From an apartment in Vancouver to a storage container near Saskatoon, how 2 teenagers’ airplane finally gets unveiled to family decades later in Ontario

Robert Wong and the CF-BAA, Feb 26, 1938. (Photo from Robert Wong collection)

Decades after soaring through Vancouver's skies, spending years in a storage container in Saskatoon, and finally being restored in Ontario, a plane built by hand by two teenagers at the height of the Great Depression will be unveiled to their family for the first time.

Robert Wong and his younger brother Thomas "Tommy" Wong were two of 12 children. Their family originally lived in Nanaimo, B.C., with their father working as a coal miner before they moved to Vancouver, living in Market Alley, where dozens of Chinese labourers lived at the time.

As a child, Robert loved to build model airplanes. When he saw an article in Modern Mechanics detailing how to craft a Pietenpol Sky Scout – a single-seater, wood-and-fabric plane powered by a Model T Ford engine – he sought to construct it himself.

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"This was 1935. We're pretty sure he saw this article with the plans, and he said, 'Oh, it's just like (my) model airplanes,'" Evelyn Wong, Robert's daughter, told CTV News Toronto.

Robert, 17 at the time, and Tommy, 14, spent two years cutting the wood for the plane – using their free time during the school holidays to build it – while their mother and her friends stitched together the fabric right onto the fuselage of it.

"They had no choice where to start to build because … there was a time of great discrimination against Chinese, and it was during the depression," Evelyn Wong said. At this time in Canadian history, the Chinese Immigration Act, also called the Chinese Exclusion Act, forced all Chinese people living in Canada to register with the government or face severe penalties, including deportation, in an effort to halt Chinese immigrants from coming to the country. This act was in effect until 1947.

In the first test flight of the plane, piloted by Leonard Foggin, Evelyn said the plane flew until it landed on a single wing tip and tilted onto its nose.

"(The media) said if the plane hadn't been so well built by these two young men, or boys it would have been, structurally, far more damage and the instructor could have got hurt, but it was so well done," Evelyn said. "They had to totally redo the landing gear system and the ignition system."

They fixed the plane, called the CF-BAA, in Robert's final year of high school, and he flew the aircraft on his own without a hitch. The plane was sold to someone in Vancouver before Robert started college.

For a time during the Second World War, Robert trained pilots out of Windsor Airport with the British Commonwealth Air Training Plan, where he trained them on how to navigate, land and manoeuvre aircrafts and Tommy eventually became a Royal Canadian Air Force Warrant Officer.

After the war ended, Robert moved to East York while Tommy went in Etobicoke. They first opened Wong's Air School at Barker Airport in 1945, but after a fire burnt their hangar, they signed a lease at Toronto Island Airport and launched Central Airways. The air school turned out to be Canada's largest flight-training school by 1950.

Robert Wong in cockpit, Tommy Wong with earplugs standing on the right when they started Central Airways, 1945. Toronto Chinese Canadian community leaders Chong Ying, and E.C. Mark. (Courtesy of Arlene Chan)

Decades after, the hunt to find the CF-BAA again ignited.

"Don MacVicar went on a treasure hunt. It's just amazing. It's just like (finding) a needle in a haystack," Evelyn Wong said.

The hunt for the CF-BAA

Donald MacVicar, who co-founded the Eva Rothwell Resource Centre in Hamilton, told CTV News Toronto he was amazed by the Wong brothers' story and how they built this airplane from their Chinatown apartment. It catalyzed his impassioned, unrelenting search to find where the CF-BAA ended up.

MacVicar ploughed through research to find who exchanged hands with the CF-BAA, learning it moved from Vancouver to Canora, Sask.

"The trail went dead," MacVicar said. He combed through obituaries and cemeteries to see if he could track down the ancestors to see who it was last sold to and find out where the Wong brothers' plane was.

After numerous calls, mass emails to a plethora of Saskatchewan-based airports, and a Saskatoon Phoenix article detailing the Wongs' history, MacVicar finally heard from someone with a solid lead of where the Pietenpol could be – in a storage container in La Ronge, Sask., about four hours north of Saskatoon.

The CF-BAA inside the container it was stored in. (Courtesy of Donald MacVicar)

"Everybody that had this plane knew that it was something unique and never wanted to destroy it. So now, how do we get it out of the container, and then get it back to Hamilton?" MacVicar, who is based out of Stoney Creek, Ont., said.

MacVicar said Campbell Harrod, a plane restorer in Dundas, Ont., bought the plane so he could restore it.

"He drove 6,000 kilometres there and back with a pickup truck and a trailer, and picked up the pieces of it, and has brought it back to Guelph," MacVicar said.

Now, the family – coming in from all across the globe including Evelyn coming in from Singapore, and Evelyn Wong's older sister, Roberta Lau from California – will see the plane with its original fabric, on Sept. 13 in Guelph. Eventually, MacVicar says Harrod plans to restore the plane so it can grace the skies again in about five years time.

Evelyn Wong with dad Robert Wong at Central Airways,1961 (left), Roberta Wong (Lau), 1970's , Toronto Island Airport (re-named Billy Bishop Airport). (Courtesy of Roberta and Ray Lau)

"It's just a fantastic feeling to see the aircraft and to see the size," Lau told CTV News Toronto. "We saw many pictures, so that won't surprise me when I see it (though) probably in person to feel and touch it."

Then the following day, and decades after their father and uncle passed away, the Wong brothers will become the first Asian Canadians inducted into Canada's Aviation Hall of Fame – something made possible after sending 16 "heartwarming" letters of support for them to be commemorated and a plethora of documents highlighting their contribution to the aviation industry. Robert died in 1987, and Tommy died nearly two decades later in 2006.

"Robert and Tommy trained thousands to fly over the course of their careers, with many of their pilot graduates going on to work for major airlines across North America, ensuring their lasting legacy as pioneers in the history of Canadian aviation," Canada's Aviation Hall of Fame historian Jonathan Scotland told CTV News Toronto in an emailed statement.

In honour of their family's story reaching new heights, Evelyn Wong published a children's book, "Ready to Fly," illustrating the story of the CF-BAA in hopes other kids will chase after their dreams.

"We do want to inspire them to reach for the sky and believe that you can do it."