The Abbotsford airport is likely a place anyone who has spent time here has seen, whether you came to this town by plane, saw it on a drive, or watched the Airshow. What many people do not know however, is that the airport was built during the Second World War. Completed on March 29th 1943, it was one in a series of airfields built across the Pacific northwest in response to Pearl Harbour. Although before this it had already been considered as a place to build an airfield. Originally Abbotsford was thought to be too close to the then neutral United States to be building a military airfield, but once the US joined the war that was no longer a problem. Once built it was announced on April 7th 1943 that the station would be used to train Royal Canadian Airforce pilots and crew for the ever-increasing war effort. The town of Abbotsford was told that this was a benefit, as the airfield would provide jobs to civilians and the trainees at the station would be more than willing to spend money on whatever goods Abbotsford had to offer.

This does not mean the relations between town and station were always sunny. One example of a clash comes from the local chicken farmers. The station took up a lot of electicity, and because of this the power to the local farms occasionally went out, which could be fatal for the eggs being incubated in the chicken farms. The farmers were understandably upset, but the issue was smoothed over once the RCAF provided some generators to pick up the slack caused by station power outages.

This site tells the story of those trainees, and the relationships they formed with the nearby town of Abbotsford. The station was far from secluded, its staff had many a civilian worker on it, and visitors were welcome much more often than you would think for a military training field. The people of Abbotsford were intertwined with the station from the very beginning, and it would serve as both a reminder of the war for good and bad.

 The station itself had two main eras, the first was from its opening in September of 1943 to July 12th 1944, when it was known as Elementary Flying Training School No. 24 (EFTS 24). As EFTS 24 the airport trained beginner pilots in smaller aircrafts. The second era was between August 28th 1944 and the end of the war in 1945, during this time the station was under #5 Operational Training Unit (#5 OTU). #5 OTU was formed to train more experienced pilots in the larger bombers.