FM159 wears the markings of a different Lancaster - F2-T, callsign T for Tommy, the aircraft in which Squadron Leader Ian Bazalgette earned a posthumous Victoria Cross over France on 4 August 1944. Bazalgette, born in Calgary, was 25. With his bomber on fire and two crewmen wounded, he held the burning aircraft level long enough for the others to bail out, then tried to land it rather than crash into the village below. He did not survive. The volunteers who repainted FM159 in his livery chose the marking deliberately. The aircraft in the hangar never crossed the English Channel, never flew an operational sortie, never lost a crewman. But she carries the name of a man who did all of those things, so that visitors who walk under her wings remember what the empty seats inside meant.

The town of Nanton bought FM159 for $513 in 1960. She had been a maritime patrol aircraft and a photo survey platform, then a gate guardian, and finally surplus. For a quarter century she sat on concrete beside Highway 2, three Lancasters' worth of Alberta weather working into her aluminum skin. By 1985, the wings were sagging and the cockpit had been vandalized. A handful of locals formed the Nanton Lancaster Society and began the slow work of bringing her back - inboard engines first, then outboards, then control surfaces, then a hangar around her. In 1991 she ran an engine for the first time in three decades. In 2014 she taxied. The work was done by volunteers on weekends. Most of them had no aviation background. They simply did not want her to disappear.

Outside the hangar stands a long wall of polished granite, etched with the names of Canadians killed serving with Bomber Command. There are more than 10,000 of them. The wall does not separate the dead by rank, by squadron, or by year. It does not editorialize about strategic bombing or about the German cities those aircraft attacked. It simply lists the names, in alphabetical order, in a quiet courtyard on the Alberta prairie. Families come from across the country to find a great-uncle, a grandfather, a name passed down. The youngest were 18. Their crews of seven - pilot, flight engineer, navigator, bomb aimer, wireless operator, and two gunners - usually died together, which is why so many of the names cluster within a few alphabetical letters of each other, killed on the same night over the same target.

Several times each summer, the volunteers open the hangar doors and roll FM159 out onto the apron. The starting sequence is slow and deliberate. One Merlin coughs, then catches, then settles into the unmistakable burble that anyone who has heard a Lancaster on film recognizes. Then the second. Then the third and fourth. Up close, the sound is physical - a heavy, layered rumble that vibrates the air and the ground and the spectators standing back behind the rope line. It is not an air show. There is no flying display, no aerobatics, no spectacle in the ordinary sense. The aircraft taxis a short distance and returns. Visitors stand quietly. Many of them, particularly the older ones, are crying. The volunteers describe the engine runs not as performances but as acts of remembrance, and that is exactly how they feel.

FM159 dominates the hangar, but she is not alone. A de Havilland Mosquito sits under restoration, its laminated wood structure being rebuilt rib by rib. A Halifax tail turret, an Avro Anson, a Bristol Bolingbroke, and a long line of aero engines - Merlins, Hercules, Wasps - fill the floor and the walls. Display cases hold flight logs, escape kits, evading-and-escape maps printed on silk, ration books, telegrams that begin REGRET TO INFORM. One case holds a photograph of a crew of seven smiling outside their aircraft on a sunny afternoon in 1943. The caption notes which of them survived the night. The museum has grown by accretion, donation by donation, and it is run almost entirely by volunteers. For a town of 2,000, the achievement is staggering. For the men whose names are on the wall, it is the kind of remembrance they were promised and rarely received.