Nov 30, 2016


A few weeks ago it was mentioned, in the Arden column, about a gun donated to Arden for their Cenotaph.  After a conversation with the donator and then some research, I felt it was necessary to bring some attention to this unique and generous individual.  Geoffrey Landon-Browne was born in England and relocated, with his wife, to Carp, Ontario in 2008.  He has refurbished a Land Rover, is in the midst of rebuilding a Volkswagon Iltis but his pride and joy is the work he is doing on the flight deck of a Lancaster heavy bomber plane.  He is a millwright and machinist by trade and has a garage stocked full of metalworking equipment and many mechanical parts acquired by a variety of ways.  

I asked him why he decided to donate the gun to Arden and he told me he really did not know why, he just had a compulsion to do it.   Passing by the large Arden sign, on his way to Toronto he recalled the documentary “The Lost Highway” and felt a connection, one that he could not explain.  On another trip he ventured into town and found the Cenotaph, and much to his dismay saw that one of the guns was missing.
He chose his replacement, a replica of a .303 “Vickers” because of it’s direct link to the Canadian forces and because the gun mounted on the other side was a German “Maxim” machine gun, vintage World War One. The Vickers gun has relevance to WWII and Korea as it was used by British and Commonwealth forces until 1989. Landon-Browne recreated this gun by newly making 100% of it;  there are no original parts.  
The actual time required to fabricate this gun…..3 days.  Impressive is just one way to describe Geoff,
and in turn,  Geoff was impressed by Arden as well.  The one thing he felt that many a large metropolis lost was their sense of community and willingness to remember and be thankful for the past.  He found both of those things in Arden, in their service November 11 and the fellowship that followed. 

So Arden formally thanks Geoff Landon-Browne for his gift and wishes him every success in his task of rebuilding history in his Lancaster bomber project.

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