MUG

The RCAF Station Summerside was constructed in the early 1940s by the Royal Canadian Air Force as a flight school which operated under the British Commonwealth Air Training Plan. The station closed in 1946 and reopened in 1947 as an Air Navigation School, a NATO training facility. The station brought an influx of personnel to the area and construction was undertaken to provide accommodations. A housing base was complete by 1949 and called "Slemon Park" after Air Marshal Roy Slemon. By 1st February, 1968, the station was renamed to the Canadian Forces Base (CFB) Summerside after the three service branches of the Canadian Forces were merged. By the late 1970s the base's mission was to provide support to Fisheries and Oceans Canada managing national ocean resources while also monitoring foreign fishing fleets, and assisting with search and rescue.

As a result of federal budget cuts the base was closed in 1991 despite much protest from community.  Groups of delegates and protestors alike traveled to Ottawa to refute the base's closure as 33% of Summerside's population was predicted to be negatively affected. The ownership and assets of CFB Summerside were sold to Don MacDougall before being transferred to the newly created Slemon Park Development Corporation which was proposed by MacDougall as a private, for-profit corporation with the goal of creating 500 jobs for the community within the first 10 years.