Royal Canadian School of Artillery

[r.morrison]

Good evening all: I have been in touch withe one of my former high school teachers, who, many years ago, was involved with the Royal Canadian School of Artillery. I was located in south west Ontario and disbanded in 1960. According to his knowledge, everything was shipped off to Shilo, including all the War Trophies, One of them was the famous German 88,

I conversed with Rob Love and to his knowledge, the Shilo Museum has never owned an "88". The fellow who kept the records has retired, so I thought I would "shake the coconut trees" and see if anyone down Ontario way could shed any light on the history of the school and where everything got moved to.
Any light shed on this is, as always, greatly appreciated!

Cheers ....Robert

[Ed Storey]

Garrison Petawawa had a Flak 36/37 88 which could be a candidate. The CWM also has one.

[maple_leaf_eh]

I won't do your research, but here is a site I've used in the past to answer questions like yours.

https://militarybruce.com/abandoned-...andoned-bases/

As for the artifacts, without a name and dates, you're going to have a hard time. In 1960, the war had only been over for 15 years. It was current memory for many people. As much as certain trophies are highly valued today, at the time, a lot of them were 'just old Nazi junk', with the attitude of 'we won that one you know'. It is entirely possible truck loads were sent off to Shilo, but things get traded and deaccessioned from collections continuously. The Germans coveted several pieces that the base had on display, and traded some of their more modern equipment to go on the pads when they left.

[rob love]

Rob: I never said we never had one, just that we never had one that I know of.
One thing with artifacts and monuments like these, is they do get loaned to other museums, bases, and in the past small towns. Sometimes they get recalled back to the proper owners, other times so much time passes that they get traded or moved to other units by the unit that borrowed it. A museum must constantly refresh the borrower about whom the gun belongs to, and where it is now.
All this to say that the monuments that may have come here from the school may not have belonged to the school in the first place, or we may have loaned them on to other places like the CWM or Petawawa.

Harold Skaruup has a website that shows the majority of the artillery monuments in Canada. I don't have the link right now and am having trouble finding it. It may be that he has taken it down and is instead selling books with the content as I see those listed province by province.

[maple_leaf_eh]

Originally Posted by rob love

...

Harold Skaruup has a website that shows the majority of the artillery monuments in Canada. I don't have the link right now and am having trouble finding it. ...

https://www.silverhawkauthor.com/

The articles are longwinded and need to be searched with a keen CTRL-F set of fingers. But, I've corresponded with him several times on other matters and he is very easy to reach.

[rob love]

It used to be, not that long ago, that you could view the content and see each monument including a photo, province by province, and with some specific pages covering certain museums. When I try that now (say for Manitoba or any other province) it leads to a link to buy the book from amazon or others:
https://www.silverhawkauthor.com/pos...ume-8-manitoba

The online version was valuable to make corrections, or to look for wayward guns.

[Dan Martel]

Originally Posted by r.morrison

Good evening all: I have been in touch withe one of my former high school teachers, who, many years ago, was involved with the Royal Canadian School of Artillery. I was located in south west Ontario and disbanded in 1960. According to his knowledge, everything was shipped off to Shilo, including all the War Trophies, One of them was the famous German 88,

The Royal Canadian School of Artillery (Anti-Aircraft) was located at Point Petre in Ontario. It was stationed there with the 1st Light Anti-Aircraft Regiment, both equipped with the US 90mm anti-aircraft gun. Both were disbanded in 1960 when the Canadian Army got out of the anti-aircraft business with the manpower positions used to create the Honest John batteries.

Point Petre had gunnery ranges for firing the 90mm gun over Lake Ontario (in the general direction of the US). This would seem to be an appropriate place to have had a war-recovered 88mm flak gun as a trophy.

Alas, I can't confirm such a gun was there and, if it was, where it might have ended up. Wasn't there one in the Borden Museum?