Soaring through the sky, high above the ground, the world laid out around you.
Flying is an experience that can sometimes be hard to describe, but no one does it better than John Gillespie Magee.
'Oh! I have slipped the surly bonds of earth / and danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings,' the first two lines of Gillespie Magee's poem 'High Flight'.
Gillespie Magee was an American who crossed the border into Canada in 1940. He wanted to become a pilot in the Royal Canadian Air Force and fly for the allies in World War Two.
Gillespie Magee attended flight training schools in Uplands, Rockcliffe and other air fields in eastern Ontario before heading over to England. He penned 'High Flight' and sent it to his parents on the back of a letter. Three months later, Gillespie Magee was killed when flying in his Spitfire. He was just 19-years-old.
But the poem has lived on. It's now the official poem of the RCAF and is a staple for anyone in aviation.
"It's an iconic name if you're an aviator and ever since I was a child, I've known the poem," says Lt.-Col. David Smith says. Smith is the commanding officer of the Canadian Forces Pilot Training school in Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan.
"My sister gave me a copy of it when I was a student pilot 20 years ago. I still have it in my wallet. It's very faded now but she was a teenager at the time and she sent it to me in a letter. I'd left home and off to the air force...it really is a beautiful piece of work," he says.
"Every pilot knows 'High Flight', probably by memory but he won't want to admit it," says Rob Erdos, an air demonstration pilot and volunteer at Vintage Wings in Gatineau.
"It's something that really speaks to our experience of flying."
Vintage Wings of Canada is honouring Gillespie Magee, as well as the 75th anniversary of the British Commonwealth Air Training Program. The BCATP trained more than 160,000 air crew for the allies in WWII.
"President (Theodore) Roosevelt called Canada the aerodrome of democracy," says Peter Allen, the CEO of Vintage Wings of Canada Foundation.
"We trained virtually all the air crew that were used by the allied air forces in WWII on the Commonwealth side."
Vintage Wings has restored a Harvard Mk. IV plane with the same colours and design from when Gillespie Magee trained on it. The RCAF has done the same, painting one of their training planes in the exact same way. The two flew for the first time together this week.
"The aircraft only came out of the paint shop less than two weeks ago," says Allen of the Harvard II, the military plane.
"We are just delighted after a year's work to be able to commemorate this event with both aircraft."
"(It) bridges time for us," adds Erdos.
"We've got two Harvards, one representing the experience of pilots that went off to defend the country in war time and the other is in training right now for pilots that are embarking on the same training and the same career, although about 70 years later."
The public will have a chance to see both of the planes at the Gatineau airshow. It happens on Thursday, June 28th and starts at noon. More details are here.
