Dr. C.M. Johnston's Project

Frederick E. Wellington

Frederick Edgar (Ed) Wellington was a close friend of fellow McMaster Honour Roll airman, William (Bill) Hilton. Together both had gone through Ridley College, attended, among other post-secondary institutions, McMaster University, and enlisted in the wartime RCAF, in which they served as flight instructors. In the end both were killed in flying accidents, Ed in Canada and Bill in Britain. But unlike his friend, Ed was born not in Fonthill but in Toronto, on 8 January 1918. Even so, he spent many of his adolescent summers in Fonthill, sojourns that reinforced the ties with his Ridley classmate.

Ed was the second child of Frederick Wm. Wellington and Muriel (Koyl) Wellington, and would join a brother, William. Their father was a prosperous business man, a partner in the firm, Stone and Wellington, which had been founded in late Victorian times and flourished as one of Canada's largest export-import nursery businesses. Like the Hiltons, the Wellington family was Church of England and it worshipped at Toronto's Sr. Simon's Anglican Church.

Throughout his brief life Ed was propelled by a joie de vivre that never seemed to fail him and endeared him to virtually every one who came within his ever widening circle, not least to close friends and family members. He displayed it to the full at Ridley College, an Anglican private school in St. Catharines, where he was enrolled in 1929. He soon struck up a close friendship with roommate Bill Hilton, both of whom went out and easily qualified for the school's football team, which competed against those of other private institutions, including Hillfield College in Hamilton. Alfred Chapman, Bill's half brother wistfully recalled watching their imaginative and lauded play from the stands. The footballers' paths may have crossed that of fellow Ridleian and future airman, Robert (Bob) Edgar [HR], who mixed football and track with performances for the school's Dramatic Society.

Ed Wellington, a “regular Ridley boy” like Bill Hilton and Bob Edgar, graduated in 1937, a year after Bill did. Armed with his diploma, he dutifully followed the instructions of his hopeful father by embarking on an ambitious engineering education at McGill University in Montreal. Potentially that fascinating metropolis opened up a whole new world for the young man who had grown up in the city that liked to call itself “Toronto the Good” and who had spent happy summers in the small town atmosphere of Fonthill. How much Ed tapped into this new and comparatively exotic world on the St. Lawrence can only be imagined.

At least he was soon enough familiarized with the McGill campus scene, thanks to a newly established freshman information centre, which urged newcomers like Ed to join at least one campus club . Given his later exploits as an aviator, it might be reasonable to suppose that he would enlist in the McGill Flying Club, which had just acquired a training glider, a sign of things to come. The records, however, disclose no such club membership though the student publication, the McGill Daily, indicates that the Ridley graduate did sign up for football, demonstrably his favourite sport and extracurricular activity. Athletic, experienced, and now big framed, standing 5' 11” and weighing some 175 pounds, he was, as he had been at Ridley, a natural candidate for the gridiron.

As a freshman, Ed could not try out for the varsity squad, McGill's so called “Big Red Team”, but clearly he did qualify for the Frosh Team, which played at the intermediate level against colleges and other educational institutions in the Montreal area. In late October it must have been a happy Ed who was called to “dress and report for duty” on the Frosh Team. After convincing the coach of his necessary prowess Ed was assigned a key lineman position, that of snap or centre. It must also have been a source of satisfaction and pride that he joined and actively contributed to a team that was enjoying an unusually successful season. Indeed it ended it undefeated and in early November in what the McGill Daily called “a blaze of glory” the team captured the intermediate title when it defeated its archrival, Loyola College. Ed was doubtless an eager participant in the celebration and “Football Tea Dance” that followed the victory.

Ed's time-consuming extracurricular activities however valuable they were to the Frosh Team, and the entertainment he likely savoured in Montreal perhaps cut heavily into his engineering studies. In any case, just as medicine had not been for his friend, Bill Hilton, so engineering palled on Ed and after one session at McGill he departed for other educational horizons. Probably at the urging of his old Ridley friend, who had already done so, he decided on McMaster University, the Baptist institution uprooted from Toronto, his home town, and relocated in Hamilton's Westdale district in 1930. One factor in favour of his new academic home – a far cry admittedly from McGill and Montreal - was its close proximity to Fonthill and his old stamping grounds in St. Catharines.

Ed applied for admission to McMaster on 1 October 1938, a few days after Bill Hilton did and after classes had actually started. He was still in lockstep with his friend, expressing his intention to register in Course 9, the Political Economy (Economics) Option, as a stepping stone to a possible business career, though he did not specify his own family's firm. In any case, like most economics students, he would join the Political Economy Club and probably take in the lectures provided by visiting professors and the seminars organized by the Club's executive. The referees who had helped to pave his way to McMaster included Dr. H.C. Griffith, the formidable headmaster of Ridley College, who obliged with a highly supportive phone call to the proper authorities.

Having signified that he wanted to live in residence, Ed was assigned to Edwards Hall, specifically to its North House, as a roommate for his friend, Bill Hilton. As they had for years at Ridley, the two must have enjoyed residential life and the extracurricular experience at McMaster, especially the outdoor action on the playing field and the indoor diversions of carefully chaperoned proms and dances, including the annual formal in Wallingford Hall, the women's residence. The popular Ed, or “Freddie” as he was known on campus, predictably went out for football and played alongside his friend and roommate on the McMaster Maroons. That year the team sported new white jerseys with maroon trim and numbers when they took to the field against their Intermediate Intercollegiate League competition, the Ontario Agricultural College, Western, Toronto, and Queen's.


This spirit also seemed to characterize his response to the academic challenge at McMaster. As a result, he ended the first session with unsatisfactory standings, an outcome that led to his withdrawal from the University. Dean Kenneth Taylor, one of his economics instructors who probably had a hand in the decision, laconically reported that Ed would not be returning when the new fall term began in 1939.

According to family accounts, Ed's departure from McMaster in the spring of 1939 was followed a few months later by his enlistment in the RCAF, within days indeed of Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain's mournful radio address announcing Britain's declaration of war against Nazi Germany. It was said that Ed did so in part to fulfill a long standing ambition to become a flyer and perhaps emulate the much publicized Billy Bishop and the other Great War aces whose exploits made them the heroes of the postwar generation. His RCAF service record, on the other hand, states that his formal enlistment did not take place until July,1940, some ten months after Canada followed Britain's lead and entered the war.

To be sure, Ed may have tried to enlist early on but was turned back simply because the then understaffed Air Force was not yet in a position to handle a full fledged recruitment program. Like other would-be recruits he settled for a respectable second best when he joined the highly recommended Hamilton Aero Club (HAC) and made arrangements to book a flight instruction course. The organization, put together in 1928 by flying enthusiasts, Royal Flying Corps veterans, and interested local businessmen, clearly reflected the mounting public interest in aviation, which had been further fuelled by Charles Lindberg's dramatic solo flight across the Atlantic in 1927.

In the circumstances Ed's selection of the HAC was a wise one. Deemed one of the best such organizations in the country, it became a member of the Canadian Flying Clubs Association (CFCA), which functioned under the aegis of the Civil Aviation Branch of the Department of National Defence. Ottawa, clearly impressed with the role aviation had played in the Great War, set about cultivating programs that could conceivably create a cadre of trained flyers for possible national emergencies. Over the years the HAC successfully lived up to its mandate, which in the words of one of its founders, was to “assist and encourage British subjects of both sexes to learn to fly”. In the process this “public spirited body” hoped to put Hamilton on the “aerial map”. Naturally every other flying club in the country -- over twenty in all -- hoped to promote the same kind of recognition for its host.

By the time war came and Ed appeared on its doorstep the HAC was in full stride and boasted, among other assets, a highly reputed instructor in the person of Ernest Taylor, who, apart from the standard training, offered an instructor's course as well as blind and night flying ones for the those hopefuls who registered with the organization. In due course Ed joined that steadily growing group, many of whom, like him, would go on to serve with the RCAF. By this time the Club was established in Hamilton's new airport at Mount Hope, located a few miles south of Hamilton on the Niagara Escarpment or “Mountain”, as the locals liked to call it. It replaced the airport originally quartered on the city's eastern outskirts, now threatened by housing developments. Some months after Ed left the HAC it was picked to host and operate No. 10 Elementary Flying Training School (EFTS) under the aegis of the recently instituted British Commonwealth Air Training Plan (BCATP).

After passing the necessary tests at Mount Hope, Ed was duly licensed as a private and commercial pilot as well as being passed as a flying instructor. His training sessions at the Club appeared to have shared time with a day job. On his service record he indicated that before joining the RCAF he had worked as a “labourer”, quite possibly at the family's nursery business, though this cannot be confirmed. Surprisingly the same service record makes no mention of his formative stint at the HAC, where apparently his affable and outgoing presence was always welcome.

Ed's days as a civilian finally came to an end on19 July 1940 when he journeyed down to a recruiting station in Niagara Falls and this time was welcomed into the ranks of the RCAF. Arguably, the fateful and almost unthinkable overseas events of that summer had helped to throw open the recruiting doors to those eager to join up. In lightning moves the Germans had overrun the Low Countries and France and were threatening to invade Britain herself. The Western Front known to the Great War generation had virtually ceased to exist, a remarkable turn of events that cast a long shadow over the troubled summer of 1940.

On the day he enlisted in the midst of all this, Aircraftsman 2 nd Class Frederick Edgar Wellington R66100, was on his way by train to RCAF Trenton, the premier air station in Canada. There he soon had to satisfy his rigorous military instructors that he had indeed passed muster as a pilot in Hamilton, after which they proceeded to introduce him to the fine art of instructing would be airmen how to fly an RCAF trainer. Some four weeks later he was cleared as a full fledged flight instructor and then on 17 August 1940 promoted Sergeant from Leading Aircraftsman.

Ed departed Trenton on 7 th September for his next posting at the St. Catharines Flying Club where he would shortly undertake his duties as a flight instructor. Following his arrival in the familiar surroundings of the “Garden City”, he was granted a leave, but unaccountably without pay. Unpaid or not, he must have used the off-duty hours to visit his many friends in the area, including the Hilton family. Whenever their leaves coincided, he and Bill Hilton may also have arranged get-togethers.

Ed's new service home, the St. Catharines Flying Club, had been formed in 1929 and duly become a member of the CFCA. Like its Hamilton counterpart it had already been selected as the venue of an Elementary Flying Training School (No. 9) under the burgeoning BCATP. The Club's civilian manager, Fred Pattison, a long time aviation enthusiast and promoter, continued to fill that position under the new wartime regime. In part this was dictated in these early days by the shortage of qualified Air Force station commanders. Besides, experienced Club administrators could as civilians circumvent the military red tape and chain of command regulations that sometimes slowed the procurement of the resources essential to a training station's viability and airworthiness.

While these high level arrangements were being sorted out, Ed had time to ponder his own circumstances. He soon enough discovered that he was not the only instructor designate at the St. Catharines station. He was joined by eleven other hopefuls, like him, fresh out of their training exercises at Trenton. Most of them, including Ed, had doubtless hoped that with their training days behind them, they would be assigned to the firing line, that is, to an operational posting overseas. If that was in fact the case, they were in for a disappointment. With so few instructors readily available, the RCAF high command deemed it essential to build up the pool of qualified personnel needed to make the BCATP work and achieve its ambitious goals.

There was another factor in play. A week after Ed's arrival at St. Catharines, momentous events overseas captured headlines in every Canadian newspaper and dominated the country's radio news programs. The crucial aerial Battle of Britain, upon which that country's and the Allied war effort's survival hinged, had been won, albeit narrowly, by RAF Fighter Command, thus forestalling a German invasion of England. After all the calamitous events that had gone before, this victory was an enormous morale booster that must have energized the BCATP's operations and expedited the training of aircrew for the ultimate table-turning air offensive against the enemy. In this context the efforts of Ed and his fellow instructors across the country took on an even greater significance.

Whether or not Ed fully appreciated all this, he was well aware that on the opening day of No. 9's operations – 14 October 1940 – work was still underway on some of the buildings and installations required on the station. He must also have been on hand for the modest opening ceremony. It consisted primarily of a ceremonial fly past executed by Fred Pattison and a distinguished passenger, Murton Seymour, the chairman of the CFCA, who had been instrumental in bringing No. 9 and other BCATP stations to life.

After the official launch, Ed and the other instructors took up their teaching assignment in earnest. The instruction was carried out principally on the de Havilland Tiger Moth, a two-seater biplane which had made its well received debut in 1931 and become the primary trainer at RAF and later at most BCATP stations. Ed had already come to appreciate the Tiger Moth's qualities at Mount Hope, when he was instructed there by Ernest Taylor, who had introduced the popular aircraft to the Hamilton Aero Club before the war. In the course of his instructional career in the Tiger Moth at 9 EFTS Ed accumulated an impressive total of some 500 flying hours. His youthful exuberance as a pilot can readily be seen in the accompanying photograph.

All the same, the flights that Ed and his trainees took over the Niagara countryside did not thrill everybody on the ground. Some irritated citizens regarded them as an unwelcome intrusion on their lives and livelihood. In tongue-in-cheek fashion Fred Pattison put it this way in the memoir printed in Jack Williams' informative history, Wings over Niagara:

Complaints from residents from Grimsby to the Niagara River surprised me not only by their number but by their nature. It began to look as though life …might cease if aircraft continued to fly over the area. Every creature, animal, fowl and human seemed endangered. Fish were the only ones not affected. Cows were not giving as much milk. Horses were becoming nervous wrecks. Fox on the popular fox farms were devouring their young. Chickens were not laying. Humans working on shift could not sleep, and those retired could not relax. All this because No. 9 aircraft were flying over.

As it tragically turned out Ed's supposedly bothersome flights would be short-lived. On the afternoon of Saturday, 23 November 1940, accompanied by fellow instructor and former Ridley classmate, Flight Sergeant Donald Whitaker, Ed took off from No. 9's airfield to carry out a weather check. He flew not a Tiger Moth this time but a recently acquired Fleet Finch (II 4554), another two-seater biplane trainer. The late November sky was overcast, affording the Finch a ceiling of barely 600 feet.

Minutes after the take off, while flying over nearby Grantham Township, the aircraft suddenly ran into trouble. In what an accident investigation report filed five days later described as “dangerous and unauthorized” low level flying – at 100-150 feet – Ed at one point put the Finch into a “steep climbing turn”, a risky maneuver in the best of times. On this occasion it caused the trainer's engine to stall. The resulting and precipitate nosedive to earth inflicted fatal multiple injuries on Ed and his passenger, both of whom also suffered third degree burns in the impact explosion of the aircraft's gasoline tanks, the smoke from which could be seen for miles around. These were the first casualties at 9 EFTS and were witnessed by most of the station's shocked personnel. Equally shocked was a stricken Bill Hilton when he received the news at Camp Borden, where he was serving as a flight instructor.

On his last fateful flight Ed, who in his college football days had “played with a reckless abandon”, was reputedly inclined to do the same in the air, better to emulate the escapades of storied Great War aces. He may have been among those many male adolescents whose prewar imagination had been fired up by the thrilling re-creation of aerial combat in such popular Hollywood productions as “Dawn Patrol”. Certainly some adventuresome student flyers came close to engaging in the same tactics at 9 EFTS. Apparently they thought of the Tiger Moth as a German aircraft and the Fleet Finch as a Royal Flying Corps machine, and engaged them in a mock reprise of a Billy Bishop-Manfred von Richtofen “dogfight”.

According to an unofficial account, Ed was said to have followed suit on 23 rd November. The story goes that in the course of a staged air battle with another trainer he failed to recover from a steep climb – the one mentioned in the official accident report – which he supposedly made to avoid a tall elm tree at the corner of the airfield.

On 26 th November, just three days after the disaster at 9 EFTS, a grieving Wellington family and a host of friends gathered for the memorial service at Ed's grave site in the Fonthill Cemetery. Thankfully Ed's older brother, William, survived his own wartime service overseas as an officer with the Royal Regiment of Canada and returned from the war to manage the family firm. Meanwhile saddened members of the Hamilton Aero Club who had always enjoyed Ed's lively company, vividly remembered the welcome visit he had paid them on 19 th November, a scant few days before the fatal accident. For its part, the McMaster Alumni News, which diligently kept track of former students and graduates serving in the armed forces, duly reported the tragedy to its readers, some of whom in all likelihood were Ed's one-time teammates on the McMaster Maroons football squad. Years later one of their number, Bill Duncan (Class of '40), sadly and correctly recalled that Ed was McMaster's first casualty in the Second World War.

Frederick Edgar Wellington is buried in Fonthill Cemetery, Fonthill, Ontario.

C.M. Johnston


ACKNOWLEDGMENTS: The following were kind enough to offer help, direction, recollections, and documentation of various sorts: Alfred Chapman, April Colosima, William Duncan, Sandra Enscat, Leonard Hodges, Lorna Johnston, Barbara McInnis, Michael Murphy, Melissa Richer, Norman Shrive, Douglas Stewart, Sheila Turcon, Jean Wellington, Martha Wellington, and Samuel Woodruff, Jean Wellington (sister-in-law), Martha Wellington (niece), Alfred Chapman, and Sam Woodruff supplied welcome family and anecdotal information as well as photographs. Leonard Hodges, who trained at 9 EFTS, provided information, pictures, and leads while Douglas Stewart, who served in 9 EFTS' ground crew, shared his recollections of the flying accident. Paul Lewis, Ridley College Archivist, and Melissa Richer of the Canadian Baptist Archives furnished material relating respectively to the Ridley and McMaster years. Michael Murphy and April Colosima of McGill University provided leads to sources, among them, the McGill Daily ; Sandra Enscat of the St. Catharines Public Library supplied extracts from the lively and informative Williams book cited below, along with other relevant material from the Special Collections Department. Lorna Johnston offered valuable suggestions and painstakingly proofread the manuscript.

SOURCES: National Archives of Canada / Wartime Personnel Records: Service Record of Sergeant Pilot Frederick Edgar Wellington; Commonwealth War Graves Commission: Commemorative Information on Sgt. Frederick Edgar Wellington; McGill University Archives: McGill Daily, 30 Sept., 5 Oct., 6 Oct., 15 Oct., 27 Oct., 29 Oct., 1 Nov., 3 Nov., 5 Nov., 8 Nov. 1937; Canadian Baptist Archives / McMaster Divinity College: McMaster University Student File 6928, Frederick E. Wellington, Biographical File, Frederick E. Wellington (contains newspaper cuttings); McMaster University Library / Special Collections: Marmor, 1938-9 , 69 [101], 111, Silhouette, 20 Oct. 1938; McMaster Alumni News, Dec. 1940; Hamilton Public Library / Special Collections: Aviation Scrapbook, vol. 1, pp. 37-41; Hamilton Aero Club/ CF Hamilton Organizations and Societies, File 1928-1947: B.W. Hopkins letter, 21 Apr. 1928 (quoted in text); Hamilton Spectator, 25 Nov. 1940; Spencer Dunmore, Wings for Victory: The Remarkable Story of the British Commonwealth Air Training Plan in Canada (Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, 1997 ed.), 58-68, 96, 113, 350; Jack Williams, Wings over Niagara: Aviation in the Niagara District,1911-1944 (St. Catharines: Niagara Aviation Pioneers, 1982), chapters: “The St. Catharines Flying Club” and “World War II – No. 9 E.F.T.S”, which includes the quoted Fred Pattison memoir; Les Allison and Harry Hayward, They Shall Grow Not Old: A Book of Remembrance (Brandon: Commonwealth Air Training Plan Museum, 1996), 804.

Internet: http://en_wikipedia.org/wiki/De_Havilland_Tiger_Moth

[ For related biographies, see William Devaux Woodruff Hilton, Robert John Edgar ]