Downsview Airport in north Toronto was established by The de Havilland Aircraft of Canada Ltd. in 1929. The airport is currently owned by Bombardier Aerospace which assembles two top-selling aircraft in a large factory: the  Bombardier Q Series Dash 8 airliner family, and the Bombardier Global ultra long-range business jet family.  
 
The old de Havilland factory where the museum is located is part of Downsview Park, a national cultural space. The hangar containing the Vimy was a paint shop for Tiger Moth, Anson II, and Mosquito aircraft during the Second World War, and the postwar birthplace of the famous DHC-1 Chipmunk trainer, DHC-2 Beaver and DHC-3 Otter bushplanes.
 
The Vimy is not the first trans-Atlantic aircraft to use these facilities. In October 1931, Australian Bert Hinkler’s de Havilland Puss Moth was assembled here and went on to claim the first solo crossing of the South Atlantic. In 1934, Captain Len Reid and James Richard Ayling’s D.H.84 Dragon biplane “Trail of the Caribou” was also assembled here, and later flew non-stop from Wasaga Beach, Ontario (near Toronto) to London, England in August 1934.