Commonwealth Air Training Plan Museum & RCAF WWII Memorial
Dedicated to the plan for training air force personnel for the Commonwealth in the Second World War
The past few years, a video reviewing the museum’s activities over the previous year has been created, and the 2025 version is now available. You can view it – and many other museum videos on our YouTube channel!
2025 was an exciting year: a new Director General, acquiring a Norseman and a Stearman, a huge bequest, and much more! Watch the video to see it all.
When Canada was called upon, we stepped up. Through the British Commonwealth Air Training Plan, communities across this country trained 220,000 personnel and helped shape the outcome of the Second World War. Small towns across Canada made a big impact.
That spirit still guides us at the Commonwealth Air Training Plan Museum (CATPM).
This year, our Director General participated in UNESCO’s global Live Museum training – joining museum and heritage professionals from around the world to explore how museums can foster dialogue across cultures. From Brandon, Manitoba, we stood shoulder to shoulder with institutions including the Grand Egyptian Museum, sharing ideas about how heritage can connect people across borders.
We are a focused, independent museum telling one chapter of Canada’s story – but it is a chapter that changed the world.
Dialogue across cultures: Museum and heritage professionals worldwide
Little hangar. Global conversation.
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Commonwealth Air Training Plan Museum Issues NRFP for Major Redevelopment of Historic WWII Hangar and Aviation Campus
Brandon, Manitoba — [F] — The Commonwealth Air Training Plan Museum (CATPM) has officially issued a Negotiated Request for Proposals (NRFP) for Design-Build services supporting a major redevelopment of its historic aviation site located at Brandon Municipal Airport.
The project represents a significant step forward in safeguarding one of Canada’s most important surviving Second World War aviation training facilities while preparing the Museum to meet growing operational, preservation, and visitor needs.
CATPM operates within an original 1941 British Commonwealth Air Training Plan (BCATP) hangar- one of the few remaining wartime training hangars of its kind still in active public use. After more than eight decades of service, the structure now requires substantial structural remediation, modernization, and accessibility upgrades to ensure its long-term preservation and safe public use.
The NRFP invites qualified Design-Build teams to develop and evaluate two comprehensive redevelopment pathways. These include stabilization and repair of the original hangar, and/or construction of a new hangar-style facility to support expanded museum operations, aircraft storage, collections care, and public programming.
“This is a transformational moment for the Museum,” said Zoe McQuinn, Director General of the Commonwealth Air Training Plan Museum. “We are not simply repairing a building, we are securing the future of a nationally significant heritage site, preserving the legacy of those who trained and served here, and building the infrastructure needed to support the next generation of visitors, researchers, and community engagement.”
The redevelopment project is expected to address structural stabilization, code compliance, accessibility, operational capacity, and long-term sustainability, while safeguarding irreplaceable aviation artifacts and collections. The work will take place on an active airfield and within a functioning museum environment, requiring specialized expertise in heritage structures and complex public facilities.
CATPM anticipates the project will also generate regional economic activity and support the continued growth of the museum as a cultural, educational, and tourism destination in western Manitoba.
Qualified proponents are invited to review the full NRFP and submission requirements through the designated procurement portal.
Submission deadline: March 30, 2026
Project location: Commonwealth Air Training Plan Museum, Brandon Municipal Airport
NRFP access: Catpm Redevelopment Project – Design-build Services – 2026 | MERX
About the Commonwealth Air Training Plan Museum
The Commonwealth Air Training Plan Museum is a nationally recognized aviation heritage institution dedicated to preserving and sharing the history of the British Commonwealth Air Training Plan and the contributions of Canadians and Commonwealth personnel during the Second World War. Located on an active airfield in Brandon, Manitoba, the Museum houses aircraft, artifacts, archives, and exhibits that honour the more than 130,000 aircrew trained across Canada as part of the largest aviation training program in history.
Media Contact:
Zoe McQuinn
Director General
Commonwealth Air Training Plan Museum
DirectorGeneral@CATPM.onmicrosoft.com
204-727-2444
When the previous long time editor of our newsletter, Contact!, passed away, the newsletter faded. Greg Sigurdson had looked after Contact! for many years, putting out interesting content. Good news is that Contact is being resurrected in digital form. You can click here to see the latest issue, and this link will take you to the Contact archives – new issues will be added here as they are published, so bookmark this page!.
This post was submitted by Rory M., one of our summer students, who continues his association with the museum even as he is back attending classes at Brandon University.
In the museum workshop, beneath the original WWII era chalkboard artifact created by Greenway school in Winnipeg, lies the in progress fuselage of an aircraft known as the Fairey Battle – carefully assembled by thousands of hours of work by dedicated volunteers at the CATPM. While for many, the Battle is not an aircraft associated with WWII such as the sleek Spitfire, reliable Tiger Moth, or imposing Lancaster; the aircraft has an interesting history, and today it is one example of living history at the CATPM.
Beginning its service in the Royal Air Force in the late 1930s, the Fairey Battle was a hallmark of a modern transition of new aeronautic innovations into the war. A single engine, all metal light bomber powered by the Rolls-Royce Merlin Engine (which would be used in aircraft such as the Hawker Hurricane, the Spitfire, Lancaster, and Mosquito), the Fairey Battle was designed for daylight bombing with a crew of three, however functionally lacking the requirements of speed, altitude, and general power.
The hope for this aircraft to be successful was soon shattered in combat over France in 1939-1940, in which the aircraft suffered devastating losses. Slow compared to many developing enemy fighters, the aircraft lacked basic protections for even low-risk attacks. Though hopes were high for this aircraft, it was quickly withdrawn from combat.
However, the story of the Fairey Battle was far from over. As the British Commonwealth Air Training Plan began to sprout across Canada in schools such as #12 SFTS in Brandon, nearly 740 of these aircraft were sent to schools to be re-utilized as trainers. Utilized for the training of navigators, pilots, gunners, and bombers, like many training plan aircraft the skills that were acquired on the Fairey Battle were applied on many combat aircraft overseas. While at first considered as a complete failure for combat, many RCAF service members gained vital skills on these aircraft that made them successful through the plan.
Ultimately, like many of the aircraft from the war, very few aircraft remain today. Most Fairey Battle were scrapped, because unlike aircraft such as the Harvard they had no functional use for the RCAF, and most of their parts and plans were either repurposed or destroyed, only surviving in the photographs. This scarcity is ultimately what makes the build of this replica at the CATPM so fascinating. In the workshop – volunteers are recreating a replica Fairey Battle from the ground up, using their own experience in engineering, teaching, and handy work with models, drawings, and research to hand create every structural component. This labour intensive process is not as streamlined or efficient as when these aircraft would have first been built, however the hard work that they put into restoration is just as thorough as wartime engineers and tradespeople, to build beautiful works of wartime innovation.
Visitors who enter the workshop at the CATPM therefore not only get to witness an exhibit of the museum, but rather the recreation of history. Facing the same challenges of aircraft assembly nearly 90 years ago, the friendly volunteers are happy to share their processes of the Fairey Battle with you, or your students. While this aircraft was not a legendary and successful bomber, it is a way of appreciating the history of the Training Plan and the hard work of the CATPM’s volunteers.
Commonwealth Air Training Plan Museum & RCAF WWII Memorial