Saving the Canso - Edmonton Journal/Calgary Herald
by Doug Roy on 04/23/10
The adventure started in late 2006. Wieben was in Didsbury visiting his youngest son when they decided to take a visit to the Red Deer airport.
On the tarmac were three Cansos belonging to Buffalo Airways, a company that provides passenger, cargo and other air services primarily in the Northwest Territories. The Cansos were being used as water bombers to fight forest fires.
The caretaker allowed Wieben a closer look at the old planes and told him they were up for sale because the federal government had decided to give the water bombing contracts to newer aircraft. At least two of the Cansos were headed for new owners in the United States.
Wieben knew something of the Cansos' role in the Second World War. He also figured that of the several hundred that had been built in Canada, few were likely still around.
"I thought it was a shame that these historic airplanes were being sold outside the country. I stopped in to see (Buffalo Airways owner) Joe McBryan a little later and I was giving him static about it. I told him he should keep one as a heritage airplane."
McBryan had his own idea. He told Wieben that if he wanted to save a Canso, there was one sitting by itself in the Far North.
Canso 11094, as it was known during the war, was built in 1943 and often flew between Canada's East Coast and Iceland on submarine hunting patrols.
After the war, it was converted into a water bomber and went through a few owners before Buffalo Airways purchased it for firefighting duty in the Northwest Territories.
The plane's service ended abruptly in 2001. Based in Inuvik, the plane was conducting a training exercise picking up water from nearby Sitidgi Lake when something went wrong. The aircraft dug its nose into the water, damaging the front wheel well and right wing. It sank before the crew could save it.
Deciding it would be too costly to retrieve and repair the plane, the company instead dragged it to the northeast shore so they could remove its valuable equipment, including the engines, propellers and some of the instruments. The rest of the aircraft remained on the side of the lake, abandoned in the cold.
"I made a deal with McBryan to buy the plane 'as is, where is' for a relatively small amount of money," Wieben says. "That's where it started, and then we had to figure out how we were going to move 15,000 pounds (6,818 kilograms) of Canso out of the bush."
Read more: http://www.calgaryherald.com/SALVAGING+HISTORY/2593025/story.html#ixzz0lz8VvX9J
