Has the cold, miserable March weather got you down?
It sounds like what you need is a tropical interlude, aloha-style.
Fortunately, the folks at the Canadian Museum of Flight in Langley have got your back.
They’re organizing a High Flyin’ Hawaiian Night, complete with a Luau, live auction and a grand prize draw, where you can win a trip for two to wonderful, warm Waikiki.
The March 31 event is the major fundraiser of the year for the museum, located at 5333 216 Street in Langley.
“We wanted to get away from the formal gala format,” museum general manager Terry Brunner said. “So this year we decided to offer a Hawaiian vacation as a door prize and focus the event around a sun and surf theme.”
Thanks to sponsors like Hawkair, Central Mountain Air, Harbour Air and Air North, there are some nifty items up for bid in the silent and live auction.
How’s a fly-along with the formation team, Fraser Blues, sound, or a flight in one of the museum’s vintage aircraft?
A houseboat vacation – donated by the Rotary Club of Salmon Arm – and a Gulf Island retreat are also on the block.
Among the boxes of merchandise arriving at the museum is one that’s sealed and marked ‘From the Headquarters of Hawaii Five-O.’
“I don’t know what’s inside,” says Carla Deminchuk, one of the event’s organizers. “I’m almost scared to look!”
Several aircraft at the museum claim a Cloverdale connection. One, the Waco INF, a sport plane built in 1930, was the oldest flying airplane in western Canada until it fell into disrepair about eight years ago. Volunteers hope to get it back in the air this year.
Cloverdale residents may recognize it from the former B.C. Transportation Museum, which closed in 1992. 
Another Cloverdale legacy, a Douglas DC-3 known as The Spirit of the Skeena (see photo at left) that was moved from Terrace, is now also at the Canadian Museum of Flight in Langley. It was built in 1940, and ended its flying career with Trans Provincial Airlines as a spare parts ship.
The Canadian Flight Museum is run by a non-profit society that has a membership of about 400. There’s a core group of volunteers who help rebuild and maintain the planes. “We have lots of retired airline mechanics who are really invaluable,” Deminchuk says. “They donate all their services and time.”
Over the course of 20 years, volunteers were able to painstakingly rebuild the Waco Cabin – the museum’s flagship plane, donated by Dr. Pickup, B.C.’s flying doctor – after obtaining the original manufacturer blueprints from the Smithsonian Museum.
At its core, the museum’s goal is to preserve Canada’s aviation past as a living legacy to visitors and volunteers alike.
As one museum volunteer noted, “We never know who is going to walk through the door. They may be elderly, troubled or lonely. We give them something to do. They find a renewed sense of purpose,” the volunteer continued. “I recently had an epiphany: are we looking after the airplanes or are the airplanes really looking after us?”
The event is the museum’s major fundraiser of the year. Proceeds will be used to maintain the museum’s aging hangar, which has a leaky roof but has undergone some recent improvements. Deminchuk says the hangar is so old, it’s thought to have been built for Canada’s first machine-powered flight – but others swear it’s older than that. Organizers are hoping to secure enough funding to pay for a new roof.
The museum is open every day from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m.
For more information, visit www.canadianflight.org.
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