Great Monday meeting this week! First, some of our members shared their news during Happy Bucks: Lex was excited to receive a letter from Audrey, the 5-year-old girl whose education he sponsors from Ghana. Anil will be visiting his family back home in India, Tom Goebel’s son got engaged and Walter welcomed his 7th great-grandchild and 1st great-great-grandchild - congratulations! Our Youth Exchange student, Jan Schulze Zur Wiesche, presented about “life back home” in Lüdinghausen - a town of 25,000 people located in the mid-west of Germany. Jan spoke about his family, school and friends. He also shared his passions, which include playing soccer, golf and skiing.
It was a pleasure to hear from guest speaker Henry Dupuis, Vice President of the Windsor Flying Club. Mr. Dupuis began with a bit about the club’s history: In December 1939, the British Commonwealth Air Training Program was formed. From its inception until 1944, 1,627 pilots were trained for the Royal Canadian Air Force and the Royal Air Force. The Windsor Flying Club was incorporated in 1944 as a non-profit flight school and when the war was coming to an end, the Elemental Flight Training School (part of the BCATP), gifted the buildings and aircraft to the Windsor Flying Club. Today, the club has approximately 250 active members and in recent years trains approximately 65 new pilots per year. Today’s training options at the club include recreational pilot permits, private and commercial pilot licences, as well as other, more advanced ratings.
The Windsor Flying Club holds annual competitions, encouraging “pilots to come out and have fun and bring out non-fliers and friends to enjoy the events”. The club has trained many pilots who went on to careers in the Royal Canadian Air Force, and just this week they are congratulating one of their instructors, who got a job at West Jet.
Our members were especially interested to learn about the many philanthropic projects the Windsor Flying Club is involved in. One is called Operation Point North: The Attawapiskat aboriginal settlement in Kingfisher Lake (Northern Ontario) is in need of goods, but transportation costs make it extremely difficult to get those goods in their hands. Volunteers from the Windsor Flying Club have been helping by doing what they love - flying planes - in order to get the products to those in need each year since 2016. For more information about this project, check out the article from the Windsor Star: https://windsorstar.com/news/local-news/local-church-and-flying-club-combat-food-prices-in-northern-ontario.
The club gives back by raising funds for a commercial pilot scholarship fund. “It is the Windsor Flying Club’s desire to support young potential aviators to achieve their goals, much like it was when the club was founded to provide trained candidate pilots for the war effort”. https://windsorstar.com/news/local-news/windsor-flying-club-goes-back-to-1940s-to-raise-75000-for-aspiring-pilots
The club also participates in Top Gun for Kids, an annual event where children who are afflicted with cancer “are invited to come out for the day and enjoy free events and flights donated by Windsor Flying Club members and our other airport neighbours so that they can forget about cancer for a while”.