That’s a great tip and lead Mike but I’d like to take this a bit farther. There are hints that this crest is actually a few years earlier, somewhere between 1940 and 42. Gus Werle, the founder and owner of Crest Craft incorporated several methods and label designs over his career, primarily because a series of catastrophic fires kept destroying his buildings and all the stock. In fact, on Dec 30th 1942, one such fire did destroyed the DC block where his business was located. The paper labels used in the two preceding years were also lost and replaced by a new, ink stamp design which came into effect in 1943 after the business was rebuilt.
This patch is missing any Makers-mark back-stamp but what it
does still show is the glue that was used to retain the paper label (or so goes my theory). The 40-42 labels would have looked like the one below. It has been observed that as the glue dried out over the years, the label could easily peel off. The important thing is there had been a
glued label on this crest, which was generally rare to find on any war era Crest Craft label after 1942. The 2nd hint is someone has actually written in pen on the back, 1940.
In looking at the great archive of stories found in Vintage Wings (
http://www.vintagewings.ca), there are two articles that touch on Hurricanes in Saskatchewan; 1) Ghosts of Saskatchewan by Dave O’Malley with help from Tim Johnston and Bruce Forsyth and, and 2) Bull Dogs on the Coast – 135 Squadron RCAF from Saskatchewan to British Columbia again by Dave O'Malley, with Jerry Vernon, Mark Peapell and Mark Duncan. If you're interested in this sort of history, they are worth a read.
Apparently, Hurricanes of 135 Squadron started out at Mossbank, Saskatchewan only a few dozen miles from the town of Moose Jaw and even closer to the 32 Service Flying Training School (SFTS) Moose Jaw. I believe there were also some security reasons for not identifying exactly from where the planes originated, so maybe “Moose Jaw” was close enough for the Hurricanes flying out of Mossbank in 1941/42 with 135 (F) Squadron.
It adds to the mystery even further that, along with the Aeronauts patch from Moose Jaw, two others were in the purchased group from 135 F Sqn (attached below). I had never seen the Flight Engineer variant patch of the “Fighting Bull Dogs” before and had always associated 135 F with Pat Bay but as we can see from Dave’s articles above, Sask. played a significant role in Hurricane training in 1942. It’s noteworthy that the Bull Dog logo and nose art was adopted at Mossbank
before they moved to Pat Bay. As I delve deeper into this, I bet I’ll find a connection between all of these patches. Stay Tuned!