Issue link: http://publications.winnipegfreepress.com/i/514227
54 COMMONWEALTH AIR TRAINING PLAN MUSEUM ARRESTING Displays It would be a crime to pass up the Winnipeg Police Museum. Artifacts include a 1925 paddy wagon and a collection of handcuffs. Pose for a mug shot in the old jail cell and peruse archives and exhibits that shed light on tawdry and tragic events in policing history, including a desperate 1920s hunt for a notorious American villain nicknamed both The Strangler and the Gorilla Killer. The museum is in the process of moving to the new WPS headquarters on Graham Avenue. > winnipeg.ca/police/museum WAT T'S Up Everybody gets a big charge out of the vintage displays at the Manitoba Electrical Museum and Education Centre, near Winnipeg's Grant Park Shopping Centre. The museum houses an electric street car, a giant robot built from household appliances and hands-on educational exhibits. In December, trip down memory lane during an annual display of trends in Christmas lights from 1880 to the present. Admission is free. > hydro.mb.ca/museum WAR & PEACE During 2015, hard-won rights and freedoms come to the fore as we mark 70 years since the end of the Second World War. Significant memorial sites include the Commonwealth Air Training Plan Museum, in Hangar No. 1 at Brandon's municipal airport — one of 14 Manitoba bases where air crews and pilots from Australia, Canada, New Zealand and the British Royal Air Force were trained. The hangar contains thousands of artifacts as well as aircraft. Outdoors, a bronze statue of an airman stands next to a 91-metre (300-foot) airfoil-shaped granite wall on which the names of more than 18,000 young men and women who died in service of the British Commonwealth air forces are engraved. Just west of Brandon, the RCA Museum, Canada's National Artillery Museum, preserves military history at Canadian Forces Base Shilo, with innovative outdoor exhibits and indoor galleries displaying artifacts, artwork and weaponry ranging from cannons to rocket launchers. Until June, the museum hosts the exhibit The Great War of 1914-15, which examines the first year of the First World War and its impact on Canadians and soldiers, including the Princess Patricia's Canadian Light Infantry, which marked its centennial in 2014. West of Morden, the Darlingford Memorial and Park was donated by farmer Ferris Bolton, whose three sons died in France in 1917. Bolton, who planted three spruce trees here, chose a location where schoolchildren might pause to reflect as they passed by each day. A Provincial Heritage Site, the park contains a memorial building and marble tablets inscribed with the names of local veterans and victims of wars. In Winnipeg, a memorial park at Valour Road and Sargent Avenue honours three First World War recipients of the Victoria Cross — Corp. Leo Clarke, Sgt.-Major Frederick William Hall and Lieut. Robert Shankland — who all lived on the same block of Pine Street, which was renamed Valour Road in 1925. > airmuseum.com > rcamuseum.ca Manitoba Electrical Museum & Education Centre 680 Harrow Street, Winnipeg, MB For more information: 204.360.7905 hydro.mb.ca/museum Free admission & parking Electrifying family fun!