RCAF Station Aylmer

The site of the former Royal Canadian Air Force training station northeast of Aylmer is largely returned to farmland today, but the history is significant: this was one of dozens of stations built across rural Canada under the British Commonwealth Air Training Plan, the massive Allied programme that made Canada the training ground for much of the Commonwealth's wartime aircrew.

There is little to see at the site itself today — the hangars and buildings are long gone — but the station's history is documented at the Aylmer and District Museum. The RCAF Station Aylmer trained thousands of airmen between 1941 and 1945; the rural flat landscape of southwestern Ontario, similar to the English countryside in some ways, made Elgin County a popular location for such training facilities.

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RCAF Station Aylmer was built in 1940-41 as a training airfield under the British Commonwealth Air Training Plan, an enormous programme that trained over 130,000 aircrew across Canada during the Second World War. Aylmer trained thousands of pilots, navigators, and air gunners who went on to fly in combat over Europe. The station closed in 1945, and the airfield was converted to agricultural and civilian use; traces of the old runways and hangar foundations are still visible from the air.

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