Looking back - The No. 2 Wireless Training School

Text by Zachary Robertson | Photos from SAIT Archives
08 July 2020

black and white photo of four men from the No. 2 Wireless School — *By digitizing a little-known collection of Second World War records, SAIT's Archives is helping researchers and families worldwide connect with past lives lived on campus.*

From September 1940 through April 1945, the Provincial Institute of Technology and Art (as SAIT was known before 1960) was taken over as part of the British Commonwealth Air Training Plan and renamed the No. 2 Wireless School. Thousands of pilots and crew members from Commonwealth and Allied countries trained here, and today an extensive collection of rare photographs, records and documents from this period is housed in the SAIT Archives.

Because approximately one-third of the students were Australian, the Archives has partnered with the National Archives of Australia to digitize nearly 200 items, providing vital information to Canadian military and aeronautic researchers including renowned historian Clarence Simonson, and priceless answers for families tracing the lost stories of loved ones who fought or died in the war.

_{March 14, 1945, men and women of the No. 2 Wireless School pose for a photo outside the main building of the Provincial Institute of Technology and Art.}

To read more about the experiences of the people who lived and trained at the No. 2 Wireless School, visit Simonson’s blog, Preserving the Past.

This story was originally written for the Spring 2020 issue of LINK magazine — SAIT in the time of COVID.