• During the Second World War, Moncton High School taught airplane engine mechanics to maintenance workers from all over the world

He found out Moncton High School had a connection to that conflict beyond the fact that some of its graduates went overseas to fight.

Tracking down those alumni who died in the war was the main purpose of Evans, who used to be the head of the school’s history department, but now works in a basement office with the Department of Education's e-learning unit. Putting together a list to honour former students who gave their’ lives was a project that started 10 years ago and continues today.

Along the way they've collected many stories related to the school during war time. One came from former Moncton resident Hazen Marr, who now lives on Vancouver Island.

Marr attended Moncton High and his father taught auto mechanics at the school from 1945 to 1957. But before Marr’s father — also named Hazen — joined the faculty, he spent four years teaching airplane engine mechanics at the school to maintenance workers from all, the world eager to join the Allied war effort.

Evans was surprised when he saw the photos Marr sent him.

“That’s right across the hall,” Evans says, recalling his amazement as he looked out his office doorway at what's now a computer lab.

Marr remembers his dad's workshop well. When he was 10, he'd go there on Saturdays while his father was making frames to hoist the engines for Spitfires, Hurricanes and other war planes.

His father was a mechanic in Halifax, but in 1940 was recruited by the government as part of the British Commonwealth Air Training Plan, which British Prime Minister Winston Churchill called Canada's greatest contribution to the Allied victory.

“Skies in Europe were dangerous and in Canada they were relatively safe,” says Stephen Payne, curator of aeronautical technology at the National Aviation Museum in Ottawa, explaining where the plan came from.

Canada, Great Britain, Australia and New Zealand were involved in creating and funding the program that saw more than 130,000 pilots, navigators, bombers, mechanics, air gunners and other role players from more than 80 countries come to Canada for training on the more than 200 training fields and support units. Payne says most of those air strips and hangars are still in use today.

Payne says Moncton had an elementary flight training school, a higher level school where pilots trained in planes similar to what they'd fly overseas and a personnel depot that would process those who finished their training and were heading to war.

Then there was the basement of Moncton High School, filled with plane engines.

The Marr family was originally from Halifax but moved to Ontario so Hazen Sr. could learn about plane engines. In December,1941 he was posted to Moncton.

“It was just about the time of Pearl Harbour,” the younger Hazen recalls.

He remembers some of the men who trained to be part of the Allied ground crews. There were lots of Australians, but also men from Norway and France — countries occupied by Germany at the time.

“They were keen to get into it,” says Marr. “Their families were under the heel of the Germans.”

He says the training school was shut down in 1945 as the war was winding down and his father joined the faculty and started teaching auto mechanics again.

“I think it's a justifiable source of pride for all Canadians,” says Marr of participation in the training plan.

Unfortunately, it's tough to find a record of the school’s war-time contribution.

Steve Harris, chief historian for the Department of National Defence's Directorate of History and Heritage, says those in charge weren't always concerned with details such as where training was taking place.

“They didn't care what came out of Moncton,” he says. “They wanted to know how many pilots and navigators they had.”

Harris says many records we assume today were important enough for people to keep during war time simply don't exist.

“They might well have had a training centre, I just don't have any record of a school there. I have no idea what it is,” he says.

Evans has learned during his efforts to locate former students who fought in the war that records aren't always complete. He says it's a long process, but the quest to track down names and stories connected to the school during the Second World War will continue.

“We feel we need to do this. It's a part of the history of this place.”