A ceremony was held at the Estevan Regional Airport on Sept. 16 to commemorate the completion of the Forever in the Clouds monument.
Carved with a chainsaw by sculptor Darren Jones, the monument was built in remembrance of the 21 servicemen who lost their lives in a plane crash at the former Estevan Airport site south of the city on Sept. 15, 1946.
Several members of the 15-Wing Moose Jaw Canadian Air Force Base were present for the unveiling of the monument, including Colonel Denis O’reilly.
“It means a lot to us to be here today, because the strength behind our uniform is our families, and 21 men lost their lives in 1946, but we have to remember their families. There were many spouses, who within a year of their loved-ones coming back from war, ended up losing them within a year of getting them back,” said O’reilly.
“Their sacrifice is even more sad in the fact that many of them flew many, many combat missions…and they served their country with honour, and they lost their lives within a year of coming back.”
Work began on the monument in 2017, and since then members of the committee overseeing the construction of the monument have been searching for photos of the 21 servicemen who lost their lives in the crash. Sculptor Darren Jones completed the carving of the final two faces on Sept. 14.
“Well whenever you have a project this big, and this important, with this much emotion… and it’s not just my emotion of creating it, it’s the emotion of the families and the communities involved, it’s such a big relief,” said Jones about completing the monument.
“It was unfinished without these last faces … 21 men died that day, and we needed to honour all 21, these men were heroes … there was just no option to not find them.”
The permanent location of the monument has yet to be decided, but Jones said he is hopeful that the location will be somewhere people can easily see the monument, so that people in the area can learn of the crash, and the sacrifice the men involved made for their country both before and after the war.
