more about HMCS Venture visit the Venture Association’s website www.hmcsventure.com.
