… will know all about this aeroplane as you have seen it all before.
It’s KB882, a Lancaster from World War II and it is one of only three “combat veterans” still in existence. It flew to Edmundston airport under its own steam in 1964 and ever since then it’s been stuck outside in all kinds of weather gradually deteriorating.
I spotted it in 2001 and ever since then I’ve been fighting single-handedly (I do other things with my other hand) to persuade the clowns in whose hands this historic machine has fallen to surrender it up to the Imperial War Museum or some other worthy organisation who can put a stop to this disgraceful neglect and get it back into the air before it falls apart.
In 2006 I was told that things might be happening and so being only 150 miles away from it I drove out this afternoon to see what they have done.
And the answer is
- they’ve put a better fence around it
- they’ve raised it off the ground
- … errrr …..
- that’s it
What is happening to this machine is nothing short of a national scandal, a total disgrace and the city of Edmundston should be thoroughly ashamed of itself. In the 9 years since I last saw it it has simply rotted away even further.
So having expected that, my blood has been boiling all day and it’ll continue to boil for a while I suppose.
and that’s not all I’ve done. In order to cool off, I retraced my steps from 2001 and retook a few pics of the falls at Grand Sault.
When I was here back then, the falls were all frozen up (mind you, it was midwinter at the time) and so I wanted a few with the water actually unfrozen, as well as a few other photos of interest that I missed when I was up here.
But I did get sidetracked a little … "no surprises there" – ed.
From Rachel and Darren’s house I could see a pile of wind turbines away in the distance to the north of Centreville and so I wandered off for a closer look. And at one stage I was so close to them that I could almost touch them, and my route towards them led off down a little country lane called Mars Hill Road.
And here I came to a dead stop as here on this hill the road also comes to a dead stop.
This is a frontier between the USA and Canada, and an unguarded frontier at that, although I do suspect that the barbed wire, searchlights, man-traps and machine guns are in that forest somewhere and that the purpose of the wind turbines is not to power up the local villages but to power the spy machines lurking in the woods.
The actual border is that orange fence to the left and this building here, Darren seems to think, might possibly be the old Canadian customs post from when this was a manned … "personned" – ed … crossing back in the distant past.
>And it’s for sale, even though it’s totally derelict. And I have a cunning plan.
Now just suppose I buy it and demolish the property that’s on it. I could erect a huge billboard and use it to display Anti-American slogans and then set up some loudspeakers to broadcast propaganda messages into the USA from here.
If it works for the North Koreans who habitually do this to the South, no reason why I can’t do it from here into the USA.
That building looks to be a good supply of firewood. I can’t imagine given that it’s caving in on itself that there’s much to be done with it.
Seriously, there’s nothing to be done with this building. If I were ever to consider this kind of thing I’d demolish the property and use it as a source of firewood, and build a nice 25-metre square balloon frame cabin here instead.