Jim Ashworth of British Columbia wanted to become a fighter pilot – so badly that when the Royal Air Force ordered him to become a flight instructor, he deliberately failed the test – twice! His plan worked. He was sent to India, where he flew his Hurricane II-D fighter over occupied Burma, strafing Japanese supply boats.

When Janet Mears of Australia started searching for information about her great-uncle Maxwell Cassidy, killed in a 1944 training accident in Canada, the results were astonishing. Not only did she discover that Max had been in love, she found the Canadian girl he left behind – alive and well, and eager to share her memories. That girl is my mother.

On September 8th, 1944, an RCAF aircraft was flying near the air training base at North Battleford, Saskatchewan when it went into a spin. Killed was Flight-Sergeant William Hashim, aged 24. His passenger was almost certainly the only woman in the RCAF to die in an air crash while on duty: Leading Aircraftwoman and photographer Muriel Almyra North, aged 21.

As a child, I used to lie in bed at night and imagine the ghosts of all the air force veterans around me.

That's because the farm in Saskatchewan where I grew up is a former airfield, one of hundreds created during the Second World War through the British Commonwealth Air Training Plan.