While over in Owen Sound last week we stopped by the Billy Bishop Museum. It is the ancestral home of William Bishop who was a fighter pilot in WWI. He is one of the most famous Canadian fighters of that war as he shot down at least 72 enemy planes ... quite a feat in any conflict! The home is wonderfully restored to the look as he grew up here in the late 1800s and early 1900s before he went off to war. He actually built sort of glider that he got into as a kid and jumped off the roof of the porch here.





This is a nicely restored home and is really in the same condition that he would have experienced as a child around 1900.




There are many large models of the aircraft he flew in accomplishing his scores of victories over the Germans and they are quite detailed. In the corner here is a leather winter flying suit; while keeping the pilot warm and safe from mustard gas, I can't imagine trying to fly an aircraft and shoot down enemy planes in this thing, but he did.

During WWII General Bishop was in charge of training and recruitment and died in his home in Florida in 1956; really outstanding flyer and example for the next generation.