I remember having a high-school debate with friends: had we been born 40 or 50 years earlier, what role would we have wanted during the Second World War? While almost no one chose the Canadian Army, the debate over being in the Royal Canadian Navy or the Royal Canadian Air Force was fierce: on a ship, friends argued, you had a chance to jump into the water to save yourself, while being trapped in a metal box hurtling through the air didn’t leave much hope if one’s engines failed.
But, as I stand in the Exhibition Hall of Base 31 in Picton, Ont., and gaze up at the majestic Lancaster bomber (KB882), I can’t help but picture myself in an RCAF uniform. According to the Canadian Warplane Heritage Museum website, the Lancaster was the RAF/RCAF’s “only heavy bomber capable of carrying the 12,000[-pound] ‘Tallboy’ and 22,000[-pound] ‘Grand Slam’ bombs” and it “won a place for itself in history” at the Ruhr dams in 1943 and the sinking of the German battleship Tirpitz in 1944.
“It’s here until 2034, for now,” says Alexandra De Gasperis, vice-president of DECO Communities Inc. The aircraft is on loan from National Air Force Museum of Canada. “They want to build a permanent home for it in Trenton.”
And speaking of permanent homes, 7,500 of them will eventually surround this almost-intact, 28-hectare 1940 military base on the escarpment above Picton.
The new pickleball court is a partnership with Toronto’s Fairgrounds Public Racket Club.Deco Communities Inc.
“Now that sounds staggering,” continues Ms. De Gasperis, “but it’s important to note that that was a number embedded in the secondary plan and it was a number put forward by the county [Prince Edward County]; this is part of their planned growth area prior to us even purchasing the site.”
At more than 300 hectares, there is plenty of room. And the various housing clusters – which will contain stacked townhouses at $299,900 as well as mews houses, bungalows and two-storey houses at higher prices – won’t lay a finger on the heritage portion, despite (or perhaps because of) the fact that six developers have teamed up for the gargantuan project.
It’s already been a huge undertaking since PEC Community Partners Inc. (the six developers) purchased the site in 2021. I first saw the site two years ago, after PEC had already held an Idea Fair, run focus groups and surveys, and begun regular concerts in the Drill Hall. Yet, the site still felt raw and lacked cohesion.
In September of 2026, I arrived to find a bold, concrete-and-Corten-steel roadside sign, laughing pickleballers on new courts (a partnership with Toronto’s Fairgrounds Public Racket Club), way-finding aplenty, and established amenities such as The Commissary and a much-needed daycare.
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“Do you want to sit in the front?” offers Tammy Sweeney, general manager of Base 31. I accept, and our little group – which also includes Kathryn Randle, vice-president of planning and development at Rockport Group – fills the back rows of the golf cart. As we drive, bumpily, to Exhibition Hall, Ms. De Gasperis says that after stormwater management is addressed, the roads will be smoothed out.
After ogling the Lancaster bomber, I peruse Exhibition Hall’s other exhibits, such as a reproduction of the Avro Arrow scale models that were stored and tested here in the 1950s, a series of love letters between an RCAF member and his girlfriend, and, under glass, uniforms and other artifacts.
“Some of them are actually radioactive,” says Ms. De Gasperis, “so we can’t display them.”
When it opened in 1941, No. 31 Bombing and Gunnery School was part of a network of training bases built in Canada under the British Commonwealth Air Training Plan, and included not only six massive hangars, but officer’s and men’s quarters, two hospitals, a dental clinic, maintenance and paint shops, Quonset huts, a hostess house/fire chief’s cottage, parachute storage building, a theatre/dance hall, and, obviously, a series of runways. Airmen-in-training came from all over the United Kingdom, Australia, New Zealand and South Africa. Base 31 was decommissioned in 1969.
Deco Communities Inc.
And, says Ms. De Gasperis, many of the men came back: “The men who trained here often took up roots here after the war. … Many of them came back and married here because there was a matchmaker that organized dances.”
En route to the Drill Hall/Gymnasium, we pass one of the very few buildings, an “H-hut,” that will have to come down (due to restoration efforts under Jacqui Burley, manager of the site under previous owners, there are only a few). The Drill Hall, however, has been completely restored with new shingles in the same green as the vintage versions, new flooring in parts (original portions show the basketball markings), along with new plumbing and washrooms; it’s a beautiful room that has hosted acts such as The Sheepdogs, Blue Rodeo and Judy Collins.
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Our next stop, Hangar 6, is mostly empty, but fun to experience for scale. But it’s our fourth stop that gets my neck hair standing at attention: the monolithic, buttressed concrete wall that gunners, from the air, would use for target-practice. Since there are only a few pockmarks, I remark that it must have been patched over after every dozen strafings.
Next, we tour “Building 3,” an entirely refurbished H-hut building that contains the Hub Child & Family Centre (daycare), Wildlings Play Café and the Arts Collective. In here, what strikes me, again, is scale: the Hub alone is 3,750 square feet, the café is 2,400 sq. ft. Outside, we admire (and play in) the Sensory Garden by Wild Child Regeneration.
And speaking of gardens, PEC Community Partners is promising 110 hectares of green space, 10,000 metres of walking trails and a great deal of public art; right now, nearby Oeno Gallery has collaborated to create an Art Walk.
It’s heady stuff indeed, made all the richer by the commitment to preservation.
“This is a national treasure,” finishes Ms. De Gasperis. “We haven’t had a single ounce of government funding for anything that we’ve done here.”
Editor’s note: A previous version of this article incorrectly stated that the Lancaster KB882 bomber is on loan to Base 31 from the RCAF. It is on loan to the National Air Force Museum of Canada. This article has also been updated to correct the starting price for stacked townhomes in the development; they will be sold for $299,900, not $299,000 as previously stated.