“Norman Reid was an admirable person in all respects,” says AAM President Rod MacLeod.
Reid was born in Edmonton in 1923 and attended Victoria High School. He joined the RCAF and attended No. 2 Air Observers School (AOS) in the very hangar the Alberta Aviation Museum now occupies. His war service, as a navigator on Wellington bombers, took him on 41 missions, including a hair-raising escape after being shot down over Yugoslavia. You can read about that in this Globe and Mail story.
After the war, deciding he wanted to build bridges rather than bomb them, he enrolled in the University of Alberta’s i Civil Engineering Program, later attaining a master degree in Structural Engineering. After a stint with the provincial highways department he co-founded Reid Crowther & Partners, an engineering company that would go on to open offices across the country.
In the 1970’s, Reid purchased a deHavilland Tiger Moth and, with his instructor, flew it low and slow across the country.
When it was time to retire the aircraft, he chose to gave it to the Alberta Aviation Museum.
“He could easily have donated his Tiger to Calgary or to the Victoria museum,” says MacLeod. “But thought it properly belonged here. I negotiated the gift and came to know him well.”
Reid died in British Columbia, where he retired, in April of this year. He was 94. You can read his full obituary here.
We extend our condolences to his family and friends. The Tiger Moth is an important part of Blatchford Field’s aviation heritage and it will help tell Edmonton’s important war-time story for generations to come.