In a corner of the NWT, a vast World War Two collection

“War memorabilia is what I’m after.”

Cliff Kimble has amassed a 3,500-piece collection of World War Two artifacts in Hay River – one focused on “anything aviation or propeller-driven.”

“I quit drinking and I quit smoking, so I had to do something. I had to have a vice, so that was my vice,” said Kimble.

“I got it all right there. Best man-cave a guy could have.”

The size of a one-room museum, the private collection features military replicas, uniforms, books, clocks, belt buckles, coins, badges, gear and tools of the time. A long string of bullets lines the base of a bookshelf that holds hundreds of books on aviation, the military and the Northwest Territories.

While admission is free, it does require a private invitation from Kimble. For those fortunate enough, this extensive museum may take hours to examine.

“Some people do ask to come over,” he said.

With shows currently screening like Masters of the Air – an Apple dramatization of life in an Allied heavy bomber unit – there is renewed interest in the war and its aerial battles.

Kimble has been buying World War Two aviation antiques since the early 1980s, and estimates he has cumulatively spent around $150,000 on his collection.

One of Kimble’s possessions is a Marconi T1154 transmitter stacked on top of an R1155 receiver. This vintage radio set was used in larger aircraft like the Avro Lancaster.

When an acquaintance stumbled upon the radio in Alberta, he bought the antique with Kimble in mind.

“He knew I was really into collecting this stuff, so he must’ve been pretty certain that I was going to buy it,” said Kimble. “Some of the stuff was missing, but I managed to get most of it.”

While the radio is now complete, Kimble doesn’t know whether it would work today.

World War Two aircraft had no heating, so pilots flew wearing specific uniforms to withstand the cold. Kimble has collected examples of the inner layer and jacket pilots would wear while in the air.

“The planes weren’t pressurized and they had to breathe oxygen. They had masks,” said Kimble.

“A lot of people don’t know that, and I love to explain that to them when they do show up, because they just think of the modern airplanes where you can go in with your shorts and sandals.”

“I’ve got a few oxygen masks there. I’ve got the bottle that they tie on their leg,” explained Kimble. “It’s a small bottle that’ll last so long, so if they bail out, the parachute opens, they can breathe oxygen till they get down to where there’s oxygen. Called a bail-out bottle.”

A few years ago, Kimble tried to buy a dummy 50-caliber machine gun – as would have been used in some aircraft – for $1,500. However, he said the replica wasn’t allowed to cross the Canadian border.

“They said: how would you like it if you were an RCMP or something, and you went to somebody’s house and they come out with this 50-caliber machine gun pointing at you?” Kimble recalled.

“I said: that’s not what I’m buying it for. I collect World War Two aviation stuff, and it’s a dummy gun, it’s not a real gun.”

The book collection stretches to nearly 60 Air Transport Command route and map books, 188 aircraft manuals, 43 aircraft engine books, and more than 400 other miscellaneous manuals or course books.

Kimble uses eBay to buy pieces from around the world, though some items also came from his wife’s grandfather, who served in the army.

Ever since Kimble can remember, he liked aircraft. In high school in the early 1970s, he would fly with his cousin Jim McAvoy, a local pilot, in a Beaver or a Cessna 185.

Kimble has flown two aircraft in his life: a Cessna 170 and a P-40 Warhawk.

“Not too many actual pilots can say they circled the West Edmonton Mall at 2,500 feet, but I did,” said Kimble. “And I don’t have a pilot’s licence.”

Family mystery

Jim’s brother, Chuck McAvoy, was a bush pilot whose aircraft went missing while flying over the Barrenlands east of the Great Slave Lake with two geologists in 1964.

The mystery was finally solved when wreckage from McAvoy’s plane was found nearly 40 years later.

“No one else would take the trip,” said Kimble, who was six years old when Chuck went missing. “He took the trip and never made it back.”

“I’ve got a picture of him standing on the float of an airplane with his knife, that they found still on the seat of the airplane,” said Kimble. “He must’ve got hurt bad or died in the crash, and that’s what was left, his knife.”

Kimble says he collects war antiques to honour the memory of the people who served.

“I don’t think it should be forgotten. A lot of people lost their lives to give us our freedom today,” said Kimble. “If I can preserve some of it for people to see, it’s great.”

There are two what-ifs he often thinks about. First, what if World War Two had ended differently? And second, what if he had packed up his precious collection and moved it to Enterprise before last summer, as he had planned?

Kimble lost his Enterprise home in last summer’s wildfires.

“I’m so glad that I hadn’t moved it to Enterprise yet, because I would’ve lost it all when the fire came,” he said.

“I would have nothing left.”