A blog is kind of like a newspaper column. Posts pile up as they're written, by date, one atop the other. Over time it becomes more difficult to find certain articles. A book organizes content by chapter and subject, but a blog is more like one long, unordered scroll.
Thus, I've created this index as a Table of Contents. The titles below are links that will take you directly to the story.
A 1946 City of Winnipeg transportation study noted that “Stevenson Field is exceptionally well located, with relationship to the central business district and the railway and bus terminal, being less than four miles away.”1 Anticipating “remarkable growth in private and commercial flying,” planners urged further expansion and development of Stevenson Field. The impact on adjacent residential neighbourhoods, however, garnered little attention, aside from a shrugged admission that living under a flight path lowers land values.
Predictions for growth were not exaggerated. Stevenson Field (now Winnipeg James Armstrong Richardson International Airport) developed as a major hub. In 2025 the airport in St. James was the “seventh busiest airport in Canada by passenger traffic, serving 4,412,013 passengers in 2025, and the 11th busiest airport in Canada by aircraft movements in the previous year.”2
The airport also accommodates military operations with Canadian Forces Base Winnipeg. As homeowners south of the airport learned, military flights don’t just add to air traffic, they sometimes present unique dangers.
The risk of living near a runway hit home when a jet hit a home.
In 1950 Winnipeg was bracing for an historic spring flood. But on April 17 news was dominated by the story of a disabled Vampire jet that crash landed on College (since renamed Collegiate) Street in St. James.
A Vampire Jet crash killed one man and injured two others at 11:23 a.m. Sunday as it swung in for a landing at Stevenson field.
Dead is Lorimer Fairhall, 41, of 391 College street.
Seriously injured is FO. Vic Barber, pilot of the R.C.A.F. craft.
A third man—Gilbert Hughes, of 405 College street, St. James—received slight head injuries.
The R.C.A.F. auxiliary fighter aircraft was coming in for a landing when it swerved from its glide-path, smashed through a garage and came to rest against a house in St. James.
Mr. Fairhall was killed instantly as the wing of the speedy jet fighter sliced through the roof of the garage where he was working on the family car.
The pilot of the aircraft, a reserve officer with the City of Winnipeg 402 fighter bomber reserve squadron, was thrown clear of the plane and taken to Deer Lodge hospital.
Hughes, against whose house the plane came to rest, suffered slight injuries to his head.3
An RCAF investigator examines the garage where Lorimer Fairhall was killed by a falling timber. The path of the Vampire is evident.4
At age 27, Flying Officer Victor Barber may have been new to Vampires, but was not a rookie. The Battle of Britain veteran and Spitfire pilot had 1,500 hours in the air, and had been a prisoner of war.
“FO. Vic Barber, Jet pilot who was critically injured in the crash.”5
Born in Aberdeen, Scotland, FO. Barber was raised and educated in Carberry, Man., where he attended the Carberry collegiate.
He joined the R.C.A.F. in 1942 and served overseas as a Spitfire fighter pilot with the City of Winnipeg squadron. On a combat strafing mission April 20, 1945, his plane was struck by heavy flak. With the starboard wing shot away and the engine on fire, he bailed out over enemy territory.
FO. Barber evaded capture for nine days before being taken prisoner. He was released by allied forces May 2, returned to his squadron and continued flying until the war ended.
Retiring from the air force after the war, he joined the reserve squadron in April, 1949.6
When his jet’s engine quit, Barber radioed air traffic control, lowered his flaps and wheels, and tried to pancake land in an empty space. He tried his best, he later said, but hit the ground eight seconds from the runway, a quarter of a mile (.4 km) from the airport boundary.
Missed by that much. Google map showing how close 391 Collegiate Street is to Runway 31.
The disabled Vampire knifed through a garage behind 391 College Street at 100 miles per hour.
The Vampire tore a chunk out of the south wall of the garage, took away the north wall and roof, ploughed through the back yards of homes for 60 yards until it came to a stop.
The jet either made a complete somersault or ground-looped as it stopped at the rear of 405 College St. There the wrecked plane was facing the south.7
RCAF officers and technicians examining the crash site. Vampire 17023 came to rest after shearing off the back shed at 405 College Street. Gilbert Hughes was slightly injured when he hit his head on the wall phone in the kitchen. He was treated in hospital and returned home.
There was no fire. The nose of the jet was sheared off to behind the cockpit, and Barber was thrown from the jet, landing face down in mud.
The first people at the wreckage could not find the pilot for a short time. Suddenly someone called “Here he is!” FO Barber was found near a fence, 30 feet from the plane, covered in mud.
He was still conscious. An air force officer who had arrived from the airport cut off his parachute harness. Part of his foot was found nearby.8
Still conscious and in shock, the injured pilot immediately asked Verna La Roche, a registered nurse on the scene, “Did I kill anybody?” Unaware of Mr. Fairhall, she said no, and the pilot was very relieved to hear it. La Roche later explained that she would not have told Barber yes in any case. She washed the mud from his face that was “so filled with mud it was impossible to see his features.” When the pilot asked about his right leg, severed just above the ankle, La Roche told him it was broken.
An RCAF ambulance rushed Barber to Deer Lodge Hospital. On April 18, doctors reported Barber’s condition as “fair to good.”
“GAVE FIRST AID TO PILOT: Mrs. Verna La Roche, 30, registered nurse, of 398 College St., heard the sound of a jet crash Sunday and rushed from her home. She was directed to where Pilot Victor Barber had been thrown, and gave him first aid. His first concern, she said, was whether ‘anyone had been killed.’ He didn't appear concerned about himself, she said, although he was severely injured.”9
Don McLardy, who lived across the street from the crash, was the first to find Lorimer Fairhall. Working on his car in his father’s garage at 391 College Street, Fairhall did not hear the silent jet approaching. When the jet banked and its wing slashed through the garage, he was immediately killed when struck on the head by a falling timber.
“LORIMER FAIRHALL of 391 College street, St. James, who was killed when the jet crashed into a garage where he was working.”10
There were plenty of questions. The provincial coroner, Dr. I. O. Fryer, announced an inquest into Fairhall’s death. The RCAF also launched an immediate investigation, and assembled a board of inquiry.
The Municipality of St. James wanted jets banned from the airport and restricted to a military airfield outside of Winnipeg. City Alderman A. E. Brotman agreed, and requested a report to study the situation. He admitted he was influenced by the recent Vampire crash and an airliner crash in Minneapolis.
He maintained that where aircraft had the choice of routes in approaching an airport they should use the route over the less populated areas of the city. “As a city we should take cognisance of the risk to our civilian population from planes,” he added.
He claimed Trans-Canada Airline planes bound for Eastern Canada always left Stevenson Airport and flew over heavily populated areas of South Winnipeg.11
Vampire restored and flown by the Waterloo Warbirds, Breslau, Ontario12
The Coroner’s jury confirmed Fairhall’s death from “a fractured skull and lacerations to the brain.” The inquest also “recommended special tribute for the pilot of the jet plane, FO. V. E. Barber, for his efforts to keep the loss of human life to a minimum.”13 The jury did not address technical aspects of the jet, leaving that inquiry to the RCAF.
The pilot was certainly not faultless, however, and the commendation from the Coroner’s jury was premature. The Aviation Safety Network summarized the case, based on the RCAF Accident Investigation Branch story in the Saskatoon Star–Phoenix:
Pilot Vic Barber with 402 Sqn RCAF, was briefed to carry out two complete circuits and landings at Stevenson Field in Vampire 17023. This was to be his second hour flying the Vampire. He was instructed to be on the ground one hour after takeoff. One hour after engine start the pilot had completed some local flying and the two circuits as ordered.
However, contrary to orders, the pilot took off for a third time. He climbed to seven thousand feet and carried out some additional local flying exercises. When the pilot returned to the airfield, he was advised of a runway change. He proceeded to complete a dummy circuit to ascertain the amount of drift.
The Vampire had now been airborne for one hour and twenty-eight minutes. As the pilot made his final approach, the engine failed due to lack of fuel. The aircraft crashed into the backyard of a home on Collegiate Street, approximately one mile southeast of today’s runway 31, killing the owner and seriously injuring the pilot. The accident could have been avoided had the pilot followed orders.14
In 2025 Brent Gair shed more light on the Vampire case:
The training regimen was sketchy with no two seat Vampires then available. Training usually consisted of the transitioning pilot sitting in the cockpit while an experienced pilot explained how everything worked. […] On final approach for Runway 31, the Vampire ran out of fuel.
There was nothing to do. Vampires did not have ejection seats. The complicated bail-out procedure needed a lot more altitude than Barber had on final approach. He had to ride this one to the ground.15
Michael Kaye, commenting on the above, added, “About half of the Vampires in RCAF service crashed […] training was minimal but the aircraft also suffered from engine failures, hydraulic failures and canopies falling off, many of the issues related to cold weather.”
Vampire Mk. III, serial no. 17023 (left foreground), served two years with the RCAF in Winnipeg. It was Struck Off Strength (SOS) on May 4, 1950.16
Waterloo Warbirds, “RCAF Dehavilland Vampire DH-115 start up and Low Pass!” [4:03]
Vampires were retired in the late 1950s, replaced in RCAF service by the Canadair Sabre.17
The Vampire crash of 1950 would not be the last time an airplane crashed near the airport. It wasn't even the last bomber that crashed in St. James.
Sources(retrieved February 24, 2026)
Metropolitan Planning Committee, Winnipeg Town Planning Commission, Preliminary Report on Transportation: Part of Metropolitan Plan for Greater Winnipeg, 1946. p. 25
