In this episode, we’re celebrating the 100th anniversary of the Royal Canadian Air Force (RCAF) and its contributions to global security. We speak with Billy Flynn, a former RCAF commanding officer, who highlights key moments in RCAF history, from its formation to World War II and advancements in aviation safety. We’ll also hear from Major General Jamie Speiser-Blanchet, the RCAF’s Deputy Commander. She shares her insights on the inclusion of women and diversity in the force, continuous pilot training, and the RCAF’s evolving role in international peacekeeping. This podcast receives funding from The Government of Canada and is produced by The Walrus Lab.
Angela Misri – That’s the sound of the Canadian International Air Show, which features military, government and civilian aircrafts doing fancy tricks and routines in the sky. It’s viewed by over a million people each Labor Day weekend in Toronto.
Angela Misri – It’s how many children first learn about the Royal Canadian Air Force. But as you can imagine, there’s a lot more to the RCAF than their contribution to this demonstration, including a very rocky start for pilots in its early days.
Welcome to Season Three of Canadian Time Machine, a podcast that unpacks key milestones in our country’s history. I’m Angela Misri. This episode is in honour of the 100th anniversary of the Royal Canadian Air Force, or RCAF.
Angela Misri – This song is called, “Tous Unis, To The Skies.” It was written and recorded by the RCAF Band for their centennial celebrations. They sound pretty good, right? It’s because they’re professional musicians.
Tous unis, to the skies,
Through adversity we fly.]
Angela Misri – The RCAF band is made up of 35 people who perform all throughout Canada, and the band has been part of the RCAF since 1947.
It’s funny, back then, a public relations rep in Vancouver was tasked with putting together a band, and here we are. But let’s rewind the tape even further to examine how the RCAF built its fleet.
In 1909, a plane called the Silver Dart was flown in Ontario as a demonstration for the Canadian military. It looked like one of those old-timey Wright Brothers planes, but it’s what started it all. For the next 15 years, Canada invested in acquiring planes and setting up the structure for what would be the RCAF. On April 1st, 1924, it became official, but the planes were still nothing like what we have today.
Billy Flynn – Well, when we look back at, you know, a century ago, aviation was still in its infancy. And the airplanes they flew, they were difficult to fly.
Angela Misri – That’s Billy Flynn, a former RCAF commanding officer and lieutenant colonel. Right now he’s a test pilot and airshow safety expert.
Billy Flynn – Back in those days, they had no real notion of safety, of flying like we know today and had extraordinary accident rates. And you had to have great skill as a pilot, and a whole bunch of luck.
Angela Misri – Billy says, as the Air Force grew, it found itself in the midst of World War Two, and they had to recruit a large number of pilots very quickly.
Billy Flynn – The population they drew from were young, they were inexperienced and there just was no time to train like we would imagine today. And then we exposed those pilots to the lethal, very experienced enemy fighter pilots, on the other side. And, these were wildly dangerous missions against those experienced, that experienced enemy, but also from anti-aircraft fire, from ground fire. And so that’s why we understand now the extraordinary loss rates that the Air Force suffered.
Angela Misri – By the end of World War Two, aviation entered the Jet Age—so the planes could go fast. But there was still a disconnect between the missions and the skills of the pilots.
Billy Flynn – All throughout all those, what I’ll call early years, this was a dangerous vocation, and it took great pilot skills to master the aircraft that they were flying.
You know, it’s horrible to say, but we look back now and pilots had accidents at a rate that was equal to what the enemy was doing. It was just flying the aircraft and trying to manage them back then.
Angela Misri – The industry evolved to include enhanced safety features, even faster planes and of course, GPS to help with navigation. We have access to so much technology and information that flying today brings about its own challenges.
Billy Flynn – It’s a data gathering spaceship, and fighter jets link one to the next, and you see everything in the cockpits. You share all the information between the cockpits in your formation, information from satellites, and information that’s fed to patrol airplanes that are out, lower or further ahead or at lower altitudes.
And all of this is a massive amount of information and data that pilots now have to manage. They’re not pilots like we talked about in the World War One, World War Two era where you really had to fly the airplane, but they’re managing these sophisticated machines that see so much, at distances that were inconceivable before. But I’ll finish by saying men and women of the RCAF who will fly these fifth generation fighters, I am certain they will demonstrate the same courage and grit and character in the face of danger, just like fighter pilots have for the 100 years of our history of the RCAF.
Angela Misri – But it’s important to note women weren’t welcome in the RCAF for all 100 years. In 1941, they launched a women’s division, but they weren’t allowed to fly. Women were assigned clerical and administrative roles. It took until 1980 for the RCAF to allow female pilots to enter the service.
A lot has changed since then. The current second in command at the RCAF is Major-General Jamie Speiser-Blanchet, and she joins me now.
Hi, Major-General, how are you?
Jamie Speiser-Blanchet – I am fine, thank you.
Angela Misri – The RCAF has changed over the last 50 years with more women as members, like 20% at this point. How does it feel to be part of that change?
Jamie Speiser-Blanchet – That’s a great question. It feels good. Or when you ask about, you know, fulfilling a mission, I think that kind of leads to me being where I am now, after many years in the RCAF, and being in a role where I believe I can influence positive change. That is also something that fulfills me.
So, I have seen much change over the past three decades of my own career, and so I can speak to what has changed, or I can definitely appreciate where we are now.
I’m really happy when I see some of the progress that has been made in terms of not just integrating women into sort of the different jobs, because those jobs have been available to, to women for many years. But really allowing or welcoming women and other minority groups to be part of the team. And I think that’s where true diversity benefits us. Clearly, when we are able to integrate diverse perspectives, that will come from people who don’t necessarily think like us and look like us, there is real benefit. And I have seen that evolve. It’s continuing to evolve. There’s always going to be work to be done. But I have absolutely seen progress and I have been very proud to be part of that.
Angela Misri – Flying used to be very dangerous, but the aviation industry has changed. You earned your wings in 1996 and qualified on the CH-146 Griffon helicopter. What was it like flying that?
Jamie Speiser-Blanchet – It was always something very exciting. It is interesting, when I think back to, you know, my years of flying, you actually get used to it to a point where you forget how novel it can be and how exciting it can be. And so certainly, having been away from flying for a few years now, just given the different responsibilities I’ve had, when I think back to it, it was always something that I enjoyed tremendously.
Just something really unique about being in a helicopter, especially this kind of helicopter, and what we do with the Griffin in tactical aviation. Being able to fly low, low levels, you know, right above the treetops. Certainly not every single flight was exhilarating, but many, many of them were. So I just have, really fond memories. And that love for flying is something that is really stuck with me.
Angela Misri – Can you describe it to me? Like, close your eyes and describe to me what a Griffon looks like?
Jamie Speiser-Blanchet – Sure. It’s… Now, forgive me for the numbers, but it’s a Bell helicopter. The military designation is a CH-146 Griffon. So it’s a modified helicopter made by the Bell Textron company. So it’s a Bell 412 in a civilian version. Ours in the military has been adapted. It’s, I guess, small compared to others that are out there, but it’s, essentially, the ones that I flew were green helicopters. Not unlike the ones that you would see in some of the Vietnam movies, but a more modern version of a Twin Huey, if I can use that analogy.
So, it looks a bit like an army helicopter. In Canada, they are all owned, operated by the Royal Canadian Air Force. But certainly the tasks that we were employed to carry out were usually in support to the Army. So we’re like an equivalent to army aviation in Canada.
Angela Misri – So bigger than the news copters is what I’m imagining, the news copter that you might see in the city.
Jamie Speiser-Blanchet – A little bit, yes.
Angela Misri – Yeah. Okay.
So it takes more than dexterity. Hands, feet, eyes, ears. It takes great communication and trust to fly a helicopter on a mission. Can you talk to us about developing that trust with your team?
Jamie Speiser-Blanchet – Absolutely. It’s a foundation of certainly what we work on and is a foundational element for many aircrew. Certainly, as mentioned, for a helicopter, this is a crewed environment. So in the Griffon, we have two pilots and typically a flight engineer and in some helicopters also a search and rescue technician. And that crew concept is critical to every mission.
So it’s something that is integrated very, very fundamentally and early on in training. It’s something that I think rose naturally for us. But it does mean we spend a lot of time on tactics and techniques and procedures to make sure that everyone kind of understands what to expect when it comes to handling the aircraft.
We have specific ways of communicating, and the overall culture is one that really encourages open communication. And certainly any level of discomfort if something’s going wrong or, you know, just being able to alert and work together to solve any kind of situation that may arise. So, trust is kind of inherent, but is something that we continually value.
Angela Misri – Well, talking about things going wrong, what goes through your mind when you’re required to fly into dangerous places?
Jamie Speiser-Blanchet – Well, a lot of it will come right back to the training. That’s why when we are training, we are always going through different scenarios of varying circumstances so that we are ready when something goes wrong, so that you can rely on maybe a checklist response, something that will come intuitively, because there will be other factors that are affecting you and your senses. A lot of that training is meant to instill that sense of being more comfortable with a potentially very uncomfortable situation. So I think that would be the best answer I’d have for that.
Angela Misri – Is it constant training or is it just training at the start and then just, like, experience from then on.
Jamie Speiser-Blanchet – So the training is continuous. Everyone will go through a certain amount of basic training to learn how to fly, to learn how to navigate and operate instruments and operate the aircraft safely. And then when you do move on and become qualified on a specific aircraft type, there is always continuous training that happens. And it’s extremely important to continue to practise to keep those skills fresh as you even develop new skills or develop that experience level, which will be tested in some of the missions. But the training never, ever ends.
Angela Misri – Yeah, I suspected so, yeah. I’m going to ask you to describe your most fulfilling mission, and I want you to do it in such a way that you give us some description. Give us, show us what it was like to be there, in your most fulfilling mission.
Jamie Speiser-Blanchet – So that’s an interesting question, because I’m not sure I actually have a mission. I don’t think I can narrow it down to one.
I definitely can tell you about fulfilling moments in my career, and certainly many of them were while I was flying. But in fact, some of them have not been in the cockpit.
Angela Misri – Interesting.
Jamie Speiser-Blanchet – So there are a few things that come to mind as I say this, but, one that definitely stands out would have been my first operational deployment, which was a peacekeeping mission with the United Nations in Haiti. It was many years ago, but it definitely sticks with me because that was the first opportunity that I had to really understand what service meant, and being Canadian. That feeling of serving your country and, you know, being outside of Canada and seeing a need somewhere and being able to to feel like you’re contributing to something more important. I would offer that as sort of something that really kind of resonates when I, when I think of a most fulfilling mission.
Angela Misri – And that was within the cockpit, right?
Jamie Speiser-Blanchet – So that was yes, that was flying the helicopter, flying the Griffon. It was early days for the Griffon in those years. And in fact, it was one of the first international deployments that helicopter was used for.
And I mean, I can be specific in terms of flying in Haiti. We had some really interesting opportunities because of the geography there. And they didn’t have as many roads, accessible roads, you know, to be able to get places. So the helicopters were extremely important in terms of helping the peacekeepers from various countries sort of get from one place to another. So it was more of a utility, transport role. However, there were, you know, there were some challenging security environments when there were protests and different things happening. So we would be used in a number of different capacities. And, it was a beautiful environment to fly in. So definitely fond memories from that.
Angela Misri – So you mentioned this just a little bit, where you talked about realizing or finally feeling what it was like to be serving your country and the world. Can you just describe that a bit more for us?
Jamie Speiser-Blanchet – I would say that, the deployment, certainly to Haiti and then, you know, subsequently to Bosnia, where I did also fly in Bosnia, and then another deployment where I didn’t fly, was in Kuwait, many years later. When you get to see and experience other parts of the world, you absolutely realize how lucky we are to be Canadian and how lucky we are in Canada.
We tend to take our security for granted, and that’s a luxury that, you know, that I guess we fight for in the Canadian Armed Forces. That’s part of our raison d’etre. And the idea of being part of something and representing your country somewhere I thought was certainly a motivator for me.
Angela Misri – So the global security environment has changed in the last 50 years. That’s an understatement. It is changing every day. What sort of adversity do you expect RCAF pilots to fly into now?
Jamie Speiser-Blanchet – Wow, that is a, that’s a very big question because you’re absolutely right. The security environment has changed, and the threats that we’re seeing now are profoundly different than many that we have encountered, I would say, over the past years. The technology plays a big factor in that. It’s very complex. It’s certainly modernized, but it is absolutely changing the way we need to plan and conduct our operations, specifically with the RCAF.
We need to be cognizant of the return of great power competition. We are now engaged in, or need to be ready, for peer-on-peer conflict, which essentially means engaging with an adversary that has similar or better technology than we do.
And this is what has driven a lot of the RCAF modernization efforts that are currently underway. We have some very positive developments, and a lot of work has gone into the force development of, what does the Air Force of the future need to look like? And that has driven investments, and some significant investments, in fact, this is the largest modernization effort that the RCAF has seen since the Second World War. And that is largely due to the modernized threat environment.
So everything from the technology that affects actual flying, the environment, and the ability to detect within the electromagnetic spectrum to more advanced weapons, standoff capability, lethality, you know, all of these factors are necessary as we consider the modern threat environment that we’re in.
And, you know, I mentioned before that as Canadians, it’s kind of easy to take our security for granted. And that remains true. And we’re very fortunate for that. There are also threats, whether it’s denial of space-based capabilities or, you know, other non-kinetic threats like cyber attacks, other areas that actually exist, but they’re not as visible, so they don’t feel as existential. And I think we’re fortunate to be in that position. However, we mustn’t be complacent.
And so that’s driving a lot of our planning, which is concept-driven and threat-based, and is really driving us to ensure that the Air Force is postured to provide security and protect Canadians, certainly in terms of being able to deter adversaries from taking action. In order to be able to deter effectively, it means that we need to be able to detect and then, if necessary, defeat any adversary action that is taken against us. So it’s a complex environment. And so there are a lot of factors andI hope I’ve answered some of your question there.
Angela Misri – I think so. I mean, I got definitely that it’s complex and there’s lots to look out for.
I have a question that’s kind of off script, but something I think about at my age and I don’t know, you might be a little younger than me. Is hierarchy and how we’re bringing people up behind us, like how we’re raising up people underneath us, the ladies, the minorities, whoever. Have you been thinking about that at all yourself?
Jamie Speiser-Blanchet – Absolutely. So, as the deputy commander of the Air Force, I am responsible for our Air Force personnel management policies. And it’s something that is extremely important in the Canadian Armed Forces writ large. But certainly from my perspective, it’s extremely important for us to invest in our people, to help them develop the skills that they will need to not only be good leaders and kind of know what to do in this modern, you know, environment that we’re moving into, but also to ensure that they have the right character to be able to deal with this adversity and help their own subordinates and/or teammates and peers develop as well.
So we spend a lot of time on talent management, succession planning. You know, it has various names. However, we’re working hard to ensure that we have a system that can help our members develop professionally. So we invest a lot of time in that professional development and in ensuring that they have opportunities to grow their experience in various elements of the organization.
So it could be, obviously, in operations and as a pilot, the majority will spend the early years of their career kind of honing their tactical skills and how to operate whatever aircraft they’re assigned to effectively. But then it’s very important to develop the skills to be able to progress into other parts of the institution, because we need to ensure that all of the enablers are there to allow our aircraft to fly.
You know, we pilots get a lot of attention because they’re operating aircraft. But it takes a lot more than pilots to ensure that the RCAF is able to operate effectively and achieve a lot of the outcomes that it is currently achieving.
Angela Misri – This was incredible. Thank you so much, Major-General.
Thank you for listening to Canadian Time Machine. This podcast receives funding from the Government of Canada and is created by the Walrus Lab. This episode was produced by Kirk Finken and edited by Nathara Imenes. Amanda Cupido is the executive producer.
For more stories about historic Canadian milestones, visit thewalrus.ca/CanadianHeritage. There’s also a French counterpart to this podcast called Voyage dans l’histoire canadienne. So if you’re bilingual and want to listen to more, you can find that wherever you get your podcasts.
