CHAPTER TWO:

Imagine the flutter of mixed emotions when it was announced in 1943 that the emergency landing strip in Mount Pleasant would become an Air Training Base, to be known as No. 10 Bombing & Gunnery School. The school was originally planned for Charlottetown but instead the capital city’s base became a General Reconnaissance School (observation). Mount Pleasant was chosen because it had a well-elevated plateau overlooking the Northumberland Strait. Pilots could see the runways from a long distance.

The chosen site was 690.63 acres of farmland, with family homes that would need to be moved and the Western Road (Highway No. 2 now known as the Veterans Highway) running right through the planned airport site. The government spent over $45,000 to purchase land, move the houses, and reroute the road.

In a story published in the Holland College Newspaper in January 1998, Leona Milligan talks about her family home being moved. She was onlyfive or six at the time but she recalls there was a lot of activity around the house in order to lift and move it to another location. Two teams o/‘horses, working in shifts, would wind a rope around a capstan, which slowly pulled the building forward. “I remember that it took several days”, she said. "It was so slow that you could hardly feel the house moving at all, but it was greatfun

In many cases people continued to live in their homes during the move. The process was so slow that the dishes didn’t even fall out of the cupboards.