Audacious echo from an earlier time

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 01/08/2025 (237 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Last week, it was reported that the Royal Canadian Navy intends to retire eight of its 12 Kingston-class maritime coastal defence vessels in the next few months.

“Paying off” ceremonies will be held in Halifax this fall for HMCS Shawinigan, HMCS Summerside, HMCS Goose Bay, HMCS Glace Bay and HMCS Kingston. Ceremonies will also be held in Esquimalt for HMCS Saskatoon, HMCS Whitehorse and HMCS Brandon. The remaining four ships — HMCS Moncton, HMCS Yellowknife, HMCS Edmonton and HMCS Nanaimo — will operate out of the Canadian Forces’ Halifax naval base, but will be retired within the next three years.

You read that right. HMCS Brandon will soon be shut down for good, and there is a reasonable possibility she will be sent to the scrap heap at some point in the future.

Since the ship was commissioned on June 5, 1999, she has been based at CFB Esquimalt on the Pacific coast. From that posting, she has carried out several missions, including participating in Operation Carribe — the Canadian Armed Forces’ contribution to the elimination of illegal trafficking in the Caribbean Sea and the eastern Pacific Ocean by criminal organizations. She also participated in the 2022 RIMPAC multinational naval exercise.

The existence and service of HMCS Brandon is a point of pride for this city, just as the city once took pride in the service of the first HMCS Brandon (K149), a Flower-class corvette that participated in the Battle of the Atlantic during the Second World War. That ship was scrapped in 1945, just months after the end of that war. There is little, if anything, in our city to remind Brandonites of its existence, let alone its contribution to Canada’s war effort.

There were once dozens of Flower-class corvettes in the Canadian navy, but only HMCS Sackville has survived. It is moored in Halifax Harbour, behind the Museum of the Atlantic.

That’s a shame. Men from all over Canada, including Brandon, served in those small ships that made huge contributions toward winning the war, yet there are few memorials of them and what their crews accomplished.

Canada is about to repeat that mistake with the retirement of the Kingston-class ships, including HMCS Brandon — and when they’re gone, they’re gone. That is, unless a community like Brandon does something about it.

Suspend your skepticism for a moment and asked yourself these questions: Wouldn’t it be something if there was a way to bring HMCS Brandon to its home here in Brandon? Wouldn’t the ship be a tremendous tribute to naval veterans from the Prairies, and a unique tourist attraction that exists nowhere else on the Prairies?

Ships like HMCS Brandon are constructed in pieces that are welded together to form a complete vessel. How hard or expensive would it be to cut the ship back into those sections and transport them to Brandon, where they could be welded back together to re-assemble the complete ship?

We often talk about the need for something in the city to draw tourists from the Trans-Canada Highway. A full-sized warship that served in active duty could do that. As to where it could be mounted on display, the Riverbank Discovery Centre, Dinsdale Park, the Keystone Centre grounds, the airport, or even on vacant land downtown are just a few potential locations.

The key is that it would be something no other Prairie community has.

Longtime Brandonites of a certain age will recall that in 1969, a committee of local leaders proposed that the HMCS Bonaventure aircraft carrier be sold to Brandon instead of being scrapped. According to reports in the Sun from that time, the proponents of the idea reasoned it would be a great tourist attraction and devoted considerable time, energy and money working on the proposal.

In 1969, just months after the Apollo 11 moon landing, our city’s leaders seemed to believe that nothing was impossible. They had the imagination, courage and determination necessary to get big things done right here in Brandon. Our city needs that kind of thinking and leadership again.

Bonaventure was a huge ship, and there was no realistic way of getting it here. HMCS Brandon is a much smaller ship, however, at just 181 feet long. It might be entirely unrealistic — impossible even — for the ship to be moved here, but isn’t it worth at least asking if it can be done? Could it be the kind of audacious idea that the Department of National Defence, and all levels of government, can get behind?

Could it be the kind of “big idea” that helps Brandon once again be a city with big dreams — to believe in itself again — with all the enthusiasm, energy and determination to make those dreams come true?

HMCS Brandon could be on her way to the scrap pile by the end of the year. The clock is ticking. Are any of our elected leaders willing to take on this project? Who among them is willing to pick up the phone and try to make it happen?