This memorial was presented to the City of Toronto by the Royal Canadian Air Force Association of the Toronto Region on August 1964. The Avro Lancaster Bomber was flown by Canadians in Bomber Command during the Second World War.
The Avro Lancaster was prominently displayed along Toronto's waterfront from 1966 to 1999, when it was moved to a museum at Downsview Park. When the museum closed in 2011, the plane was dismantled and put in storage at the Edenvale Aerodrome in Stayner.
In 2017, Toronto's economic development and culture division issued a call for proposals to "manage and preserve" the bomber. The British Columbia Aviation Museum was awarded custody of the disassembled aircraft in the late summer of 2018. The aircraft, still in pieces, was moved to the Museum's complex near Victoria and the multi-year restoration project is under way.
This Avro Lancaster FM104 was built in Toronto in 1944, but did not see combat service after arriving in the United Kingdom in January 1945. In June 1945, the aircraft returned to Canada and was converted for use in coastal surveillance and search and rescue. It served in that capacity until retired in 1964. The aircraft then spent more than three decades on display at the Toronto lake shore. Restoration work on the aircraft was commenced by the Canadian Air & Space Museum in 1999, but that organization was unable to continue the work after they lost their hangar space to redevelopment.
