RCAF Station Summerside
When the Second World War began, Summerside, P.E.I. was a town of approximately 5000 people. It had a strong mercantile and service base supported by surrounding rural communities. The business community lobbied hard for an air force training base. They wanted the economic opportunity it would bring to the area.
The training facility was built on farmland in North St. Eleanors, displacing an entire community. Summerside companies
Curran & Briggs Ltd. and M.F. Schurman Co. Ltd. carried out the construction of runways and buildings for RCAF Station
Summerside in the summer and fall of 1940. Construction contracts brought the majority of the federal war effort dollars that came
to Summerside. While most people applauded the base coming to Summerside it meant the end of the farming community of North St.
Eleanors. Farmers, many whose families had been in the area for years, were told they would be given a price for their land -
end of discussion.
"The base said they wanted part of our farm in 1940. There really wasn't any choice. They took the land and paid what they
thought was a fair price. I believe it was $77 dollars an acre. It was prime farmland."- Charlie Tanton
At the height of air training at the base over two thousand people called it their place of work. The numbers swelled the town's population and the demand for housing, services, and goods was positive for the town coffers. The jobs civilians were able to secure at the base as well as the new ones developed around service industries were welcomed and appreciated.
The people of Summerside began to quickly intermingle with the airmen and new opportunities for social interchange were created. Particularly delighted with the development were the young women of the community who had watched so many of the young men of Summerside go off to war.
Summerside Hospitality During World War II
Things To Do!!!
You come home from school one afternoon to find your parents sitting in the kitchen looking at a letter. They tell you that the only home you have ever known will soon disappear to make way for an air force training base. Write in a diary your feelings upon hearing the news.
You are a young farm boy or girl of the age of eleven. After school it is your job to let the cattle out of the barn and water them at the trough in the yard. It takes you a long time because you dawdle watching the planes flying overhead. What are some of the things you see?
Click on the hospitality site and read about some of the flying antics and accidents.
Put yourself in the place of the people of North St. Eleanors. In your opinion was it ethical or justifiable for the government to displace the people to make way for a training base? What would be your feelings towards the town of Summerside? When the community of Summerside lobbied for the air-training centre was it being patriotic or self-serving? Is it realistic to separate the two?
How do you believe the greater good should be determined? What factors need to be taken into consideration?
The construction of the station brought short-term jobs to the area. In 1940 construction was up on the Island by 125 %. Did the base do anything to help the long-term economic development of the Summerside area? Years of additional lobbying kept the base at Summerside open until 1989.
Learn what other Summerside industries benefited from war contracts.
