A small town in Alberta honoured a Second World War pilot Saturday who helped organize an event immortalized by Hollywood – The Great Escape.

An exhibit was opened at the Nanton Lancaster Society and Air Museum featuring journals, photos, and other memorabilia owned by Barry Davidson.

In 1940, the young Albertan landed his damaged plane behind enemy lines.

Nanton exhibit

"His navigator told him he was coming up on the white cliffs of Dover," according to Barry Davidson Jr., the pilot's son. "It was actually the beach at Dunkirk."

He was taken to a German prisoner of war camp, in what is now Poland.

Davidson's role in the escape was as a "scrounger" – the part played by James Garner in the movie called The Great Escape.

Davidson's diary now on display

He secretly collected everything from uniforms to pieces of identification to help the PoWs digging a tunnel to freedom.

But the film took liberties with the facts. For starters, Garner played an American not a Canadian. And Davidson never escaped because he was too claustrophobic to go underground.

Also, only four of the men who crawled out of the camp avoided being recaptured. Fifty were rounded up and executed.

Winston Parker, of the R.C.A.F. Prisoners of War Association, thinks tributes like the one in Nanton are important because they help set the record straight.

"Our intention is that we honour them all," he says.

Davidson was eventually released from the PoW camp after more than five years in custody. He died in 1996, at the age of 82.

"Knowing my father, he would have been very proud," Barry Davidson says, when asked about the exhibit.

"And again, knowing that it is falling on his Birthday today. It would have been a very special birthday present if he were alive today."