The Rest of the Story

    When something happens in a small town that you don’t quite understand, eventually you will hear the rest of the story.  I thought of that yesterday when I finally heard what was going on with Dr. Cowburn’s old Tiger Moth bi-plane that was once again flying around in the Robson Valley.

    When Dr Cowburn owned the plane, I used to love watching the antique yellow aircraft sputtering across the blue sky of the Robson Valley.  The vintage plane was the joy of the Valley’s only doctor and he would take it out periodically to fly it around.  Before he died, he sold it to a person who grew up in Crescent Spur, a nearby hamlet.  That new owner moved to Prince George, so we didn’t see the Tiger Moth again except once when the new owner had it doing cartwheels in the sky above McBride during one year’s Pioneer Day parades.

    Over this past weekend, the Tiger Moth suddenly was all over the skies of the Robson Valley.  It buzzed low over our house a couple of times, and each time I raced out with my camera in an attempt to get a photo.  I didn’t really know why the plane was around again.

    Yesterday when I was at the grocery, Pat the cashier, knower of all things local, told us that the plane’s owner was in town because he was getting married.

     “Okay, now I know,” I thought, but there was more information to come later in the day.  

    At meal time, when I went to pick up some food at the Chinese restaurant, I ran into Charlie Leake, an aviator who used to live in McBride.  From him I got more information about the Tiger Moth’s  return to the Valley.

    He was in town for the wedding and the ceremony was going to take place at one of the hangers at the McBride airfield.  When I mentioned how I kept seeing the plane zipping around, flying low, and seemingly tearing around all over the place, Charlie told me that the pilot was practicing all kind of flying maneuvers because he was working toward getting a license so he he perform tricks at air shows.  

    After hearing Charlie, I was satisfied that I knew “the rest of the story” about the why the bi-plane was here again, and why it was buzzing around so much.  Little by little I had been given the explanation.

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