Montreal’s only aviation museum loses its founder

This article from today’s Gazette will be of interest to many of our members, esp those of us who made the trek to the aviation museum in Ottawa. (Photos of that field trip here)

Heritage centre was brainchild of aircraft enthusiast Pasmore

 It is known simply as the Old Stone Barn and it sits in the middle of agricultural farmland on McGill’s Macdonald campus in Ste- Anne- de- Bellevue.

Historian Bill Doran looks at a Fairchild Razorback at the Canadian Aviation Heritage Centre in St-Anne- de-Bellevue on Thursday. Godfrey Stewart Pasmore, who started the museum, died on March 12.

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The structure has 23- inch thick walls, is more than 100 years old, and would seem like an inauspicious location for anything other than a place for cattle to retire for the day, or night. But since its radical repurposing a decade ago, it is now home to Montreal’s only aviation museum. The Canadian Aviation Heritage Centre, which opened in 2009, was the brainchild of Godfrey Stewart Pasmore, an aviation enthusiast who passed away March 12 at the age of 83.

“Godfrey was a very special guy,” said Eric Campbell, the museum’s chief of operations. “It’s his determination that got the centre started. There were over 30 aviation museums in Canada, but there was nothing ( like this) in Quebec.”

The museum now houses seven aircraft built by volunteers who shared Pasmore’s passion for aviation history. An adjoining art gallery displays an impressive collection of more than 60 paintings of aircraft, along with dozens of finely detailed model aircraft.

Campbell credits Pasmore for spearheading the museum’s founding, which included 10 years of refurbishing the Old Stone Barn, originally built in the early 1900s by tobacco magnate and philanthropist Sir William Macdonald, to bring it up to modern museum standards.

Pasmore’s passion for vintage aircraft came from his father, said Campbell.

“His father was Hubert Pasmore, a World War I pilot who later ran Fairchild Industries in Longueuil, which produced a lot of aircraft in the 1930s and ’ 40s, and closed just after the war.”

Godfrey Pasmore, a Montreal businessman whose mother was Beatrice Macdonald Molson ( née Stewart), converted part of the Old Stone Barn into a modern art gallery to display his personal art collection.

“Godfrey created over 35 paintings with Canadian aviation artists to honour his father’s career and he wanted a gallery to show it in,” Campbell said. “It’s his will that we are there. I’ve never met anyone who had the determination to put a high- end steel roof on a building he didn’t own. He was that determined to get his art collection shown.”

Museum volunteers also spent 15 years building a replica of the Blériot XI ( Le Scarabée), the first aircraft to fly over Montreal in 1910, piloted by Count Jacques de Lesseps.

“We flew it once on Aug. 29, 2014 to celebrate the first flight over Montreal,” Campbell said. “We also recreated the Razorback ( Fairchild FC- 2), the plane that Godfrey ’s father flew the first international airmail delivery, from Quebec to Ottawa, in 1927.”

Campbell said the museum breaks

even financially, and depends on public donations to survive.

“Every year we come to the end of January and we survived the year,” he said. “We do not have a white knight investor. We are hand to mouth.”

Fundraising efforts will require even more effort, now that Pasmore has passed away, said Campbell.

“It’s up to the rest of us to pick up and carry on the runway of life because Godfrey ran out of runway and we’re here to make sure his dream goes further,” Campbell said.

In an effort to broaden the museum’s appeal to the general public, museum officials are in the process of rebranding it simply as the Montreal Aviation Museum.

“We’re broadening community interest in it,” said former museum president Bill Doran. “That’s what our big aim is, because we’re getting far more Air Cadets and students coming here.”

The museum has a five- year lease with McGill. Doran and other members would like to see that converted into a long- term lease.

“This museum is the best- kept secret on the West Island,” added Doran, a former aircraft maintenance instructor at John Abbott College.

Pasmore leaves a strong legacy for fellow aviation enthusiasts. Even the Old Stone Barn unofficially bears his name, Campbell said.

“A lot of his family and close friends called it ‘ Godfrey’s Church’. It’s there because of him. That’s what he strove to do to protect Canadian aviation history in Quebec.”