RCAF War Artist-Photographer

I wanted to share an amazing story I recently read on the Globe & Mail website, written by Roy MacGregor. The article recounts the life of RCAF Photo tech, John Fleetwood-Morrow, who was part of No. 39 Wing, RCAF.

John Fleetwood-Morrow, who was also an amateur artist, would paint and sketch the scenes around him while waiting for the squadron planes to return from their missions.

Using the sketches, paintings and drawings, director/producer Matthew Corolis, would partner with cinematographer James Burke, and animator Brandon Park, to create an animated film about John Fleetwood-Morrow.

After discovering dozens of her father’s paintings and drawings from when he was a reconnaissance photographer during World War Two, Jane Fleetwood-Morrow investigates the story of the 39th Reconnaissance Wing, dubbed “The Eyes of the Army”, all told by bringing the decades-old paintings to life through animation.
The Reconnaissance Painter is an animated-documentary short film that will be released in 2023.

Thank you to Matthew Corolis for permission to share this story with visitors to the Film Unit website.


2 Comments

  1. Hello just wanted to give you a quick heads up. The words in your post seem to be running off the screen in Firefox.
    I’m not sure if this is a formatting issue or something to do with
    internet browser compatibility but I figured I’d post to let you know.

    The design and style look great though! Hope you get the problem solved soon.
    Many thanks

    • Hii Jeffery – thanks for the heads up – try refreshing the page a few times – or try using a different browser. I will continue to monitor things and see if there is a fix. Dale.

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About me

Dale Gervais has been actively researching and documenting the history of the Canadian Film & Photo Unit since 2006. Dale recently retired in September, 2018, after over 36 years with Library & Archives Canada. Dale now works as an independent researcher, with experience in audio visual holdings, video production and more recently doing Archival textual document searches, and photographic scanning.

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