Photo credit: Department of National Defence
Project description
Women were first allowed to serve in the Royal Canadian Air Force (RCAF) during the Second World War. Throughout this conflict, they served in the Women’s Division (WD), a separate female-only unit. The WD’s motto was “We Serve That Men May Fly”, which suggested the supporting nature of servicewomen’s roles during this period. Nearly 17, 000 women served between 1941 and 1946 when the WD was disbanded and its servicewomen released. It would be nearly 40 years before women were the ones flying and nearly 50 years before all air force occupations, including fighter pilot, were open to women.
How did women get there? What changes occurred and when? And does integration actually translate to inclusion?
Along the Rocky Road to Inclusion explores the history of women in the air force in the relatively understudied period between the disbanding of the Women’s Divisions in 1946 to the present day. First and foremost, this work aims to document the lived experiences of women in the RCAF. Its secondary goals include situating and contextualizing these experiences, preserving them for future generations, and sharing them with a wide variety of audiences.
Project outcomes
Blog
Research document
Audio Documentaries
The Tipping Point: Women and the SWINTER Aircrew Trial
Have you ever heard of the SWINTER Aircrew Trial?
The SWINTER (Servicewomen in Non-Traditional Environments and Roles) Aircrew Trial was one of four Canadian military trials, held between 1979 and 1985, that tested women in roles previously restricted to men. It was the first time in Canadian history that women were allowed to train and serve as pilots, air navigators, and flight engineers in the Royal Canadian Air Force. However, their employment was temporary and the results of the Aircrew Trial were used to determine whether or not women had a future in non-traditional air force roles.
In five episodes, The Tipping Point tells the story of this forgotten moment in Canadian history. Using archival research and oral histories, The Tipping Point puts women’s voices at the centre of the story, exploring the impact of the Aircrew Trial on the women who participated and its significance over forty years later.
Audio transcripts available below.
Episode One: “It was only a trial”
*theme music begins; a steady rhythm of cello pizzicato/plucking in a minor key*
Between 1979 and 1985, the Canadian Forces conducted an experiment. The trial employment of Servicewomen in Non-Traditional Environments and Roles, known as the SWINTER Trials, consisted of four trials held across the army, navy and air force that tested women in military roles previously restricted to men. The SWINTER Trials were a decisive moment in the process of integrating women into the Canadian Forces, yet they are not well known or recognized by the public.
My name is Camas Clowater-Eriksson and this is The Tipping Point, a five-part Canada Aviation and Space Museum audio documentary that explores one of these trials: the SWINTER Aircrew Trial. For the first time in Canadian history, women were allowed to serve as pilots, air navigators and flight engineers, in five operational flying squadrons in the Canadian air force. However, their employment was temporary and the results of the trial would be used to determine whether or not women had a future in these non-traditional air force roles.
The Tipping Point tells this story through archival documents but more importantly, through the voices of women who were there. The SWINTER Aircrew Trial may not be in our history textbooks, but it is very much alive in the memories of those who participated.
The rest of us, however, need some context: What exactly were the SWINTER Trials and how did they come to be?
Episode One: “It was only a trial”
Part One: Bona fide occupational requirement
*theme music fades out*
Well, actually…after I had already gotten onto my second posting and my second airplane. I found out afterwards that, "Oh yeah, you know, after two years we didn't know what to do with you and there was a possibility that you were going to be, essentially, kicked out of the military…or released from the military, because we couldn't put you back into your old trade." It was a bit of a…a bit of a shocker. Perhaps that was me not paying attention to information. But, again, at that point, information wasn't really forthcoming. It was all one big secret.
That is the voice of retired Master Warrant Officer Christine Krueger. And the “big secret” she’s talking about? That refers to the employment terms of the SWINTER Aircrew Trial, one of four military trials held between 1979 and 1985, to assess the impact of servicewomen in previously all-male roles and units. The Land, Sea, Isolation, and Aircrew Trials compared the job performance of women to men, the effectiveness of mixed-gender groups, the resource implications of integrating servicewomen into these roles, and the sociological effects of women on unit cohesion, servicemen and military families.
During this period, 280 servicewomen served on a “trial basis” in operational units considered to be non-combat or near-combat. For the Land Trial, women served at two field service units stationed at Canadian Forces Base — or CFB — Lahr, in Germany; in the Sea Trial, women were posted to a non-combatant ship called the HMCS Cormorant; for the Isolation Trial, women were sent to Canadian Forces Station Alert, a communications station above the Arctic Circle; and for the Aircrew Trial, women were employed as pilots, air navigators and flight engineers at five non-combat operational flying squadrons based in Canada, and as pilot and air navigator instructors at three Canadian Forces training schools.
Christine participated in the Aircrew Trial. She joined the military in 1978 and became an airframe technician — someone who maintains aircraft.
Okay, I am retired Master Warrant Officer Christine Krueger. My date of birth is April 29th, 1960, and I was born in Peterborough, Ontario. That’s where I grew up.
Joining the military has always been a, I would say, a lifelong dream of mine. I had a good friend of mine where I was growing up and her parents were in the military and they had nothing but positive things to say about the military. And the other thing is that Peterborough, at the time that I was growing up, was a factory town. You had Canadian General Electric, you had Outboard Marine, DeLaval, Quaker Oats, and I didn't want to spend my entire life just in one spot. And that's where I figured that, you know, joining the military, I'd be able to get out and see more than just Peterborough.
When I first joined, they gave me an option of being an 'MSE Op,' which would be a driver. I didn't want to do that. And so then they said, "Well, okay, fine. We can get you into electronics training." So, that would be POET training in Kingston. After attempting that, I didn't want to get out of the military. I'd just gotten in. And, so, they had reassigned me to being an airframe technician and I did my trades training in Borden.
An airframe technician is actually a lot of fun because you get to deal with the entire aircraft minus the electronics and the engines. So, you're looking after the wings, you're looking after the tires, the brakes, the hydraulics, the doors, everything.
Unfortunately for Christine, being a female airframe technician did not allow her to travel very often.
At that time it was still pretty sexist with regards to travel. They only wanted to send the guys away to travel, not the women. And, if we did go, then they always had to send a guy with us...We knew we were capable…but, no, they still had to send a guy.
When she heard that the military was holding a trial for female flight engineers, she jumped at the chance.
I started my basic flight engineer trades training in Trenton. That started April of 1983.
Again, being a trial, I was the only female on my course, and that was out of, I think, there was 10 of them.
And it was certainly different because, again, when you're the only female it's, uh *laughs*, it is a lot of fun. And you always have something to prove. Right?
*electric piano music fades in; a thoughtful, rhythmic chord progression*
The training that they gave you was broad brush as to 'this is what a flight engineer does.' And it is a more in-depth look into and experience of looking after an airplane because you're now the one that —besides, you know, removing all the plugs and covers and making sure that there aren't any leaks and that everything is good to go. It's not where now the pilot just climbs in and you get to stay on the ground — No, you are now an integral part of the crew. So, it's your proverbial butt that is in the seat. So, you really want to make sure that everything is good to go.
The SWINTER Trials were a significant moment for the Canadian air force: it was the first time that servicewomen like Christine were allowed to serve as aircrew, even on a trial basis.
But women’s participation in military aviation in Canada goes back much further.
During the First World War, civilian women manufactured airplanes for the war effort and worked as aircraft mechanics. In the Second World War, over 17,000 women served in traditionally male roles as part of the Royal Canadian Air Force’s Women’s Division. And, in the 1950s, thousands of women were recruited to staff a new radar defence network.
Yet, in each of these cases, women were recruited on a temporary basis to help the air force meet an extraordinary demand for personnel. When the demand dried up, so too did the jobs for women.
*music fades out*
Retired Lieutenant Commander Rosemary Park, one of the Canadian Forces primary researchers for the SWINTER Trials, called this “the shelf theory.”
…And what I saw was that when you needed women you took them off the shelf and when you didn't need them, you put them back on the shelf. They were always peripheral.
Even when opportunities were available, women were relegated to administration, medical and support jobs. Operational positions like aircrew were off limits and the air force ensured that they remained so. Like, during the Second World War, when the RCAF rejected applications from qualified female pilots despite a shortage of experienced men. Instead, women had to go to Britain to fly as civilian pilots with the British Air Transport Auxiliary.
Aircrew was considered a man’s job.
Since this was the case for so long, why then did the military choose, in 1979, to test women in roles it had restricted to men?
Here —
*steady acoustic guitar music begins, builds with melody*
— is some context:
In the thirty-four years between the end of the Second World War in 1945 and the beginning of the SWINTER Trials in 1979, a lot changed for women in the Canadian military. In the 1950s and 1960s, changing attitudes towards women’s work in general, accompanied by a growing number of women participating in the workforce, had a profound impact on military policy. When the army, navy and air force unified in 1968, women were given the right to serve as permanent members of the newly established Canadian Forces, but servicewomen were limited to a small number of occupations.
*music fades out*
The next major changes came in the early 1970s, after the Royal Commission on the Status of Women in Canada identified a number of ways the Canadian Forces could give women equal opportunity to men. First and foremost, the Commission recommended that all positions must be opened to women. In response, the military announced a new employment policy that there would be no limitations on the employment of women…except in some areas. The new policy allowed married women and women with children to serve and it did open a number of new jobs to women. However, the military kept one third of all positions male-only and excluded women from working in more “hazardous” work environments, such as operational units deemed “combat” or “near-combat,” at sea, at isolated postings, and as aircrew.
The military said the exclusions were necessary for it to function effectively. Yet, the policy had major implications for servicewomen.
*music fades back in*
Being barred from active duties like aircrew greatly limited a woman’s ability to gain operational experience. Without experience in an active operational unit, women were unable to attain promotions to higher-level positions where operational experience was required. Consider, for example, the highest position in the air force, that of Commander (today called the Chief of the Air Staff and Commander). From the position’s establishment in 1975 up to today, all but one of the nineteen men to hold the position started their careers as pilots. The one exception trained as an air navigator, also an aircrew role.
It was likely not the ambition of every woman who joined the military at this time to hold a position of senior leadership, nor would it have been the ambition of every man. But to deny women access to these roles was to deny them the same opportunities their male colleagues had within the organisation. It placed a limit on their career progression. No matter the intention, the policy effectively ensured that the Canadian Forces would remain male-dominated.
By the end of the decade though, the military was forced to re-evaluate this policy.
*music fades out*
In 1978, the Canadian Human Rights Act came into effect. It prohibited employment discrimination on a variety of grounds, including on the basis of sex. The Act required that a discriminatory policy had to be eliminated, unless a bona fide reason for its existence could be identified.
“Bona fide” is a Latin term meaning “good faith.” In a legal context, it means to do something honestly, without an intention to circumvent the law.
So, if the military wanted to continue to exclude women from combat and near-combat roles, on ships, at isolated postings, and as aircrew, it would have to produce evidence that women could not do the job “safely, efficiently, and reliably,” as stipulated by the Act.
The Canadian Forces responded first by launching an evaluation of the current and potential employment of servicewomen.
The 1978 study consisted of reports from senior leaders across the army, navy, and air force. In these reports, leaders framed the current employment of servicewomen as a burden on the military system. Women, they said, were expensive to employ: they became pregnant and went on leave after time and money was invested in training them; they limited employment flexibility because they married servicemen and then wanted to be posted with their husbands; and they did not stay in the forces as long as men.
Leaders hypothesised that if women were employed in active operational roles, these issues would be amplified and suggested that limiting women’s employment was necessary to maintain operational effectiveness. They linked operational effectiveness to the preservation of all-male combat and near-combat units. If women were integrated into these units, senior leaders feared that they would have negative sociological effects, disrupting unit cohesion and morale, and thus impair the unit’s ability to respond to an operational situation. Furthermore, they suggested that women in operational roles would undermine the perceived effectiveness of the Canadian Forces in the eyes of allies and potential enemies.
But despite their many concerns, leaders also acknowledged that it may be in the military’s best interests to explore the idea of expanding women’s employment. Opinion polls conducted in 1977 and 1978 showed that a growing majority of the Canadian public and service members were supportive of women in some operational roles, particularly as aircrew.
*tense, rhythmic music begins with piano and violin*
With each passing year, the number of women joining the military was growing and demographic projections indicated that increased enrollment of women may be essential if the military was to meet personnel requirements in the 1980s.
In January 1979, the Chief of the Defence Staff (or CDS) — the highest position in the Canadian military — made an announcement to all Canadian Forces members:
As a result of the recently completed study into the employment of women…it was determined there was an obligation as well as a Forces requirement to expand employment opportunities for women in the CF. However, it was equally obvious that there were many uncertainties and real cause for concern if changes were introduced in other than a gradual and controlled manner.
To explore these concerns, the CDS announced a new study, an experiment:
A controlled number of servicewomen, selected from within the Forces, will be posted on a trial basis to a select number of near-combat units of the land environment and to one or more non-combatant ships. In addition, a few women, also selected from within the Forces, will undergo aircrew training.
With those words, the SWINTER Trials were born.
The exact details would be hammered out over the next year and the research produced during the trials would determine how the military would comply with the Canadian Human Rights Act. Would non-traditional occupations be opened to women? Or would the trials produce evidence that limiting women’s employment in the Forces was indeed a bona fide occupational requirement?
The nature of women’s future employment in the Canadian Forces hinged on the results.
*music rises and ends sharply*
Part Two: Beginnings
“These three jet-pilot trainers are just one of the boys,” proclaimed Regina, Saskatchewan’s Leader-Post on March 15th, 1980. But the trainees were not boys at all. They were Captain Leah Mosher, Captain Nora Bottomley, Captain Deanna Brasseur, and Officer Cadet Kris Hummel. Four months earlier, in November 1979, these women had started the first stage of pilot training in the Canadian Forces: primary flight training at No.3 Canadian Forces Flight Training School in Portage la Prairie, Manitoba. This marked the beginning of the SWINTER Aircrew Trial.
*funky electric piano music begins, a warm sound*
By March 1980, three out of the four women had progressed to the next stage of training — known as basic flight training — at CFB Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan. In February 1981, Captains Mosher, Brasseur and Bottomley graduated as the first women in Canadian history trained for operational service as military pilots.
*music fades out*
Retired Major Robin Camken remembers the impact this had on her:
I’m Major Robin Camken, I was born on March 12th, 1957, in Bellville, Ontario.
Then in 1980, I read an article in the newspaper about the Canadian Forces opening pilot training to women and the first three female officers passing basic flying training. And that was Leah Mosher, Dee Brasseur and Nora Bottomley. After reading about these women starting flying training, I went to the recruiting office in February 1980.
Robin was a civilian at the time, and she had an interest in aviation. After completing her Bachelor of Arts degree in Humanities at the University of Toronto in 1979, she took private flying lessons at Buttonville Airport — which she described as very expensive — and got a job as an aircraft dispatcher for the flight school, Toronto Airways. She wanted to be a pilot and was disappointed when she was told at the recruiting office that she could not apply for pilot training as a civilian.
And at that time I was told the occupation was only open to women who were already in the military, but I could apply for another occupation and then transfer into the pilot category once it became open.
The occupations that they offered to me, that they were accepting people's applications for, there wasn't really anything I was interested in. I did put my paperwork in to go into air traffic control, but I was hoping that that wouldn't happen, *laughs*.
Luckily for Robin, it didn’t. At the time, the air force was struggling to find pilot candidates for the Aircrew Trial from within the ranks. By the beginning of 1980, the air force had not been able to recruit any women besides the initial four and so the trial was opened to civilian candidates.
So, at the end of February, they contacted me and notified that I was a candidate to go to aircrew selection. So, that all happened very quickly. They changed the policy within two weeks of my going to the recruiting office.
Retired Major Micky Colton remembers walking into a recruiting office in Kitchener, Ontario in early March 1980 and declaring her intention to become a pilot. She had no idea the option had been opened to civilian women less than a month before.
So, my name is Micky Colton. I was born on the 30th of May 1958, and I grew up in Kitchener, Ontario. When I finished high school, I didn’t know what I wanted to do. It’s not like I wanted to be a pilot ever since I was a child, I wanted to be a veterinarian, that was my goal.
I had, interestingly enough, *laughs*…I had received a free flying lesson in a book of coupons — those were the days. And I had said to my boyfriend at the time, “Hey, I’m going to do this, I’m going to take this flying lesson, I think that’s really cool.” And he said, “You can’t do that, you’re a girl.” And so, I have no idea what happened to him, *laughs*, he’s gone. But I took this free flying lesson and I got hooked.
Micky worked as a courier to fund her flying addiction, but, like Robin described, this was an expensive hobby to sustain. A solution came when her roommate suggested to her that she consider joining the air force so that she could get paid to fly.
And I said, “Well, that’s a really good idea.” So, *laughs*, I went down to the recruiting center and walked in the door and said — and this was in Kitchener, Kitchener is a big city — and said to the recruiter, who turned out to be a pilot, I didn’t know at the time, and he said, “can I help you?” And I said, “Yeah, I want to be a pilot.” And he said, “Oh you’re my first one!”
To be accepted as aircrew candidates, Robin and Micky first had to pass an initial screening at the recruiting center. To be selected you had to be a minimum of five feet two inches tall and weigh at least 130 pounds; have 20/20 vision and not be colour blind; have no criminal history; and a high school diploma with at least a 65% average in English, Physics, and Mathematics.
Successful candidates were then sent to the Canadian Forces Aircrew Selection Centre in Toronto to undergo a series of tests and a medical exam in order to qualify for training as a pilot or an air navigator, both officer classifications.
Robin.
Oh, aircrew selection. Yeah, it was…it was interesting. It's four days of testing, the whole day you’re doing all different tests. They put you in the simulator and you pretend you're flying. And there's a whole bunch of other tests that are showing, like, spatial recognition of which direction the plane is going. And, yeah, it's quite challenging. I'm not sure what the percentage of people that qualify is. It's not that high. It's very difficult. And a lot of the physical requirements at that time were, you had to be a certain height and the length of your legs were all required to be quite tall, which eliminated several of the women, just on physiological qualities.
Out of the twelve women in her cohort, only Robin and one other woman were successful.
Micky also remembered going to Toronto for aircrew selection. One test in particular stood out in her mind.
It was a serial addition test. Have you ever heard of a serial addition test? Well, you walk in and there’s a person, you know, a military member, sitting on the other side of a desk. You sit down and they say, “We’re going to play a tape and the tape is going to give you a series of numbers and you have to add them together but then remember the second one.” So, lets say for example, it will say, “One, three.” You say, “four,” but you remember the three and the next number would be a two, so then you’d say, “five.” So you have to keep, *pauses*. And I was, I think, maybe the sixth to go through. There was four other women that particular week that I was there, and some of them went before me. And everybody came out a wreck. People were just freaked. Their eyeballs were fourteen feet big and some people were almost in tears and all stressed…and I thought, “Oh my god, what are they doing to people in there?” Anyways, I walked in and sat down and he explained it in this really reasonable voice, you know, kind of good pacing. And then the tape started, and it was like, “One! Three! Four! Five! One! Two!” *Laughs* And of course you messed it up almost immediately. And so I would just pick up where I left off. And then he stopped and he said, “Do you know what you’re supposed to do?” “Yeah,” I said, “but no one can possible keep up, all you can do is keep trying.” Which is what they were looking for. They were looking for your ability to make a mistake, ‘cause as a pilot, right, you make mistakes, the airplane makes mistakes, your crew makes mistakes. They wanted you to get over it, you know? Pick it up, pull it out of the flaming wreckage and carry on, *laughs*, you know?
Both Robin and Micky were selected to train as pilots. Robin was the first female civilian to qualify for pilot training in the Canadian Forces. Micky was the second.
Robin described what came next.
…April the 2nd, 1980, I was sworn in as a military officer. And April the 11th I went to Chilliwack, British Columbia for basic officer training, which was 13 weeks of, mainly, army training, weapons handling, map reading, et cetera.
So, two months after I had walked into the recruiting center, I had completed all of the testing and started basic training, which is an extremely rapid processing for anybody joining the military. That's crazy fast to get through all that testing and paperwork. But the reason we were so quickly accelerated was because, in the SWINTER Trials, no women had started the course for over a year, other than the original four women.
And in basic training there were only four women on my course and two completed. There was two eliminated for different reasons — one was injury and the other one was peer assessment. So, after completing that, I was posted to the Canadian Forces base in Portage la Prairie where our primary flying training took place.
Robin started primary flight training in September 1980. It was there that she met another trial participant: Wendy Sewell.
Unlike Micky and Robin, Wendy was already a member of the military when she volunteered to become a pilot.
Retired Captain Wendy Sewell:
Okay, my name is Wendy Elizabeth Sewell. I was born on the 27th of July in 1959. My father was a Canadian Air Force pilot in the war, and I was born in Saint-Jean, Quebec. And then we were posted to Goose Bay and, lastly, to Clinton, Ontario where my father retired after thirty-six years in the military.
So, yeah, I grew up military, a base brat, moved around, had it in my blood. My brother also joined the military and I wanted to be anything he was. So, *laughs*, that was one of my motivations, and my father being a pilot, it was always something that was just normal in the family.
In 1979, Wendy joined the military straight out of high school. Without a university degree, she expected to join as a non-commissioned member, but her high grades allowed her to go straight into the Regular Officer Training Program.
In those days, that was in 1979, they were not accepting pilots at that point, but I chose to go air weapons control. An air weapons controller is basically like an air traffic controller, but for fighting aircraft.
Wendy started basic training in January 1980, finished in May and was posted to CFB North Bay, Ontario to start training as an air weapons controller.
But a welcome turn of events had her changing course soon after...
During the summer of '80, they were looking for women to take part in the SWINTER Trial and I was recruited to go to Toronto to do testing for pilot. And that was very successful. So, in September, I was already shipped off to Portage to start basic training.
*upbeat music fades in, beginning with shakers and electric piano and building with trombone*
Yeah, we got to Portage and the story began, *laughs*.
The early 1980s were an exciting time for women in the Canadian air force. The first class of female pilots graduated, with the second group not far behind. In 1981, Cheryl Tardif, a former airframe technician, graduated from training as the first female flight engineer in the Canadian Forces. That same year, the first two female air navigators graduated from Canadian Forces Air Navigation School: Lynn Paddick and Karen McCrimmon.
Retired Lieutenant Colonel Karen McCrimmon.
*music fades out*
I joined the military in 1975 on a dare from my brother.
Karen joined the military first as a reservist and spent five-years in the Windsor Regiment while she studied Russian and Linguistics at university.
And it's what actually allowed me to pay my way through university, being a member of the reserves. And it's also where I learned an awful lot about leadership.
But I think when I joined in 1975, I got the feeling I can fit in here. I can thrive here. This is…an environment…not always easy, very challenging, but, also, it’s something I understood pretty quickly how it worked, you know?
Her plan was to become a foreign service officer.
I wanted to work in embassies and I thought, "I studied Russian, I studied German, I studied French," and that's kind of where I was heading. But late in the 1970s, they had just downsized the foreign service here in Canada. And so, there were going to be no openings for people to join the foreign service for two or three years anyway.
So, that was a bit of a disappointment, but then when they came up with SWINTER, as I said, my dad worked for Air Canada or Trans Canada Airlines at the time. So, I've always been around airplanes, always loved airplanes, and I loved traveling. So when this opened up, I thought, "I could do that." And also it would actually allow me to do the traveling that I really wanted to do, anyway. And so when I applied you could apply for pilot, navigator, or either and I had no idea what a navigator did, right? I just thought, "Hey, what the heck? I'll give it a try.”
Karen started her basic officer training course in September 1980 and by October 1981, she and Lynn Paddick had graduated from air navigation school.
*tense piano music beings, builds with violin*
You know, a door opens, right? But I don’t think I took it to the next step that said, “Oh, I could be the first.” No, I don’t think that ever occurred to me. Funny, eh?
Part Three: One big secret
*music sharply ends with violin*
I never heard this term "SWINTER" until my friend sent me that little promotional thing of you guys looking for people to talk. That’s the first time I’ve heard of it.
Retired Master Corporal Bev Beale.
I was born in Ottawa, Ontario, on the 8th of May, 1955. My dad was in the military, so we were a military family. And I have three brother and two sisters. I was in the middle of the boys, which might explain a few things, *laughs*.
When I graduated high— I didn't know what I wanted to do. My mom and dad said, "Oh, take shorthand and typing. You can be a secretary." So, I did that and I worked for a year as a secretary, but it was driving me insane. Boring. And I wanted to do something different. Now, I was a secretary on the base in one of the hangars. And I, everyday, would look down and see what was going on down there and it looked kind of interesting. So, I decided I would join the military.
So when you go to the recruiting office, you take a bunch of tests and then they tell you what you can try for. And they gave me, they said, "You can do administration, you can do photo technician." And then they said, "Airframe." And I knew what airframe was. Like, in the old days they called it a "rigger." My dad was a "fitter," he worked on the engines after the war when he rejoined. So, I kind of knew what it was and I had always helped Dad and my brothers work on cars and stuff. So, I said, "Well, I'll try that airframe thing." And the recruiter said, "Oh, you can't do that. You're too small. You'd never do it." Well, don't tell me I can't do something, right? And I said, "Just watch me. Put me down for that," *laughs*.
My dad wasn't happy that I joined as an airframe, 'cause he kind of knew it was a man's trade. And I'm only five feet tall so, *laughs*, he thought it would not be good for me, especially with all the men around and stuff. And my size. But I told him I wanted to do something different. And he said, "Well, I'll tell you girl, it's only going to be different for a little while and then it's gonna be the same old thing." *Laughs* And he was right, *laughs*.
Bev joined the military in 1974 and was one of the first women to train as an airframe technician. Despite her father’s concerns, she found her place in the trade and stayed in the job for six years before she applied to be a flight engineer in 1981.
Well, I knew it was open to women because there was one before me. And, basically, I joined because my dad was a flight engineer. Like, after the war, he flew a Lancaster for the RAF and then he came back here and joined the RCAF as a fitter, and then he remustered to flight engineer. So, I figured, ah, what the heck, I'll go for it. And all my bosses and the people I worked with, "Yeah, go for it. Go for it." Right? So, I did.
As a non-commissioned trade, the recruitment of flight engineers for the trial went a little differently than it did for pilots and air navigators. Three “feeder trades” were offered the opportunity to remuster to flight engineer: Instrument Electrical Technician, Aero-Engine Technician, and Airframe Technician. These trades had only been opened to women six years before the trial began, in 1974.
Retired Sergeant Cheryl Tardif.
My name’s Cheryl Tardif and I was born February 5th, 1954, in Trenton, Ontario. From there, my dad was in the military, so we went to Ottawa. Then we went to France. Then we went to just outside of Montreal for a year, then up to the near North, a place called Moosonee for two years, and then to Toronto. And it was when I was up North in Moosonee, it was a lot of bush pilots flying. So, I remember just laying in bed in the morning or at night listening to these aircraft fly by. And it always interested me very much what they were doing and where they were going.
Like Bev, Cheryl joined the military in 1974 as an airframe technician. Cheryl was the first woman to remuster to flight engineer. She was that “one before” that Bev remembered.
‘74 when I joined, I became an aircraft technician, an airframe tech specifically. And when I heard they were starting to open up for women being pilots, I went and applied to become a flight engineer because I had all the qualifications for it. And I wore glasses, so, I couldn't be a pilot and I had no interest in being a navigator at the time.
When women entered the Aircrew Trial, they committed to doing either five or two years of obligatory service upon completing their training — five years if they were going to be a pilot or an air navigator and two years if they were going to be a flight engineer.
Retired Corporal Mary Lou Ellan was one of the last servicewomen to remuster to flight engineer during the trial period. She joined the military in 1977 as an aero-engine technician. She had actually worked with the first female pilots at CFB Portage la Prairie in 1979 when the trial began.
Okay. My maiden name was "Gfroerer," and that's what I was when I was in the military. So, it's G F R O E R E R. And they had a really fun time with, *laughs*, my name ‘cause nobody could pronounce it. They just ended up calling me “Smith,” *laughs*.
I didn't know at the time it was called SWINTER, but we heard that there were going to be females training to be pilots. And so, you know, we were all pretty excited.
Mary Lou enjoyed being a mechanic, but the job of ground crew left her wanting more.
Well, I was in Portage for two years. Then I got posted to Trenton, Ontario, where I was working in snags on the Boeing 707 and the Hercs. And, you know, I traveled a bit because we did MRPs, or “Mobile Repair Parties,” where we had to travel to different places and fix airplanes, but I still wanted to travel more. And I was kind of, I don't know, a bit bored in my job because a lot of times when you’re in snags you're kind of waiting for an aircraft to break down so you can fix it, *laughs*. So, sometimes you're really busy and sometimes it's pretty slack.
So, in 1984, Mary Lou decided to make a change and became a flight engineer.
They didn't really give us any information that I can remember. You know, I heard they were accepting females for flight engineers and I thought, oh, I'd like to do that. You get to travel, learn new stuff. And I was excited.
Regardless of when they entered the trial, be it 1980 or 1984, all the former flight engineers we interviewed remarked on the lack of information they were given on the trial process. As Christine put it at the beginning of the episode: it was like it was “one big secret.”
Cheryl.
At that time, I had no idea it was a trial and I didn't learn that ‘til a few years later when I was in Comox. So, that wasn't my intention, to become part of a trial. It was just because I wanted to fly.
Bev never knew she was in a trial. She assumed the military had opened the trade to women.
When I went into airframe they had just opened it to women. So, I thought, well, they've opened this to women now. That's all I really thought about it, but I never knew it was just a trial.
Female pilots and air navigators also remarked that they did not receive sufficient information. In fact, the 1979 Canadian Forces General Order inviting servicewomen to become pilots does not mention the word ‘trial’ once. In a report written by participants later in the trial, women said that they had never been “apprised of the trials goals, their responsibilities in it and employment prospects.”
Military leadership never issued a clear statement as to what would happen to the women once their term of obligatory service ended. If the trial was deemed a failure, would they be allowed to return to their old positions? Or would they be discharged from the military? Were their careers contingent on the trial being designated a success?
This lack of information left women feeling insecure about their future in the military.
Wendy.
I hadn't heard anything until I was recruited. I didn't even know about the first women already being there in pilot training. But once we went through the selection and I was accepted, yes, then we were briefed that it was only a trial. That there was, in their minds, quite a large chance that we would be, at the end of the trial, go back to our previous occupations of air weapons controller, or wherever we came from. Yeah, that was…That stayed with me that they really emphasized that a lot, that it was only a trial period, it wasn't for good. But the chance to try anyway was still something that really appealed to me. But I do remember thinking, like—
*thoughtful acoustic guitar music begins*
—why would we not succeed? And why is the emphasis so much on a trial? Because of my father's flying career in the war, I knew a lot about women that had been ferry pilots and flown all the fighters and bombers from the factories to the squadrons during the war. So, obviously, they know women can fly. So, why is this being emphasized so strongly in the lead up to this?
Wendy makes a good point. In the thirty years prior to the aircrew trial, there were a number of examples of Canadian women working in aviation. During the Second World War, as Wendy mentions, there were the Canadian female pilots who flew with the British Air Transport Auxiliary: Helen Harrison, Marion Orr, Elspeth Russel Burnett, Violet Milstead, and Gloria Large. In 1971, Maureen Routledge was the first woman in Canada to be licensed by the Department of Transport as an aircraft maintenance engineer. Two years later, the Canadian airline Transair hired Rosella Bjornson, making her the first female commercial pilot in North America.
There were also examples in the military sphere.
In the mid-1970s, the Canadian air force had even allowed a female medical officer, Dr. Wendy Clay, to train as a pilot so that she could better understand the issues facing the aircrew she treated. In 1974, Wendy became the first woman in the Canadian Forces to complete pilot training and be awarded her wings. But this occurred with the understanding that she could never serve as a pilot.
Also compelling was the example set by the United States Air Force in the late 1970s, when they opened non-combat pilot and air navigator positions to women on twenty different types of aircraft. This decision was the outcome of a three year test program that saw twenty-eight women successfully complete training as pilots and air navigators.
So, if these examples existed, —
*music fades out*
—why was there any doubt that the Aircrew Trial would be a success?
From the perspective of air force leadership, the history of women flying was beside the point. Women had never served as pilots, air navigators, and flight engineers in the Canadian military. The military viewed itself as a unique organisation, one distinct from allies and civilian society. While flying aptitude was necessary for aircrew to be operationally effective, so too was morale and unit cohesion. The main question, then, being answered by the Aircrew Trial was not whether women could fly, but whether men would accept them.
*theme music begins*
In the next episode, we take a closer look at the Aircrew Trial as a research study and women’s first impressions of training and squadron life. In what ways were women expected to adapt to conditions and equipment that were designed for men?
That’s up in episode two.
This episode was written and produced by me, Camas Clowater-Eriksson.
Script editing by Erin Gregory.
Voice acting by Dennis Rice.
Music by the Blue Dot Sessions.
Thank you to the Department of National Defence’s Directorate of History and Heritage for the digitisation and use of their Directorate of Women Personnel Fonds.
And a very special thank you to the women whose voices and stories you heard in this episode: Christine Krueger, Robin Camken, Wendy Sewell, Micky Colton, Karen McCrimmon, Bev Beale, Cheryl Tardif, Mary Lou Ellan, Rosemary Park and Wendy Clay, and to all the women who contributed their oral histories of the SWINTER Aircrew Trial to the national collection at the Canada Aviation and Space Museum.
This project was supported by the Ingenium Research Institute.
Thank you for listening and we hope you tune into Episode Two of The Tipping Point.
*theme music fades out*
END OF EPISODE ONE
Episode Two: “Suck it up, buttercup.”
*theme music begins; a steady rhythm of cello pizzicato/plucking in a minor key*
The trial employment of Servicewomen in Non-Traditional Environments and Roles, known as the SWINTER Trials, was a Canadian Forces experiment, held between 1979 and 1985, that tested women in roles previously restricted to men. Four military trials were held during this time, across the army, navy and air force and at an isolated communications station in Canada’s north.
My name is Camas Clowater-Eriksson and this is the second episode of The Tipping Point, a five-part Canada Aviation and Space Museum audio documentary about women and one of these trials: the SWINTER Aircrew Trial.
The first episode explored the history behind the decision of the Canadian Forces to launch the SWINTER Trials in 1979 following the Canadian Human Rights Act, and women’s memories of entering the trial — if they knew they were entering a trial at all.
In this episode, we look at what exactly the Aircrew Trial was studying, and women’s first impressions of training and squadron life.
Episode Two: “Suck it up, buttercup.”
Part One: Setting up the trial
*theme music fades out*
In 1979, the Deputy Chief of the Defence Staff issued a directive outlining the five research objectives of the SWINTER Trials:
- To compare the individual effectiveness of men and women for representative work;
- Compare integrated male-female groups with all-male groups for work and operational effectiveness;
- Assess the behavioural and sociological impact of women on trial units, including the sociological impact, if any, on the immediate families of personnel;
- Assess the degree of acceptance of the public and Canadian Forces allies for the employment of servicewomen in non-traditional environments and roles; and
- Determine the resource implications of the expanded participation of servicewomen in the Canadian Forces.
These objectives stemmed directly from the concerns expressed in the 1978 study discussed in Episode One. Could women do the job? Would mixed-gender units function as effectively as all-male units? Would the Canadian public, allies, servicemen and their wives accept women in these new roles? The results of this research would determine if the military had bona fide reasons to continue restricting women’s employment.
Two evaluations were set up to study these questions. One was to be conducted by operational commanders of the trial units, who would “evaluate the servicewomen’s overall impact on unit operational effectiveness.” The other was a social and behavioural science evaluation to determine “the human consequences, if any, of introducing servicewomen into previously exclusive male roles and environments.” This evaluation would be conducted by the Canadian Forces Personnel Applied Research Unit — also known as CFPARU — whose purpose was to conduct psychological and sociological research to inform Canadian Forces policies on things like recruitment, selection and effective employment of military personnel.
In 1981, Captain Rosemary Park was posted to CFPARU as a Personnel Selection Officer. She was assigned the job of principal researcher for the social and behavioural science evaluation of all four of the SWINTER Trials. It could not have been a more fitting assignment.
Rosemary had joined the military in 1972 as the first woman to enroll in the Regular Officer Training Plan. As part of that program, she earned an undergraduate degree in Psychology and a Master’s in Applied Health Sciences, both of which primed her in a rather unexpected way for evaluating the SWINTER Trials.
Now retired Lieutenant Commander Rosemary Park.
What the military didn't know at the time was that my undergrad and my Master's thesis were both an investigation of the use of the masculine, feminine stereotype and creating expectations around behavior for men and women. But in that, it was all related to career choices and did your own identification with sex role characteristics, personality characteristics, align with your career choices?
Her university career introduced her to a new way of thinking about gender roles — at least new in the 1970s.
And a new concept that was developed, that, interestingly, has fallen off the radar, was the notion that you didn't have to be masculine if you were a male and you didn't have to be feminine if you were female. That the binary assignment of these roles, the pink and the blue, was totally societally determined and that you could pick from either camp and you probably would be better off for it. So, that interested me, that it looked like people who weren't bound by having to behave according to the "societal scriptures" were probably better for it.
So, that primed me to see the SWINTER Trials as something that we could not stick to the old assumptions.
The social and behavioural science evaluation was about gauging the extent to which servicewomen were socially integrated into the unit. The success of social integration was viewed by the military as key to maintaining operational effectiveness. For the Aircrew Trial, the evaluation looked at “the extent to which servicewomen were accepted by their male peers as effective and equal contributors on squadron” and also “servicewomen’s own assessment of their abilities and contributions, as well as their perceptions of having been accepted.” To gather this data, attitudinal surveys were conducted as well as group interviews with squadron members during the trial period.
Rosemary.
So, here I come in with my multi-method multi-measure research design hat on, and I go, okay, we have a directive from NDHQ that was very open-ended. It was: "assess the impact of any servicewomen on the operational effectiveness of the units involved." And that's pretty open-ended.
Embedded within the directive was an assumption that operational effectiveness relied on the maintenance of the masculine status quo. The five research objectives outlined by the Deputy Chief of Defence Staff made this assumption clear; men were the standard that women would be measured up against.
And so, when they created the SWINTER Trials, they made it so broadly based that if they could find any reason that could be used, that would be evidence that they could use. So, did wives accept that their husbands were working with women? There was a lot of stereotypes built into this. And all of those stereotypes had to be dealt with. But they all had to be dealt with in a measurable way.
In her analysis of the trials and their outcomes, Canadian Historian Retired Lieutenant Colonel Karen Davis has written that “the only way that the trials would be considered successful was if women managed to minimize any perception of change and participate in ways identical to men. Any perception of difference would be interpreted as failure.”
Yet, the trial did not allow women to participate in ways identical to men. Leadership kept the scope of the trial small, involving only nine units and three training schools across all four of the trials, capped the number of women allowed in each unit at 15%, and restricted women to non-combat and near combat duties. In the air force, women were limited to 10% of each squadron and could serve only in squadrons designated as non-combat.
Rosemary explained that the approach of military leadership towards the SWINTER Trials was deeply rooted in the history of the organisation. Even though servicewomen had been given status as permanent members of the military after unification in 1968, the attitude remained that their purpose was to support operations, not participate in them:
And it was almost inconceivable that women could do this, or should be there, should be doing this. Because at the time women were used for emergency, they were used on a temporary basis and they were always auxiliary. The entire history of women up to that point fit those three categories. Only when necessary. And that’s what I called, “the shelf theory.”
As a trained researcher, Rosemary noticed flaws in the trial design from the beginning.
There were so few women. When I look at the numbers in terms of percentage of women that were at units, you really couldn't measure impact with such limited presence. To put the burden of proof on a very few women was unrealistic. They couldn't affect operational effectiveness. The trial didn't let that happen. It said, “We're not going to let operational effectiveness be negatively impacted by women, even though we think it will, because we’re going to put brakes on not letting that happen.
…That is not how you set up a correct measure. You don't start with a preordained assumption, or a preordained decision. You have to let the data tell you what is the conclusion.
But the 1979 Directive was an order from the top. CFPARU had to move forward with the social and behavioural science evaluation, despite the limitations. So, Rosemary and her team did what good researchers do.
Conscientiously, I undertook to do what the…1979 Directive said. We have to measure it across all five measures, and we have to do it in a rigorous way.
*mysterious, inquisitive music begins with acoustic guitar and builds with electric piano*
And so, we set it up that it could be both positive and negative findings coming out of the data. We didn't preordain anything.
All that was left was to see how the trial participants would do.
Part Two: Training begins
*music fades out*
So, when we arrived, it was nice to see that I wasn't the only woman.
Retired Captain Wendy Sewell describing her first impressions of primary flight training at CFB Portage la Prairie, Manitoba in 1980.
What I remember was that we had separate quarters. We had a little separate building that was much more luxurious, *laughs*, than the men had. They had barracks, and then we had individual rooms with our own bathroom attached and paneled and it looked like a suite instead of a barracks. So, that was already very different. And we really took to base life. Everybody had to go to the mess to eat and to our classes and to the flight-line to do our flying.
They were very choosy about who they had as instructors for us. I think I was quite lucky. I had good instructors. I didn't find any pushback from the instructors. I didn't feel like they were angry to be having to teach a woman, or, *laughs*…I didn't find that at all. Like, I didn't get that sense. I think they chose more senior instructors, because I feel like a lot of them had more of a father figure…Like, I remember when I was going solo for the first time in Portage that somebody took a picture of my instructor waiting at the Ops desk, and he looked like a nervous dad and I'm sure they didn't do that for all the men. I still have that picture, and it's wonderful. You can just see him waiting for me to come back, you know, *laughs*, in one piece.
But I remember the time in Portage being a lot of fun as well as a lot of hard work. I remember the first day we were in the class, the instructors told us to look left and look right in the row we were sitting in, and out of the three of you there would only be one left at the end of Portage.
*beat of Another One Bites The Dust by Queen fades in*
And our course song was, "Another One Bites the Dust." And it was almost every week, people were going home, like they were just failing out at that point.
Primary flight training was a competitive environment at the best of times, but as one of the few women, Wendy felt this pressure amplified.
*Another One Bites The Dust fades out as vocals begins*
We had a lot of pushback from our course mates. All kinds of very strange reasons, we thought, but, anyway…
We also had very good friends within the course. But a lot of them were very distant, and they would say things like, "I wanted to be a pilot my whole life, and I get here and there's girls on the course," like we brought the whole level down of their dream or something. And then things like, "Oh, so and so didn't get on this course because you guys got the spot. And he’s still waiting." And, you know, a lot of, I guess, emotionally-driven, but not logically-driven, pushback.
Retired Major Robin Camken was one of the other female pilot trainees on Wendy’s course.
What you do in primary flying training is take off, landing, how to recover from a spin, all sorts of stuff related to being a pilot. And also military, getting you used to being in the military as well.
And the instructors for the most part treated us the same as other students. You know, I was happy with the training.
Robin observed that some of the push back she and Wendy experienced was due to the military treating them differently than the men. Like their living quarters.
This is one thing that I think they changed later, 'cause we put it down — like, you know, they interview us to find out how they can improve something. And they put the women in separate quarters from where the men were. And so we were staying in officer's quarters and that gave people the idea that we were getting special treatment because we were in nicer quarters. We had a room with our own bathroom and staying with the advanced helicopter pilots in that building. So, that was seen as...treating us differently than the male students. And the same thing in Moose Jaw, they could have put us in the student’s quarters because the student’s quarters were individual rooms but they had a bathroom adjoining the two rooms. So, there were two women. We could have used those rooms.
And then, you know, if they don't see you, they start thinking, "Oh, what are they doing different than us? Are they being given the answers to the tests?" Or...*laughs*. You know? People imagine things when they don't see you. So, I think they did change it after Wendy and I left. I’m not sure.
And I found that once the male students worked with women for a while, that we were accepted and we had a good working relationship with the other students on the course. And any nasty remarks about women usually came from people who didn't know us. And it always surprised me. It's like, why are you saying that? *laughs* You don't even know me.
*music of upbeat shakers and electric piano begins, fades out as narration begins*
The trajectory of aircrew training — in broad strokes — went something like this:
Pilots first went to CFB Portage la Prairie for primary flight training on the CT-134 Musketeer, a single engine, propeller aircraft. Next, they went to CFB Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan for basic flight training on Tutor jets. Flight engineers had to do a six month basic flight engineer training course at CFB Trenton in Ontario. Air navigators were sent to CFB Winnipeg to attend Canadian Forces Air Navigation School.
My name is, fully, it's Georgina Jones, but when I went through the trial it was Georgina Ferguson. That was my maiden name. I was born 9 November 1958 and, for the most part, I grew up in North Vancouver, BC.
Retired Lieutenant Colonel Georgie Jones, air navigator, joined the military in 1980. But due to a series of delays she didn’t start her training at air navigation school until 1982.
There were six people on my serial at nav school, and I was the only woman. And I was the last of the eight female navs trained. I had a bit of a delay in my training because when I finished basic officer training, it was about the same time of year as the military college guys graduated and they had priority for any course loading. So, they had nothing else to do with me so they put me on a year-long French course. And then eventually I got to nav school.
We did aircraft and electronic systems, we studied celestial theory, because way back then we were still using sextants in the airplane to take position lines off the stars, and the planets, and the sun. We studied meteorology, the weather, basically. We had officer development…learning to speak in public, learning to write, you know, that kind of thing, learning to do oral and written presentations. We had an electronic trainer and then we had flying trainers.
Next came advanced training on the aircraft you would fly on the squadron. Air navigators were sent to 426 Training Squadron in Trenton to become qualified for operational duty on the Lockheed C-130 Hercules, a massive, four-engine transport aircraft, affectionately referred to by some as the ‘trash hauler’.
Do you ever walk into a cockpit and look up and see all the switches and all the equipment and you think, "How does anybody keep that straight?"
That is Retired Lieutenant Colonel Karen McCrimmon, air navigator, remembering her training.
So they set you up, and teach you, step-by-step, so you have a place to put all this information in your brain. But it took a while for it to actually solidify into, "Why am I doing all this stuff?" I'm a ‘why’ person, so: "Why are we doing that? What are you trying to accomplish with that?" At the beginning, I think, for the first five, six months they were worried 'cause I really wasn't doing that...I did well academically, of course, I was right at the top, but in the airplane I’d kind of gone, "Why are we doing that? I don't understand this…So, I'm doing what I'm told to do, okay? And I do it," but I couldn't connect all the pieces together.
And then one day, I don't even remember what it was. It was a mission that actually ended up changing, a training mission. And so you do all this planning and do all this stuff, and then the mission had to change at the last moment. And then you had to direct what was going to happen next. And I aced it because, finally, okay, I know what I need to do. And it all fell into place. And then from then on, I was fine.
For advanced training, pilots were funneled into two streams: they would continue training on fixed-wing aircraft, airplanes, or they would train on rotary aircraft, helicopters. Flight engineers had only one option: they were trained on the Buffalo, a twin-engine, turbo prop, short takeoff and landing aircraft made by De Havilland Canada, primarily used for search and rescue at the time.
We went into the classroom and they had these training boards, which were like six or eight feet by four feet high, and there was like one, two, three, four…There were five or six of them, all around the classroom walls.
Retired Master Corporal Bev Beale, flight engineer, recalling her training on the Buffalo.
And we walked in and every light on these boards was on. And, like, it was wires, right? Here, there, going over here, going over there. And I'm going, "I am never going to learn this." And here's what a good instructor can do for you: he turned off all the lights on all the boards and he flipped one switch and the battery lit up. He said, "We're going to start with that." And it was like spaghetti and you followed it from there, all around there, all in there, and there it goes over there, and there it goes, here it goes to the engine, here it goes over to the aux power unit, here it goes over to here and, okay…And I can't remember how long it took, a week or two, but by the end, when we were done, we knew it. We knew the entire electrical system for that aircraft. But I think it was because we had really good instruction. Now, I'm sure they have better — what did they call them? — training aids now than they had then. Some of these things were homemade, I'm sure, *laughs*.
But after all the course part, which, I think, was a few weeks, I don't remember the length of time for the Buffalo course. Then we started flying. And that was a different—
*thoughtful acoustic guitar music begins*
—cup of tea, a different kettle of fish…
As women made their way through training, they were reminded in many ways that they were entering an environment designed for men.
Robin.
The uniforms were all, like the flying equipment and the flight suits, were male. Designed for men.
*music fades out*
And the problem with them was, *laughs*, that if you could get them to fit you in the hips, the arms were really long and the shoulders would hang down. Just because, you know, they're designed for men with narrow hips. So, that was the biggest problem, was the flight suits. But the aircraft themselves, I didn't have any problems with them. I'm 5’7”.
*music fades back in*
And, so, it wasn't an issue. That would be, maybe, for shorter people.
Karen.
I couldn't get flight boots small enough to fit me and I don't have really tiny feet. I'm size eight, women's size eight. So, they couldn't find boots to fit me. So, they actually had some made.
*music fades back out*
You know, the flight suits were good enough. I mean, they had kind of…Velcro tightening. They didn't look great, but I really wasn't there to look great. Helmets took a while, too, to get helmets that fit. And so much really was designed for men. And there had been very little thought given to women. This was kind of a new idea. So, I think they did their very best. I think they tried.
*music fades back in*
The military did try to make it better for us. But it was a bit of a challenge.
Georgie.
I’m 5’11” so, I mean, it wasn’t really a big deal for me to fit into any equipment. The only little bit of an issue was obviously, you know, bathroom breaks.
*music fades back out*
It's a lot easier for the guys in the airplane than it is for the girls. But once you get used to the honey bucket at the back of the Herc, you just…you live with it or you're…the last one on the airplane and the first one off the airplane, *laughs*.
*music fades back in, melody begins*
Airplane bathrooms are not the most comfortable, even on commercial planes. The bathrooms on the military aircraft used for the trial made commercial airplanes look luxurious. In a way, they were something male and female aircrew could loathe together. The bathroom on the Buffalo wasn’t too bad, it at least had a door. The bathroom on the Hercules was another matter.
Retired Major Micky Colton, pilot, remembered it vividly.
*music fades back out*
The limited toilet facilities available in the rear of the Hercules were not amenable to anybody.
So, it comes down on a set of rails and it sits on this platform and this lovely, beautiful green plastic curtain goes around to give you privacy. And I always had this vision that I'd be sitting there and, because it was located right on the ramp, we'd be flying along and I'd have my flying suit down around my ankles and the ramp locks would let go and I would get sucked out into the space with a naked backside. And it just like, it always ran through my mind.
You know, it's not like I had an option, I couldn't use the urinal. I mean, I could, but it was gonna be really an awkward thing. And, anyways, eventually they stopped allowing the urinals ‘cause all of the urine was going out along the sloping longeron in the back of the airplane and rotting it. So, they stopped, *laughs*, letting people use it anyway.
But you dealt with it. Some people held their, like, I couldn’t do that. I would have peed over the seat. Like, I couldn’t. There’s no way!
So, I just sucked it up buttercup, I guess, and went. You know?
*music fades begins again, rhythm builds*
Poorly fitting flight suits, boots and helmets and awkward bathroom situations were described by women as small obstacles to overcome in the scheme of things. They adapted.
(Micky)
Yeah, so, there was nothing, they didn’t go out of their way to make it easier for us or anything, —
*music ends*
— but they didn’t necessarily in that case try to impede us in any way. You know, as far as that goes. You were just expected to make do with what you got.
The air force may not have actively impeded women, but their inaction in terms of providing women with appropriate equipment put trial participants in a situation where they had to overcome challenges that men did not. Perhaps the air force did not see the point of investing money into equipment that they thought may not be needed in the future.
*mysterious, inquisitive music begins with acoustic guitar and builds with electric piano, transitions into a steady beat*
This was a trial, after all. But because the trial judged women’s performance against that of men, the equipment issue does raise the question of equity. Were women given an equitable chance as aircrew if they did not have properly fitting equipment?
And there were some things that were a bit more difficult to adapt to, because the inequity was, in some cases, built into the airplanes themselves.
Here’s how Bev described her first flight on the Buffalo.
So now we’re flying. So, we get up and we're all strapped in. Away we go. So, in the Buffalo there's a pilot and a co-pilot. And the flight engineer sits in between them, in a seat that you pull out from the wall and it folds down. The first time I was sitting in the seat, so, you've got the harness, I guess the same as a pilot’s harness, you have the shoulders and it comes across your hips and there's a middle layer and there's a big buckle right in the middle.
*music fades out*
So, I got myself cinched in there, nice and tight, nice and safe. And one of the jobs a flight engineer does on the Buffalo is to put the flaps up. So we're, *makes a whirring noise*, and you're watching the gauges and stuff because you have to call abort if all these certain parameters aren't made before a certain — I think it was called V1? — before a certain point you have to decide: are you going to take off or stay on the ground? So, anyway, *laughs*, we're up and we're taking off and the first thing the pilot says to you is, "Flaps up." I went to put the flaps up and I couldn't reach them. Because I'm in this seat. And I'm like, "Oh my God. I can't reach." So, he put them up, right? And I thought, "Oh, okay." So, I wriggled forward and I loosened my straps, loosened my straps, loosened my straps. By the time I was in the position where I could actually reach the flaps and put them up, my harness was as far out as it could go. And the first thing in my head was, “Well, this is pretty safe,” *laughs*.
The Buffalo was designed with a particular operator in mind: someone much larger than Bev. This design feature confronted Bev with a dilemma: she could be safe, with her harness tightened properly, but be unable to do parts of her job, or she could compromise her safety.
And, like, you can't move the seat. I mean, it's attached to the aircraft. So, you can't do anything about that. But, you know, I was able to do the job if I had the harness as loose as it would go. And I thought that was fine for the time being. But there was no way that was ever going to change.
*music begins again, with a rhythmic steady beat*
Part Three: On squadron
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With their training completed and having become fully qualified as aircrew —in other words, having earned their “wings” — servicewomen were posted to one of five operational flying squadrons that served either a transport or search and rescue role in the military, or a mixture of both. These were: 413 Squadron at CFB Summerside, Prince Edward Island; 435 Squadron at CFB Edmonton, Alberta; 442 Squadron at CFB Comox, British Columbia; and 424 Squadron and 436 Squadron, both based at CFB Trenton, Ontario. Women were also posted as instructors at three Canadian Forces training schools, but these schools were not included in the CFPARU evaluation.
For the purposes of the Aircrew Trial, air force leadership defined the trial squadrons as “non-combat,” meaning: “those units whose primary role does not involve combat, operations in direct support of combat…or training for these roles.” In this way, the trial allowed women to be ‘operational,’ in that they would play an active role in military operations, but it stopped short of allowing them to serve in a squadron with a “near combat” or “combat” role. These squadrons remained all male.
Yeah, you know, search and rescue was real life.
That is retired Sergeant Cheryl Tardif. After completing flight engineer training and becoming qualified on the Buffalo in 1981, Cheryl was posted to 442 Search and Rescue Squadron in Comox, BC.
I was very, very happy to be part of search and rescue. I probably did my flying backwards. I went from a really good job to ones that were a little bit more boring after that. But, back then, that's what I wanted to do, was, you know, help people.
442 Squadron, they flew the C-115, which is the Buffalo, and then also they flew the Labradors, the helicopters. So, it was an excellent airplane but it was, you know, it was getting worn out and it wasn't pressurized. It wasn't a pressurized aircraft. So, if we went up…to 10,000 feet, we'd have to go on oxygen. Which, of course, we all hated to do. So…
On the different searches, if we were looking for missing aircraft, I could swear, I flew around every mountain in BC at least ten times. So, the beauty was, I was in beauty all the time.
At 442 Squadron, Cheryl got her wish: to fly and to help people. And socially, she felt accepted for the most part.
Most of the men were happy, I think, to have a woman around. But, of course, there's always going to be, you know, the people that want nothing to do with you.
You know, the guys that I worked with, they were...they could really tease well too. And actually, I can't remember if…it was on a search that we were on and, sometimes I remember being away from home for three weeks, it was during a really, it seemed, heavy search and rescue year that year…And because we were always on the go we were close to the next one, so we just would keep going. And I remember coming back and, it wasn't on my crew, it was the other guys on the other crews, and they were kind of, "Oh, you're going home?" And I would get funny looks and everything. So, because they do play a lot of tricks, I went back to the unit, when I got back, flew back to Comox, and I went right through my suitcase because God knows what they could have put in there. You know? They could be pretty nasty tricks. Anyways, I didn't find a darn thing. Even the ground crew when I was in servicing were looking at me funny and kind of snickering. I went out and they’d put my little Honda up on four blocks so I couldn't go anywhere. So, *laughs*, I had to go and get guys from servicing to come and help me.
Navigating the social environment of the air force was not the same experience for all trial participants. Everyone was an integral part of the crew, but pilots and air navigators were officers, and flight engineers were non-commissioned members. Officers are like the management. They have responsibility for the planning and execution of operations, and the supervision of lower ranking military members. Non-commissioned members, on the other hand, are specialised tradespeople and have a different rank structure than officers. So, there were some cultural and hierarchical issues at play between the two groups, and even within these groups was a further ranking of status. Being a pilot was often viewed as the most desirable aircrew role.
Georgie remembered how that led to female pilots receiving a lot more push back than female air navigators.
I was posted to 435 Transport and Rescue Squadron in Edmonton. And I got there in July of 1983. So, because I was at the end of the trainees, a lot of the girls that were going to transport, went to Trenton and then they started backfilling Edmonton. So Edmonton had three female navs by the time that I got there. And that was it, we had no pilots for the trial in Edmonton.
I found that everybody was quite welcoming. They were a little bit leery. They gave me the benefit of the doubt until I either, you know, stubbed my toe or proved that I could do it.
I do have to say though that from talking to a lot of friends of mine in the trial that went through as pilots, they faced a lot more harassment because they were taking a pilot cockpit position away from a guy. To a large extent, if the guy was a nav, they didn't see it the same way. I don't wanna say navs were second class citizens, but a lot of guys were only navs because they failed pilot training. So, because I was a nav, I wasn't as intimidating to the younger guys who feel like maybe they should have got my slot instead, sort of thing.
Flight engineers also had unique challenges.
Retired Corporal Mary Lou Ellan was posted to 413 Squadron in Summerside, PEI.
I got along well with the ground crew and same with the aircrew, the pilots and the air navigators, I got along really well with.
It's the other flight engineers I had a problem with, *laughs*. They were really chauvinistic.
In archival documents on the Aircrew Trial, the issue was raised that male flight engineers were particularly resistant to women entering the trade. Mary Lou wondered if that was because a lot of male flight engineers were originally from the army, where a lot of resistance to women in non-traditional roles was recorded in the Land Trial.
And what I found was that a lot of these people who become flight engineers, they're army, and then they see these aircraft coming in and the flight engineer and they say, “Hey, I'd like to do that job.” So then they remuster to an aircraft trade and then become a flight engineer. Because you only have to be, I think, in the trade for four years and then two years as a corporal to apply to be a flight engineer.
One of the things that I found with my fellow flight engineers is, they would just say, *pauses*, if there was a problem, they would say, “Oh, baffle them with bullshit because they don't really know.” And I would say, “Well, that's not a good attitude.”
And I got along really well with the pilots and the air navigators. And they liked that, if I didn't know something, I would say, “Oh, let me look it up,” because we always carried the technical manuals with us on the aircraft. So, if I didn't know something, I would say, “Oh, just a minute, I'll look it up.” And they really respected that.
A common experience shared by the women we interviewed, regardless of their role on the flight deck, was the pressure they felt to prove that they had a right to be there. This was a pressure faced at every stage, from training to the squadron posting.
As a pilot, Wendy remembered facing that pressure throughout training.
If something went wrong, it spread like wildfire. By the time you landed, people would know that you'd made a mistake somewhere. You’d think, "How? How is that possible?" You would never hear that about a guy, unless, of course, he had to eject, then everybody knew. But not if he had a hard landing or if he got lost or…Like, you're doing so many things. You're doing air aerobatics, you're doing navigation, you're doing night flying, you're doing instrument flying, there's so many components in that year that you're learning. So, there's lots of places you could screw up.
Retired Master Warrant Officer Christine Krueger, flight engineer, experienced that pressure at 424 Squadron in Trenton, Ontario, a mixed search and rescue and transport squadron.
Keep in mind, this was also in a time where it's the typical, 'suck it up, buttercup,' you get along, you do what you have to do. Because, again, the last thing you wanted to do is feed into the...the attitude and the thought of the day is that, "Oh yeah, well, there you go. Another woman, she can't handle it. See? It was a mistake." Right? So you didn't want to do that. You always wanted to make sure that you could do the job as well as, or better than, any of the guys.
But once she proved she was capable, she was accepted.
For the most part, I got along certainly with all the guys...It's like anything else, as soon as you have a reputation and, you know, the guys know that, okay, fine, you're going to pull your weight, you're going to do your job, then, yes, they will certainly go out of their way to help you, to work with you and not fight you.
Mary Lou had a similar experience.
You're always kind of having to prove yourself. Prove that you could do the job, prove that you were capable—
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—that you knew what you're doing and things like that. So, you did have to work hard, harder than men, I think. But once you prove that you can do a good job, then you were accepted.
But for Wendy, this change in attitude never really came. She was posted to 436 Squadron in Trenton. No matter how well women at 436 performed at their jobs, they never felt fully accepted by the men.
What made this squadron different from the others?
The story continues in Episode Three.
This episode was written and produced by me, Camas Clowater-Eriksson.
Script editing by Erin Gregory.
Music by the Blue Dot Sessions, with a short clip from Another One Bites The Dust by Queen.
Thank you to the Department of National Defence’s Directorate of History and Heritage for the digitisation and use of their Directorate of Women Personnel Fonds.
And a very special thank you to the women whose voices and stories you heard in this episode: Rosemary Park, Wendy Sewell, Robin Camken, Georgie Jones, Karen McCrimmon, Bev Beale, Micky Colton, Cheryl Tardif, Mary Lou Ellan, and Christine Krueger, and to all the women who contributed their oral histories of the SWINTER Aircrew Trial to the national collection at the Canada Aviation and Space Museum.
This project was supported by the Ingenium Research Institute.
Thank you for listening and we hope you tune into Episode Three of The Tipping Point.
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END OF EPISODE TWO
Episode Three: Working in a fishbowl
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The trial employment of Servicewomen in Non-Traditional Environments and Roles, known as the SWINTER Trials, was a Canadian Forces experiment, held between 1979 and 1985, that tested women in roles previously restricted to men. Four military trials were held during this time, across the army, navy and air force and at an isolated communications station in Canada’s north.
My name is Camas Clowater-Eriksson and this is Episode Three of The Tipping Point, a five-part Canada Aviation and Space Museum audio documentary about women and one of these trials: the SWINTER Aircrew Trial.
The last episode outlined the research objectives of the Aircrew Trial’s social and behavioural science evaluation, conducted by CFPARU, that looked at men’s acceptance of female aircrew, and women’s perceptions of having been accepted. Women described overcoming the first hurdle of the Aircrew Trial: becoming fully qualified aircrew and earning their ‘wings.’ As a minority in an otherwise all-male environment, women adapted to equipment and aircraft that had been designed for male bodies and felt a pressure to perform just as well, if not better, than the men. Once at squadrons, many women felt accepted once they demonstrated their capabilities. At 436 Squadron, however, this didn’t happen.
In this episode, we look at the case of 436, the problem posed by military culture, and women’s search for support.
Episode Three: Working in a fishbowl
Part One: Male attitudes
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On a scale of one to five, with one being negative and five being positive, answer how you feel now to the following:
Given the proper training, women can carry out tasks as aircrew on operational flying squadrons as well as men.
Women serving as aircrew on operational flying squadrons are emotionally able to cope with life on squadron.
The operational effectiveness of my squadron will be lowered as a result of having women serving as aircrew in the squadron.
Squadron morale will be lowered as a result of having women serving as aircrew.
These are statements from a questionnaire given to servicemembers at two squadrons in 1983: 424 Transport and Rescue Squadron and 436 Transport Squadron, both in Trenton, Ontario. The questionnaire was part of an attitudinal survey, conducted by Canadian Forces Personnel Applied Research Unit — CFPARU for short — as part of their social and behavioural science evaluation. An initial survey in 1982, one year after the arrival of the first three female pilots, concluded that attitudes towards women were “generally neutral,” likely due to the few women actually on squadron at that point.
By 1983, eleven female pilots, eight navigators and three flight engineers had completed training and been posted to a squadron. At 436 and 424 Squadron, the population of female aircrew had reached 10%, considered by CFPARU researchers to be “critical mass.” Anything less and researchers determined that a meaningful evaluation of the impact of servicewomen on the squadron could not be accomplished.
The 1983 study found that, at both squadrons, the acceptance of female aircrew was linked to “perceptions of ability.”
Male aircrew at 424 perceived women as “displaying a normal range of flying ability” and their attitudes reflected a general acceptance of female aircrew members.
At 436, however, the presence of women was perceived as “somewhat problematic.”
Male aircrew reported a lack of confidence in women’s professional abilities as pilots. While the performance of air navigators was viewed as adequate, “it was commented that both pilots and navigators showed less motivation, commitment, and dedication than did their male counterparts.”
CFPARU proposed a variety of explanations as to why women were accepted at 424, but not 436.
First, there was the fact that women were restricted to non-combat duties. CFPARU’s primary researcher for the SWINTER Trials, retired Lieutenant Commander Rosemary Park remembered how all the squadrons had protested the classification:
They said, "You're calling us non-combat? Really?" There was a certain indignation. Every time you go up in an aircraft there is a risk. And, of course, flying search and rescue in Northern Ontario isn't the same as intercepting Russian bombers but there was a certain pride that all of the squadrons were agile and crosstrained. That to make a distinction was more artificial than not because the next time they might go into a more hostile situation.
This was particularly artificial at 436. As a transport squadron flying the Hercules, 436 had an obligation to be trained in something called tactical airlift, the transport of troops and supplies in and out of combat zones. At the time, it was something of a grey area, not defined as combat but not exactly non-combat either. In the beginning of the trial, women were prohibited from being trained in tactical airlift. To prohibit female aircrew from this duty meant that women were perceived as not able to fully contribute to the squadron, and put the burden of fulfilling combat duties onto the shoulders of the male aircrew. Men described this as a form of “reverse discrimination.”
The amount of contact squadron members had with servicewomen also varied between the two squadrons. 424 was a small squadron, and the nature of search and rescue was such that the crews spent a lot of time together, allowing servicemen to know female aircrew on an individual level. 436, on the other hand, was large, the crew changed with each operation and a lot of time was spent apart, which meant that men were less likely to gain enough experience working with women to dispel any rumours that they might have heard about female aircrew.
And rumours were common.
Rumours were identified as a particular issue of concern in the 1983 survey, an issue that was present at all the trial squadrons but seemed most problematic at 436. Some men were convinced that standards had been lowered to get women through training and onto the squadron. This accusation was often directed at pilots.
One male pilot at 436 reported:
If a guy in the military today gets his wings, he earned them…I think all the guys are proud to wear their wings. I know I am and I really resent the fact that some of these girls are coming here and they are not capable of flying. They shouldn’t be flying! It bothers me that they’re wearing the same wings I am and they haven’t achieved the same standard a guy has to.
CFPARU researchers did not believe that training standards had been lowered as the pilot suggested, particularly given women were viewed as performing well at other squadrons. CFPARU never found evidence to support this claim. Later, in 1990, a report by R.J. Hicks, the head of the Central Medical Board at the Defence and Civil Institute of Environmental Medicine confirmed that standards were not lowered. The report compared aptitude scores and the training outcomes of male and female aircrew over the trial period and concluded that not only were the same selection standards used, but also that, when it came to aircrew training, “one cannot make any claim for a significant sex difference in success rate.”
Rosemary recalled how this was not the first time such a claim had been used to resist change in the military. The same argument was used against the integration of Francophone servicemembers into Anglophone units after the Official Bilingual Act was passed in 1969.
"Standards were dropped." That was always the rumour. "Oh, well, of course that's why." So any minority group, you have to, it isn't just women for which that was rumored. It's not something that I think the air force got hung up on. That’s their job, is to get all pilots to that standard. You don't graduate. And they have to adhere to that. I just don't think the wink, wink, nudge, nudge was at play.
And air force leadership did not appear too hung up on the rumours reported at 436. In response to the 1983 study, Commander of Air Command Lieutenant-General Paul Manson commented that his staff had monitored the selection and testing of aircrew closely:
…care has been taken to emphasize the need for unbiased training and testing. If a difference in standards did exist, it was apparently inadvertent rather than intentional and was largely eliminated early in the trial.
He urged that the findings at 436 not be taken in isolation, and remarked that he found “encouragement in the fact that only one trial unit has so far registered negative feelings.”
*uplifting and thoughtful electric piano and guitar music begins*
But the social and behavioural science evaluation was not just about men’s attitudes. It also looked at how servicewomen felt about their abilities, how they were contributing to the squadron, and whether they believed they were being accepted by the men around them.
So, how did the women who were posted to 436 perceive their acceptance?
Did they have their own conclusions as to why one squadron was more accepting than another?
Part Two: Women remember 436
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I remember one of the first trips I did, I won't say where, but I was brand new. Brand new, fully qualified.
That is retired Lieutenant Colonel Karen McCrimmon, air navigator. She was one of the first female aircrew posted to 436 Squadron in 1981 for on-the-job training.
And we went on a mission in Europe. And we had an overnight somewhere. And the overnight, we all shared an apartment. The crew lived in an apartment in different rooms and stuff. So, we each had our rooms. It's all fine. But that night when I was there, I was left on my own. I'd never been there before, had no idea. And all the male crew members all went out to somewhere, *laughs*. You know, the strip joint...or something like that. They made it perfectly clear they didn't want to include me and they were going to go off and do their thing. And, you know, sure, I was disappointed, but, ew God, anyway…
...So, there was lots of that that went on during those early years at 436. It was not exactly a welcoming place and if people were allowed to treat someone that way then whatever you allow is, you know, it's gonna grow. And we saw a fair amount of that.
Karen described a variety of problematic cultural norms that were evident from the start, such as sexual material in the workplace.
In 1980, they had a pub bag on most airplanes that was filled with Playboys. And so that's what would come out in the cockpit. There are always segments of the flight that are long and boring and so that's what they did, they would sit around and read Playboy magazines.
And, you know…one of the jobs of a navigator is to do an emergency navigation systems using a sextant to navigate via the stars. So, let's say if you lost all of your external radio aids we could still find our way. And so you needed to practice that every now and then. It just, it was for emergencies but it was very effective. And I remember once being up — so, you have to stand on a stool, put your hands above your head and hold the sextant for two minutes steady and focus on a star — and when I turned around, looked around, one of the people in the cockpit had the centerfold out and comparing me with the centerfold. Like, okay, grow up guys!
These issues were not isolated to 436 Squadron. Karen compared 436 to 426 Training Squadron, also in Trenton, where she was trained for operational duty on the Hercules.
Well, 426 was a little more mature. Not quite the macho kind of…there were some of them over there. 426 actually took this seriously. Because it’s a training squadron, they thought it was in their best interest to make sure that we succeeded. But that didn't change that when the first, you know, slide show we would get, when we would get briefed about engine systems, and what would come up was all the pin-ups. "Oh, we're not going to do this again, are we? Really? Do we really need to have Playboy pictures when we're supposed to be getting a briefing, a lesson, on engine systems or something? All kinds of stuff like that. But generally, I would say 426 was a little more mature than 436 was. But there were still turkeys there too.
But in terms of the attitudes of the male aircrew at 436 towards female aircrew, Karen recalled both the good and the bad.
We had some good majors, mind you. We had some really good majors who stepped up and made sure that everybody knew that we were expected to treat each other, as members of that squadron, with respect and dignity...And I will credit some of those majors for making it tolerable for us. But it was really kind of a macho place, right? Some of them, not all of them, but some of them could make your life...difficult if they chose to.
Retired Captain Wendy Sewell was also posted to 436 Squadron. Wendy’s first choice had always been to pilot the Hercules.
My idea of joining the military was to see the world; that was my number one, one of my number one, motivations, was to travel a lot. And a lot of the flying that you do in the military, if it's on a smaller aircraft, is local. So, Buffalo would be more search and rescue, staying in Canada-area…
So, I applied for the Hercules and I got it. But, again, a lot of men were upset because…if you're not fighter it's probably one of the top choices. So, anyway, I think it was also because, at that time, there were women already, like, Leah was already in Trenton, Nora was in Trenton.
That’s Captain Leah Mosher and Captain Nora Bottomley who were in the first class of female pilots.
I think they were trying to also keep us in a support group and not put me in Shearwater by myself on a new squadron. But I don’t know. I don't know what their thinking was but I got Hercs and I was over the moon.
After becoming fully qualified on the Hercules, Wendy arrived on squadron in January 1982.
So, then we got onto the squadron and…that was a real mixed bag. There were people that just really didn't like us there and people that were really helpful. So, I had pilot officers — that are in charge of the pilots — that were awful, and I had ones that were just near and dear to my heart, they were so good to me.
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Despite the varied response, Wendy loved the work at 436.
My favorite trips were up north. We had a weekly trip to Alert.
That’s Alert, Nunavut, where the Canadian Forces have their most northern communications station, and also where the SWINTER Isolation Trial was held.
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You could request trips and I would always request the Alert one…You went to Greenland, to Thule, Greenland, a big base that the Americans had. So, you'd fly Trenton to Thule, stay overnight. Then, the next morning, fly to Alert and back. Flying up there where nobody else gets to see. And usually the people that requested that loved the North, so it was always a nice, nice crew and nice feeling. And you went out for dinner on the base and it was always a beautiful landscape up there. Just incredible.
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However, the transient nature of serving in a large transport squadron like 436 meant Wendy couldn’t always count on having a nice crew that accepted her as a pilot.
Because in a Herc squadron you don't fly with a set crew, every trip you go on is a different crew. So, you have, you know, different navigators, different flight engineers, different loadmasters.
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So, every single time it was like, “prove yourself, prove yourself, prove yourself.”
And even when you did very well, you were never recognized. It was never seen as it would be with the guys…Like, they…were so careful about not having preferential treatment for the women that even it carried over to not commending them, or awarding them or…The negativity was broadcast loud and clear. Positivity was never broadcast loud and clear. It was always, "Oh no, we can't do that, because they'll think we're giving the women preferential treatment."
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Wendy’s concerns, along with those of fellow female aircrew at 436, were reported by CFPARU following the 1983 survey. Women said they were “judged more harshly than their male peers” and had to “work twice as hard to be considered half as good.” They claimed that because of their high visibility, any mistakes that they made were soon well known throughout the squadron whereas those of male peers were easily forgotten.
Wendy recalled one time when another female pilot had a hard landing flying into Petawawa.
Before she even got back to Trenton, everybody in the squadron in Trenton knew about it. There were people you were never going to win over, no matter how hard you worked or how hard your work ethic was. Or even if you had been the most fantastic pilot in the world, you weren't going to win them over. They just had a mentality that I shouldn't be there because I was a woman.
We called it a “fishbowl.” We were always in a fishbowl. And each new crew that you were with you had to completely prove yourself to them. And I think now that I'm older I would have just said, you know, "I'm just going to get on with my job and do it, I'm not going to worry about you at all." But, in those days, you're young and impressionable and you want to prove yourself. Like, you want to be the best version so that they could have nothing to complain about or remark about.
Retired Major Micky Colton was also posted to 436 in 1982.
It was a terrible place to work. It was awful. Yeah, they did not want us there.
There were five women on the squadron at that time, including her, Wendy and Karen.
There were some of the male members of the squadron that were lovely, they were just generally nice people. You still didn’t do a lot of socialising with them but at least at work it wasn’t hostile. There were some that were hostile. I hung around a lot with the other women. You know, we formed our own kind of social network. Karen McCrimmon and I, she’s a navigator. She and I — it was a frustrating place to work, as you can well imagine. So, we used to go to the end of the runway, park the car, usually her car, and wait for a plane to go over and scream at the top of our lungs. It was great, it was very cathartic.
Karen also remembered letting off steam.
My best friend at the time coming out of Chilliwack was a lady named Mickey Colton, who was a pilot. And she went on to fly like, I don’t know how many hours, more than 5,000 flying hours of flying time on Hercs. The two of us, though, we were like minded souls. We will put up with shit for a little while, but then, okay, that's enough now. And we had a lot of fun together. And we used to go...It was so frustrating that out behind the airfield in Trenton there's train tracks and the trains would resupply Trenton. They'd come and I remember we would, we just went out there one night and just screamed when the trains were going by — because we wanted to mask our voices — ‘cause we were just so frustrated.
Whether they were screaming at planes or trains, having a support network certainly helped make the difficult environment at 436 more bearable for the trial participants we had the opportunity to speak to.
(Karen)
And that made a big difference, knowing that we weren't alone. And I think that's something where...you need a critical mass, right?
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If you put two women there and two women there and one women there, that's...they're not going to make it. It's going to be too hard.
Part Three: Searching for a solution
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The case of 436 Squadron provides some insight as to what was needed to facilitate a more welcoming environment for women during the Aircrew Trial.
Wendy.
I saw a change in there were more women, which was great. The ones that didn't want us there never changed. It's hard to say. I didn't see change. I didn't see change, no. There were good people and bad people. But I didn't see that there were more good people by the end or something. You know? There was still always the core of people that just didn't want us there. And, I think, you know, the problem was my whole time was within the trial. So, they felt, "Okay, they're just in a trial. So they're not real squadron members. They're just here for a trial."
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The trial status was one barrier to acceptance. It labeled women as temporary. Having critical mass helped, but it did not appear to be enough to change attitudes at 436 over the trial period. Something more was needed.
Micky noticed a change in attitude only after she stood up to poor behaviour.
I had one experience that really brought it to a head, I think for all of us.
The incident took place in 1984, while on a trip with the squadron to CFB Lahr in Germany. While out to dinner with the crew, a Major, a first officer in 436 Squadron, told Micky exactly what he thought of female aircrew.
And we were having dinner in a place we used to call “Bambies,” because they served venison is why.
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And he was sitting across from me and he threw his fork onto the table. There were ten of us sitting there. And he threw his fork onto the table and he pointed across at me and he started. And he used a lot of profanity, which I won’t at this time. But he said, “You F’n woman. How dare you join? How dare you come and take a job from a man. You should be home,” honest to God, he said, “home in the kitchen and having babies.” Honest to God, he said that to me. At this point in time, enough things had happened that I had enough. So, I took a napkin. I took a pen out of my purse and everything he said I wrote down. I just wrote it down. And he didn’t get it. Like, he was just on a rant, right? He was just ranting. And not another man at the table said anything. Like, “Hey, come on, that’s enough.” ‘Cuz, he was a major, right? He outranked me. He outranked all of us and there was this stupid idiocy that rank had its privileges. Well, it didn’t. It had to be earned as far as I was concerned. Anyway.
I wrote down everything he said and when he was done, I said to him, “Are you done?” And he said, “Yeah.” So then I ran around the table and I wrote down everybody that was there. I wrote down the date and the time and I took the — I had a couple napkins by now filled out — put them in my purse, closed it up and just carried on with my dinner.
…When I got back to my room, I called my boss, my aircraft commander, I said, “Here’s what happened, I’m going to bring charges against him when I get back to Canada. I’m not going to do it here, but I’m going to do it when I get back to Canada.”
When Micky got back to Trenton, she did not take her complaint to the commanding officer of 436. She didn’t trust him to take her complaint seriously. So, she set out to find someone who would.
And, so, I got home and I walked around the squadron and I was trying to find the right superior officer to talk to. Not the CO, I didn’t want to go to the CO. I found another one, who was kind of the overall aircrew guy, you know? And I talked to him about it. I said, “I want to bring charges.” And he said, “Okay, that’s good, I understand that.”
So, I asked for them not to have the CO involved in it. I involved all the other women though.
So, they finally, we worked out that it was going to be a meeting of me and all the supervisors, except for the commanding officer, so there was quite a few of them, and this guy, *laughs*. And I was a Lieutenant, so I had no rank whatsoever so to speak. So, we got into this room and they read out what he had said and everyone in the room looked a little uncomfortable. As they should have. What if someone had said that to their daughter or their wife? Would they think that was a great idea? And he turned to me — the guy that was running it — and he said, “What do you want to come from this?” I said, “I want this to stop. I want the word to go out across the squadron that women are not here for your abusive privileges. We’re here to work. We have a job. We’re all here because we passed the course.
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We’re not here because we slept our way into an airplane, for God sakes. Get that out of your stupid heads.” And I said, “And I want an apology and I want him to mean it.” *Laughs*, you know?
Micky got her apology, but said she was fairly sure he didn’t mean it. It wasn’t until later that she saw her efforts had made an impact.
I got qualified as an aircraft commander.
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I became an aircraft commander. I was the second one on the squadron. And they asked me if I would fly with him. This Major that had been abusive. And I said, “Yeah, I would.” You know? And, *laughs*, and he was good as gold, let me tell ya.
And we ended up going out for dinner, we said, “Ya, let’s go have a crew dinner.” And I got there and he got there and nobody else was there yet, and he apologised again. And this time he meant it. And he actually started to cry. And, yeah…and I said, “I can forgive you.” I said, “I’m not going to forget it, but I can forgive you. I wouldn’t have flown with you if I didn’t think there was some value to you.” And that was kind of the end of it.
And attitudes started to change then, on the squadron. Like, the word kind of went out. It was more a fear response. “Don’t mess with Micky. She’s got claws and she’ll bite you.”
But, yeah, whatever. It made a change.
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Micky took it upon herself to step up and speak out against the negativity that was being directed at the female aircrew at 436. It was a brave act. But it shouldn’t have been her responsibility to call out bad behaviour. It was the responsibility of her superiors and she was fortunate that she knew of at least one senior officer who would take her complaint seriously. Leadership could not always be trusted to do so.
Karen explained that leadership was a key ingredient missing at 436.
Leadership matters, eh? You know? Leadership really matters. At 436 squadron, we had a critical mass, but I don't think we had the kind of leadership, the kind of welcoming leadership there.
Leadership does matter in a hierarchical organisation like the Canadian Forces. From their positions of influence, leaders set the tone for what behaviour is and isn’t acceptable in the organisation. They can dispel rumours and hearsay by providing accurate information to those under their command. They can take complaints seriously. Leaders have the power to facilitate social change. This power is held by leaders at all levels, from the squadron to Air Command. For the trial participants we spoke to, the attitude of squadron commanders certainly appeared to play a role in whether the squadron was welcoming or not, and whether problems were adequately addressed.
For Karen, Wendy, and Micky at 436, the commanding officer did not seem to provide the leadership that the squadron needed to disrupt prejudiced beliefs and facilitate a change in attitude towards female aircrew.
At 424 Squadron, however, that type of leadership was present. Retired Major Robin Camken noticed that it made a difference.
…424 Squadron was very welcoming to women and a lot of it had to do with the commanding officer there who was very positive about women entering the role, and the pilots, and we had flight engineers too. Only one that I remember at the time.
I do think the commanding officer attitude makes a huge difference in something involving gender integration because people take their cues from the senior officer. So, if the senior officer is negative, that will trickle down through the rest of the staff. Yep.
This was also noticed by CFPARU. Researchers put leadership forward as a potential explanation for the difference in attitudes at 424 and 436. As they wrote in their report: “The attitudes of senior personnel within each unit may serve to influence the degree of acceptance displayed by squadron members.” They suggested that “supervisors at all levels should be sensitive to the adverse consequences arising from the spread of exaggerated or false information and take steps to curb its flow.”
Here, again, is Karen.
…and 436, with the exception of some notable majors, it was a culture I would not want to see replicated. Right? So…I must admit, at 436 I learned what not to do in terms of leadership and teamwork and stuff like that.
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But maybe that's a good lesson.
Part Four: Searching for support
Please be advised, the following contains a discussion of sexual assault. If you find this material distressing, you can skip it by going to 47 minutes into the audio track.
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While 436 Squadron stood out as particularly difficult, women at squadrons where few negative attitudes were recorded also experienced challenges.
Retired Sergeant Cheryl Tardif, posted to 442 Search and Rescue Squadron in Comox, remembered feeling isolated. She arrived in 1981 to find she was the only woman at the squadron. While she generally felt accepted by her male colleagues, she also recalled feeling like she had little support to help her navigate the added pressure of being a trial participant, let alone a new member of the crew.
Right from going into the squadron, nobody ever said, you know,"Oh, there's a woman over there. You're very welcome to go and talk to her if you have any issues." And so I just felt alone absolutely the whole time. Alone like I was in a fishbowl. Really. You know, if I did something good, well, that was okay. But if I did something bad, then, you know, it would certainly make the rounds.
In 1979, air force leadership had been advised by CFPARU that they should employ a minimum of four women at a squadron at any time. “Anything less,” they wrote, “will tend to produce social isolation of the minority group.” It is unclear in official documents why the decision was made to post Cheryl on her own and not to another Buffalo squadron like 424 where other female aircrew were already posted. Nor is it clear why Cheryl was not offered support when placed in a situation that leadership was aware may lead to feelings of isolation.
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This was a trend. During the trial, air force leadership anticipated problems, such as the negative attitudes of male aircrew and the social isolation of female aircrew, and then neglected to put in place procedures and support structures to address these problems. This also appeared to be the case for incidents of sexual harassment and assault.
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In our interviews with trial participants, sexual harassment did come up, but not for everyone. Some, like Karen, described the prevalence of sexual materials in the workplace, others described inappropriate comments made about their bodies. Some women spoke of unwanted attention from male colleagues that they usually dealt with on their own. And there were those that described having no issues at all. While no one that we interviewed spoke about experiencing sexual assault, we know that it did occur during the trial. In 1998, two women aircrew, a pilot and a flight engineer, came forward about their experience of sexual harassment and assault during the trial period. Because we did not get a chance to speak to these women ourselves, we have chosen not to use their names to respect their privacy.
In May and June 1998, their stories were published in Maclean’s magazine as part of a larger exposé on the problem of sexual assault in the Canadian Forces. Both of the incidents occurred at the beginning of the trial. The pilot said she had been pursued by an instructor during her flight training and felt coerced into having sex with him. She did not come forward about the incident during the trial period. “My future was in his hands,” she explained to the Maclean’s reporter. The flight engineer had also kept silent about what she experienced as a trial participant in 1981. At the time, she was posted to a squadron in Trenton and they had flown a crew of search and rescue divers to Bermuda for training. She described how two search and rescue technicians entered her room in the night with the intention of raping her, but she managed to get out of the room before they could follow through. In the article, she recalled how it became a joke amongst her fellow aircrew.
The next day, the whole crew laughed at me. It was the big joke around the squadron…Who knew about it? Everyone right up to the colonel. And what am I gonna do now? I just became aircrew, I’m gonna report them for attempted rape? Then what? The brass would say: “We’re not having women in aircrew,” and that would have been the end of it right there.
In the 1980 directive outlining the terms of the Aircrew Trial, Air Command made this statement:
…the employment of female aircrew will be a novel situation and some minor difficulties can be expected. Every effort will be made to ensure that women are treated the same as men in similar situations. Discrimination or harassment will not be tolerated within trial units…Reporting procedures…will include provision for the recording of any incidents which appear to involve discrimination, harassment or reverse discrimination.
Harassment and discrimination may have been on Air Command’s radar, but the Canadian Forces had no sexual harassment and assault policy at this time. And neither did civilian workplaces. This was an issue being actively debated as the trial was taking place. Between 1982 and 1988, a series of civilian court cases and Canadian Human Rights Tribunals demonstrated that it was the responsibility of an employer to create a harassment-free workplace, and to actively stop harassment from occurring. Not long after this decision, in 1988, the Canadian Forces issued the first military policy to define sexual harassment and outline reporting and investigative procedures.
No official policy existed at the time of the SWINTER Trials, but there were options for a member to report an incident of sexual harassment or assault. A servicemember could go to their supervising officer, the military police, or a medical officer, for example. Each option, however, came with the risk of backlash and it could not be counted on that the report would be taken seriously.
If the incident was a criminal offence, like assault, an alternative option was to file a report with the civilian authorities, but seeking justice outside of the military system could also lead to backlash and depending on what happened, when and where, those authorities might decline to pursue the case, arguing it was the jurisdiction of the military police.
Retired Master Corporal Bev Beale looks back on her time in the military fondly, but she also acknowledged that there was not a lot of trust in the system when it came to reporting sexual harassment. She recalled feeling very much on her own at the beginning of her military career in the mid-1970s, when she was an airframe technician, a trade that had only just been opened to women.
I only remember being uncomfortably harassed by one guy and he used to come up against me as close as he could when we were getting debriefings and stuff about aircraft snags. And one day I was doing an after flight check on a Herc and you have to go up in the cockpit and then up through a hole in the top and walk along the top to check for whatever damage and stuff up there, right? So, you stepped up onto the bunk and then there was a footstep and then there was the hole you went up through. And this guy was an instrument tech, or something. So, he was sitting in the seat and he was playing with dials and stuff and I'm on my way up there and he says, "Oh, do you want a hand up there?" "No, no, I'm fine. I've done this a hundred times." He said, "No, no. I'll give you a hand." And he put his hand on my butt and gave me a push up. And my foot slipped right off of the, the little step right into his face. Then he never touched me again.
Because we were the first ones, there was really nothing you could do except figure out yourself how you were going to deal with it. There was no harassment policy and there was really nobody to tell. You could tell your boss, but sometimes they were just as bad.
As the flight engineer described in her testimony, the trial scenario created even more of a disincentive to file a complaint. Micky’s story earlier appears to be a rare instance in which a complaint went somewhere. But she was also in a different position: it was later in the trial and she had earned some credibility as a pilot. She also knew of someone in a high enough position that she could rely on to effectively address the harassment she endured. But for women at the beginning of the trial, with low rank and no credibility, there was fear that a complaint could be ignored, lead to backlash, end your career one way or another, and that it could be used as evidence that women should not be aircrew.
While sexual harassment or assault were not universal experiences for trial participants, it was common knowledge that there was little institutional support if it did happen.
Micky.
Support networks? There wasn’t any….Zero tolerance, you know, zero harassment, all that stuff that’s in place — because of us — wasn’t there when we started. It was sink or swim. You’re on your own.
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Since the SWINTER Trials, policies and procedures for reporting sexual harassment and assault have evolved, but these problems persist and there remains a mistrust in the system and in leadership. In 2015, retired Supreme Court Justice Marie Deschamps conducted an investigation of the on-going issue and concluded that the Canadian military had a “hostile organisational culture that is disrespectful and demeaning to women.” In 2018, Statistics Canada reported that 37% of servicewomen and 19% of servicemen in the Regular Force feared negative consequences if they reported a sexual assault. And since 2020, the Canadian military has been embroiled in a scandal over sexual misconduct — a term that encompasses sexual harassment, assault and gender-based discrimination — that has seen eleven senior leaders under investigation for sexual misconduct or for mishandling reports of sexual misconduct.
The military leaders who face allegations of sexual misconduct today all entered the military in the 1980s or 1990s: during the SWINTER Trials or in the aftermath of the trials. The experiences of women shared in this episode paint a picture of a military system in the 1980s that allowed a problematic culture to persist, and provided little support to members who were harmed by that culture. More often than not, it silenced them.
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We asked retired Master Warrant Officer Christine Krueger what she thought needs to be done to bring about a change of culture in the military in light of the present leadership crisis.
*laughs*...There is so much that can be said on that subject. And I honestly feel that the women need to work with the men and the men also need to understand that we have a rightful place within the military, within any job. Now to try and recruit and retain, we need to start having women in the higher positions. I mean, yes, we are fortunate enough that we've got, I believe it's Lieutenant General Allen. She is now in as, I believe, Vice CDS. We need more women like that. This is where you've got to get rid of that male bastion. It has gone on for too long and it's unfortunate that now every one of the 'old boys club,' —
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—it's now coming home to roost. And it's stigmas and it is things like that. That needs to stop.
Servicewomen during the SWINTER Trials had little in the way of overt institutional support, but there were people in positions of leadership who were advocating for them behind the scenes at National Defence Headquarters in Ottawa.
One of those advocates was the Director of Women Personnel, known as DWP.
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The position was created in 1969 to advise senior leadership on issues related to servicewomen, such as training, clothing, welfare and morale, terms of service and employment.
Rosemary.
She was, Colonel Belanger, Anne-Marie Belanger, was the, when I first got into the SWINTER Trials, Anne-Marie Belanger was the Director of Women Personnel. I have such admiration for that woman. The guys never made a decision if she wasn't in the room about the SWINTER Trials. "Oh, well, we'll just wait ‘til Colonel Belanger is back." *Laughs*. Because she came with facts and figures and numbers.
Women in the trial had few opportunities to influence the decision making process, other than in their participation. But the DWP had a seat at the table. She and her staff reviewed the trial reports, sat on committees, and attended meeting, upon meeting with senior leadership throughout the trial. As an adviser, the DWP had the responsibility to make sure that women’s rights were considered by senior leadership.
In January 1982, in a memorandum addressed to senior military leaders on the subject of the Aircrew Trial, DWP Colonel Belanger wrote:
The major stumbling block to the successful integration of women in all three elements is the failure and refusal by many members to recognise and accept women’s undeniable right to equal opportunities, and the failure—
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—to create, maintain and progressively enhance a climate conducive to their optimum/maximum performance in the work place and in the organisation in general. Other stumbling block are paternalism, fraternization, favouritism, sexual harassment and all ensuing problems. Proper leadership, education and reinforcement of good service discipline by all those in positions of authority are the only means to deal effectively with those negative attitudes and unacceptable behaviours, not continuing discrimination nor foot-dragging.
Next, we dig into the archival documents of the Director of Women Personnel and take a closer look at the struggle to convince senior air force leadership to put aside old attitudes and accept servicewomen’s right to equal opportunities.
How did this struggle intersect with the evaluation conducted by operational commanders to determine servicewomen’s impact on operational effectiveness?
That’s up in Episode Four.
This episode was written and produced by me, Camas Clowater-Eriksson.
Script editing by Erin Gregory.
Music by the Blue Dot Sessions.
Voice acting by Tom Everett, Noah Eriksson, Dennis Rice, and Erin Gregory.
Thank you to the Department of National Defence’s Directorate of History and Heritage for the digitisation and use of their Directorate of Women Personnel Fonds.
And a very special thank you to the women whose voices and stories you heard in this episode: Karen McCrimmon, Wendy Sewell, Micky Colton, Cheryl Tardif, Bev Beale, Christine Krueger, and Rosemary Park, and to all the women who contributed their oral histories of the SWINTER Aircrew Trial to the national collection at the Canada Aviation and Space Museum.
This project was supported by the Ingenium Research Institute.
Thank you for listening and we hope you tune into Episode Four of The Tipping Point.
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END OF EPISODE THREE
Episode Four: “It was like going back in time”
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The trial employment of Servicewomen in Non-Traditional Environments and Roles, known as the SWINTER Trials, was a Canadian Forces experiment, held between 1979 and 1985, that tested women in roles previously restricted to men. Four military trials were held during this time, across the army, navy and air force and at an isolated communications station in Canada’s north.
My name is Camas Clowater-Eriksson and this is the fourth episode of The Tipping Point, a five-part Canada Aviation and Space Museum audio documentary about women and one of these trials: the SWINTER Aircrew Trial.
Episode Four: “It was like going back in time”
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I only remember one interview and it was a colonel from Ottawa —
That is the voice of retired Major Robin Camken, pilot. Early on in the trial, just after she had been posted to 424 Squadron, the squadron got a visitor from the National Defence Headquarters in Ottawa.
— and he gave a briefing to us in our aircrew briefing room. And it wasn't just me, all the pilots were there. And I don't remember the colonel's name, but he seemed to have a very negative attitude towards the likelihood of the trial being a success. And I specifically remember him stating that women would be a liability to operational readiness because they become pregnant and would have to be grounded for six months for their pregnancy. And it was funny because our commanding officer interrupted and said, well, he had a male pilot that was grounded for more than six months due to an injury and they were still able to operate in an administrative post. So, what was the difference between him and a woman who was pregnant who could do the same thing.
And then this colonel came up and he stated that women were more likely to be single parents and not be able to deploy or respond on short notice. And again, our commanding officer interrupted and said that he currently had a male pilot on squadron who was a single parent and he had never missed a deployment. So, all of this colonel's negative attitude towards the trial, it was almost like he was trying to make the women fail, *laughs*. And our CO just could find examples of males doing exactly the same thing and not being an issue. So, yeah, that was interesting but it was kind of disappointing to be there and hearing this senior officer from Ottawa with such a negative attitude towards the trial, which didn't turn out to be what happened but...Yeah, that was the first year I was on the squadron that that came up.
We don’t know the identity of this Colonel from Ottawa, but his words reiterate a common argument made during the SWINTER Trial period. Senior military leadership had used a similar angle to justify limiting women’s employment in response to the Canadian Human Rights Act in 1978.
In Episode Three, Karen, Wendy and Micky described their mixed reception at 436 Squadron, their encounters with negative attitudes and a macho culture, and finding support in each other. Karen identified a lack of positive leadership at the squadron as one barrier to successful integration at 436. Other women spoke of feeling isolated during the trial, and we shared public revelations in 1998 that brought to light two women’s experiences with sexual harassment and assault when they were trial participants.
We concluded the episode with a statement by Colonel Anne-Marie Belanger, Director of Women Personnel, who urged military leaders in 1982 that their failure to create a climate conducive to women’s optimum and maximum performance in non-traditional roles was a barrier to the successful integration of women. She demanded that those in all positions of authority work actively to counter negative attitudes, discrimination, sexual harassment, and other unacceptable behaviours in the organisation.
Leaders like Robin’s CO certainly appeared to demonstrate the type of leadership Colonel Belanger was calling for, but if the attitude expressed by this Colonel from Ottawa is anything to go by, there were those in positions of senior leadership that were not supportive of integrating women into non-traditional roles.
The attitude of senior leaders was particularly significant for determining the outcome of the Aircrew Trial. Senior air force leaders would decide what was learned from the findings of the second trial evaluation, conducted by the commanders of the trial units, which assessed servicewomen’s impact to squadron operational effectiveness. While commanding officers like Robin’s had their say, the final decision lay, ultimately, with senior leadership at Air Command Headquarters.
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So, as the trial reports came in, how were senior leaders interpreting the results? Did they hold on to the assumptions of the past or did they consider a different path forward?
In this episode, we dig into the archives to find out how this played out and look at the efforts of Colonel Belanger’s successor, Colonel Sheila Hellstrom, and others, to ensure that leaders did not ignore the perspective of servicewomen during the decision making process.
Part One: The DWP
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In 1983, then Colonel Sheila Hellstrom was appointed Director of Women Personnel, known as “DWP.” The position was created in 1969 to advise military leadership on policies related to the employment of servicewomen. The DWP and her Deputy, known as DWP 2, were always women. During the SWINTER Trials they sat on multiple committees and advised on policy development. They also reviewed the reports from trial units and provided feedback and recommendations to senior leadership.
In December 2020, Sheila died at the age of 85. By the time she retired in 1990, she had risen to the rank of Brigadier-General, the first woman in the Regular Force to achieve that rank. Sheila was remembered by fellow servicewoman retired Major Judy Harper as always having a big smile and a welcoming manner. Judy described how Sheila gave confidence to the servicewomen around her and to those who came after her, “reassuring us that in taking on jobs not previously done by women, we were not going a step too far, not asking too much.”
We couldn’t talk to Sheila ourselves, but interviews conducted by historian retired Lieutenant-Colonel Karen Davis, Sheila’s journals, and archival documents provided a lot of insight into her experience of the SWINTER Trials while she was working in the DWP office.
Sheila’s appointment as DWP in 1983 was not her first experience with the position.
Well in 1975-1976 I came into DWP as, well, DWP “2” they called it. Up until that point, you know, I hadn’t even thought of women and men being different in the jobs that they were doing in the military. Because as an administrator, I was doing the same job as my counterparts and my peers. I was progressing at the same rate as my peers and I never thought of the other stuff.
Sheila’s experience working as DWP 2 in the mid-1970s opened her eyes to the resistance that existed amongst senior military leadership to women in non-traditional areas of employment. Throughout this period, many new positions were made available to women, but Karen Davis recalled how Sheila described the time as “trench warfare.” With each trade and officer classification, the DWP had to fight to convince senior leadership to open it to women.
Sheila was DWP 2 until 1976 before she was posted elsewhere, but it wasn’t long before she found herself back at the DWP. From 1980 to 1983, she served as Deputy to DWP Colonel Anne-Marie Belanger.
Well, actually, when I went back to the DWP in 1980 it was like going back in time. Not that much had changed. Because the trials were cranking up but really the same comments that were present in ‘75, about the same number of employment areas were open as back then, when it came to the non-traditional areas, and the same attitudes, the same resistance.
In her writing on the subject of women in the Canadian military, Karen Davis called the office of the DWP the only advocate for women in the Canadian Forces during this time. Still, as Sheila explained, they had no real power.
Because we were advisors, we didn’t have any power. We weren’t able…we could only, sort of, try to influence.
That didn’t stop her from trying. Archival documents from the office of the DWP, held at the Department of National Defence’s Directorate of History and Heritage, reveal the attitude of senior leadership towards the SWINTER Trials and the efforts of the DWP to advocate for the rights of servicewomen during this period.
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In particular, they help us understand just what Sheila meant when she said that going back to the DWP office in 1980 was like “going back in time.”
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When Sheila returned to the DWP office as Deputy in 1980, the SWINTER Trials were well underway. In the Aircrew Trial, the first three female pilot candidates were in training and status updates from Air Command indicated that there were no problems. In fact, women were reported as doing quite well. Captain Dee Brasseur was the first student in the course to fly solo and Air Command was pleased to see that there had been no extra resources expended during training.
In late 1981, the good news continued. An Air Command report from December stated that commanding officers at the trial squadrons “were unanimous in that the employment of females has to date no adverse effects on the operational effectiveness of their units.” There had been minor problems with the fit of flying clothing, flight-line washroom and changing facilities but no “indications of discrimination or adjustment problems.”
The next update from Air Command, dated June 1982, also said that no problems had been reported by commanding officers, and that female aircrew “all continue to proceed at an average or better pace.”
However, here the tone changed.
An incident had occurred that greatly concerned Air Command: a pilot trainee was “diagnosed as pregnant” and removed from training. Air Command commented that “limited training resources had been expended.” This time.
This would not have been the case had the pregnancy been reported at a later stage of training. While both the human rights and medical aspects attendant with occasions of pregnancy among female aircrew are recognized, this Headquarters is concerned that significant resource expenditures could occur should a female aircrew member cease training during the latter portion of her course…The removal from flying duties of a female aircrew…who, for example, was a fully qualified C-130 aircraft commander…might be expected to have a negative impact on unit operational effectiveness until such time as an equally qualified replacement could be found.
It is anticipated that should the trial prove to be successful, then a definitive policy concerning the training, employment and retention of pregnant and/or those female aircrew with children will be required.
The report sparked a bit of a debate.
The head of career management for pilots wrote in agreement with Air Command’s concerns:
With regard to the impact on flying duties, the removal of a qualified female aircraft commander from flying, for pregnancy reasons, could have a greater impact than withdrawal of an officer from operations for a staff school…because it would be uncontrolled and unexpected.
Pregnancy remains an unaddressed problem which will certainly affect how females will prove out in terms of their capability in the environment as well as how the environment will be affected by them. Since we are conducting a trial, it may be worthwhile to encourage anyone who became pregnant to stay with the trial so a data base, albeit limited, can be obtained on the impact and problems associated with pregnancy for the female pilots. Such information could prove to be a determining factor in the future employment of females.
As DWP 2, Sheila pushed back against this attitude. Her notes in the document read:
“No way! Not all women incur pregnancy. What about accidents, particularly those related to drinking? Grounding because of drug or suspected drug use?”
Like Robin’s CO, Sheila challenged the assumption that employing women in operational roles posed unique problems. Why were women considered more of a risk than men, who may go on leave for a variety of unexpected and uncontrolled reasons?
In a more official response to Air Command’s report in June 1982, Sheila questioned why a special pregnancy policy was necessary:
…a candidate who becomes pregnant should be treated the same as any other candidate who must temporarily interrupt training, for illness or injury for example.
The air force already had a policy for aircrew who requested to be removed from flying duties. “That,” she argued, “should be appropriate for women aircrew who become pregnant or have [who have] children as well.”
It is no wonder Sheila said working at the DWP office during the SWINTER Trials was like “going back in time.”
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The pregnancy argument had been used against women in the military for longer than the DWP had been in existence.
Back in the mid-1960s, for example, the air force used pregnancy, along with similarly gendered arguments, to justify a request to the government to phase women out of the air force completely. At the time, a woman was automatically discharged if she became pregnant. If she wanted to marry, she could only stay in the air force if her marriage did not interfere with “her usefulness to the service.” Not surprisingly, these policies contributed to a high attrition rate for women in the air force, forced to choose between having a family, which was still a considerable social expectation at the time, and staying in the military. The air force argued that women’s high attrition rate made them too expensive to employ. Not considering, or not wanting to consider, that it was its own policies that encouraged them to leave. The request was ultimately denied by the government, saying it was out of step with changing trends in the civilian workforce. It was time to adapt. Still, it wasn’t until 1971 that policies prohibiting servicewomen from serving while pregnant, married and while raising children were officially removed, and even that was only after the Royal Commission on the Status of Women in Canada urged that they be changed.
However, as the comments made earlier by the Colonel in Robin’s anecdote, Air Command and the pilot career manager demonstrate, by the time the Aircrew Trial came around, pregnancy was still viewed as a concern. And as the trial progressed and reports were coming in from trial units showing that, despite minor issues here and there, female aircrew were doing just fine, leadership began to rely more and more on the age-old pregnancy argument to characterise women as incompatible with operational roles. Even when the evidence suggested otherwise.
Part Two: Cheryl
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In June 1983, Air Command reported that a flight engineer at 442 Squadron in Comox had been grounded because she was pregnant. As opposed to the first case, where the woman was a trainee, this time it was a working member of the aircrew. That flight engineer was retired Sergeant Cheryl Tardif.
In 1984, my daughter was born. I was the first aircrew to get pregnant. So, they didn't really know what to do at the time…Actually, well, it was 1983 I got pregnant, yeah, because she was born in 1984. So, they let me fly up until I was three months pregnant and then they grounded me for the rest of the time. And I don’t know if you’ve had any kids yet, but usually the first three months are the worst, worst part. And then after that I was, you know, felt great.
Cheryl was grounded from flying duties for a total of twelve months. For maternity clothes, she recalled just wearing a bigger flight suit.
…and then I just wore civilian clothes, 'cause I don't even know if they had a military maternity uniform. But we didn't dress up all the time. We didn't have to wear the full uniform. And that's, *laughs*, somebody said that was maybe why I became a flight engineer, so I didn't have to iron anything, *laughs*.
And as for maternity leave, Cheryl didn’t remember there being any.
Well, back then there was no leave granted to women who were pregnant. And there was no…There wasn’t the same…I had enough annual leave, so I just went on leave. But I wasn’t home near long enough.
Archival documents reveal some confusion within Air Command as to what benefits Cheryl was actually entitled. They said that the federal government policy allowed women to take up to fifteen weeks of unpaid leave — which fits with what Cheryl remembered. Yet, Air Command was incorrect. At the time, government maternity benefits did allow women to take up to fifteen weeks off but while receiving 66% of their salary. It is unclear if Cheryl was even told she was entitled to these benefits. Perhaps they wouldn’t have made a difference. As the breadwinner in the family, Cheryl couldn’t afford time off, even at 66% of her salary. So, instead, she took two months of annual leave and then returned to her duties at 442 Squadron while her husband stayed home with their child. Cheryl admits that her situation was not the norm at the time.
My husband had got out when I got posted to Comox, he got out of the military. And so, he was at home being the dad with the kids, so, way back then. Which you see a lot more people doing it now. It's more accepted.
Balancing a military career and a family was difficult, but Cheryl didn’t think it was easy for anyone: man or woman. A military career affects the whole family.
It could be challenging at times if I didn’t get my time off. When I was on the Hercs, we were really busy and it was more global flying, right? It was international flying. And I remember just, you know, one month having three days off and, you know, most people can handle that at the time but the families can't. They want Mom around or Dad around a little bit more. So, you know, it could cause some problems there.
Yet, Cheryl made it work. And what’s important to recognise about Cheryl’s experience is that she made it work despite measures that today would be considered quite severe. Today, the policy in the Canadian Armed Forces is that pregnant aircrew are grounded six months into a pregnancy, but they can fly for even longer if a flight surgeon determines that their pregnancy is low risk. But in 1983, as Cheryl said, “they didn’t know what to do.” Cheryl was grounded for a year only three months into her pregnancy, and she took two months off of her own annual leave after the birth of her child because no other options were offered to her.
In the face of administrative confusion, and within the high pressure environment of the trial no less, here was Cheryl doing something that air force leadership had been convinced for so long would not work. She was aircrew and she was a mother. And nothing bad happened. For the same reporting period, commanding officers at the trial squadrons — including at Cheryl’s — unanimously reported that female aircrew continued to have no negative effect on operational effectiveness.
That did not stop Air Command from suggesting that women could be a problem in the future.
…it is anticipated that as an increasing number of female aircrew join operational units additional problems will become evident.
*music beings with shaker and vibraphone, creating a feeling of curiosity*
Just what problems were they suggesting?
The next Air Command report outlined what they meant by that statement.
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In February 1984, a year and a half before the trial was scheduled to end, Air Command released an aircrew trial report that looked very different from the ones that had come before. Unlike previous reports, this one included a list of “areas of concerns.” These included: a concern that the non-combat limitation placed on women was affecting operational readiness and male careers; that female aircrew increased conflicts between family responsibilities and aircrew duties; and that pregnancy would affect the operational capability of squadrons.
Let’s go through these one by one.
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First, the non-combat restriction. Air Command argued that the non-combat restriction was creating significant administrative and operational difficulties. These difficulties had actually led the air force to allow female aircrew at Hercules squadrons, like 436, to be trained in tactical airlift, which they defined for the trial as a “near combat role.” This decision happened early in the trial, in 1982. Still, there were other duties that women could not perform, and squadrons they could not be posted to. Air Command did not like having aircrew that weren’t able to do all jobs, but they also did not seem willing to consider lifting the restriction. In fact, they suggested limiting women’s employment even further because of the effect it was having on the normal career progression of male aircrew:
Air force career progression requires that aircrew be occasionally rotated out of combat squadrons into aircrew positions on the ground or in non-combat squadrons. The relatively large number of females employed in non-combat roles block these positions and thereby limit the non-combat positions available to males.
They even proposed that Hercules squadrons be defined as combat and stop employing women, thereby removing the problem of women needing to be trained in tactical airlift altogether.
Next was the concern over female aircrew and family responsibilities. Here, Air Command echoed the concern raised by the Colonel in Robin’s anecdote: more female aircrew meant more single mothers. They also feared that female aircrew would lead to an increase of marriages between aircrew. Air Command acknowledged that conflicts between military commitments and personal responsibilities had always existed for military personnel, but predicted that these conflicts would become unmanageable if more female aircrew were employed.
In families in which both the aircrew and spouse are military members or the aircrew does not have a spouse, the response of the squadron will likely suffer as the parent is unable to respond to a military call-out and arrange child care on short notice….The increasing number of female aircrew will likely aggravate this problem to the extent that the operational impact will no longer be tolerable.
They recommended posting only a limited number of single parents and service couples with children to operational squadrons that required personnel to be on call.
And, lastly, pregnancy. Despite Sheila’s suggestion back in 1982 that the policy for grounding men was adequate for pregnant women, Air Command remained fixated on establishing a special pregnancy policy. They proposed that women, upon “diagnosis” be “immediately” re-posted to a ground tour.
In addition to these concerns, Air Command theorised as to what would be done if the trial was determined a success. Even if female aircrew were found capable in their roles, and even if it was determined that they had no impact on operational effectiveness, Air Command announced that they still might not open aircrew roles to women.
*music fades out*
The question will remain, however, as to whether the CF has a requirement for female aircrew and whether they can be adequately and economically employed within the combat [and] near combat imposed limitations.
This time Sheila was not alone in her criticism of the policies suggested by Air Command. Backing her was Lieutenant Colonel Frank Pinch, the Director of Personnel Selection Research and Secondary Careers.
In separate comments, Sheila and Frank pointed out that the concerns expressed in the report were largely of the air force’s own making.
Sheila, who was now DWP, argued that it was very unlikely that the low numbers of female aircrew currently employed in the trial were having any effect on male careers and asked why Air Command did not seem concerned with the impact the non-combat restriction was having on female careers. She stressed that women would continue to face discrimination until all roles were open. Further limiting women’s employment was not the answer.
A few individual males may have their personal choices reduced, but this is insignificant compared to what women have experienced and will continue to experience unless all areas are available to them.
Sheila challenged the assumption that servicemembers with children were not capable of making appropriate arrangements for the care of their families and proposed that leadership ensure support systems were in place to help aircrew meet their operational and family responsibilities. She questioned the scientific validity of the proposed policy to ground women immediately upon diagnosis of pregnancy.
Frank concurred. He cited a recent study on the employment of pregnant women in the Canadian Forces:
…there is no data to support the fear that a woman may not be able to carry out her flying duties while pregnant, although her physical ability is certainly impaired in the second half of her pregnancy.
He recommended that a more flexible approach be adopted when deciding when it is appropriate to ground women during pregnancy. Further, he pointed out that the proposal to immediately post pregnant women to a ground tour could mean that women were grounded for three or four years, which could have considerable impacts on their careers.
As for Air Command’s final comment that, even if the trial was deemed a success, they may still decide not to employ women, Sheila reminded them about one small detail: the Canadian Human Rights Act.
…if the trial is successful, it would be difficult to establish the bona fide occupational requirements necessary to exclude women under the CHRA.
*music beings with shaker and vibraphone*
Sheila’s journals from this time indicate that her work on the SWINTER Trials was a frustrating experience, to say the least. She described the many SWINTER Trial meetings she attended with words like “depressing,” “discouraging,” and went as far calling what was discussed at one meeting “garbage.” The archival documents explored in this episode suggest that much of this frustration resulted from the unwillingness on the part of senior leadership to put aside their preconceived ideas about women and consider the evidence. What was the trial actually saying about female aircrew?
Sheila, along with other advocates like Frank Pinch, did what they could to get senior leaders to do just that. As advisors, they critiqued, they spoke-up, and they championed an alternative perspective. That was all they could do.
It was now up to leadership to listen to that advice, or ignore it.
The final decision on the second evaluation of the Aircrew Trial — did women impact operational effectiveness? — rested with Air Command. But before that decision was made, there were some more perspectives that they would have to consider: the views of trial participants and the final conclusion of CFPARU’s social and behavioural science evaluation.
*music ends*
Part Three: We can do the job
As Sheila and Frank defended women’s rights in the offices and meeting rooms of National Defence Headquarters in Ottawa, on the ground, trial participants were compiling reports that would bring their views of the trial to the attention of Air Command.
Captain Leah Mosher was tasked with coordinating and writing the report on behalf of the female aircrew at 436 Squadron. Leah was one of the first four pilot candidates who started the trial in 1979. She was the first woman to qualify as an aircraft commander on the Hercules. In November 2021, Leah died suddenly at the age of 67. She was remembered fondly by the women we spoke to who served with her at 436. Retired Captain Wendy Sewell remembered her as a friend and a mentor for the women who arrived on the squadron after her. She was described as a “solid, conscientious, super lady,” with a quiet manner. And a skilled pilot.
In 1985, Leah submitted a report to Air Command on the views and personal assessments of the eleven Aircrew Trial participants who had served at 436 Squadron during the trial period. Through interviews and questionnaires, women described how the trial had affected them. In a letter inviting women to share their perspectives, Leah urged them that the report “could have a positive influence on our future employment.”
Wendy remembered contributing to that report.
So, we talked a lot amongst ourselves about, you know, what we felt were rights and wrongs and goods and bads at that time. We felt that it should no longer be a trial at this point. We were there functioning, we were all doing our jobs. When could we get the word trial removed from our label?
In the report, female aircrew at 436 voiced a number of concerns over how the trial was conducted. They described the information given to trial participants as “vague,” “sporadic,” “contradictory,” and many noticed that “what facts they did obtain kept changing.” Women said the special attention given to them as trial participants had created “a fishbowl existence that made it difficult for us to blend in and be accepted.”
Women did not think standards had been lowered to get women into the trial. That was confirmed by CFPARU and again in 1990: standards were not lowered. To the question of their impact on operational effectiveness, a few remarked that if anything hindered operational effectiveness it was all the time “spent…doing CFPARU questionnaires and interviews.” Others stated that the only hindrance to operational effectiveness were the restrictions on what female aircrew could and couldn’t do, like the policy that women could not be trained in tactical airlift. Once the restriction was lifted, the women performed well in all squadron duties.
When asked about the effect of marriage on their career, women replied: “no problem” and that it was possible. As for children, women gave a diverse range of answers. Some said that having children could be “worked into a normal cycle of flying and ground tours.” Another felt that children could interfere with her career, but that “if her career was better than her husband’s then he would take his release.” A few women thought having children would be difficult to balance with an aircrew career. One woman questioned why having children was even an issue being discussed.
…since the Canadian Forces requires five years of obligatory service after pilot and navigator training, then anytime beyond that is for the betterment of the person’s own career. The Canadian Forces realises that after this time period, there are no guarantees from men who often join civilian airlines, so why should they be concerned whether women become pregnant and terminate their careers?
Leah concluded the report with these words:
…it is felt that the SWINTER Trial and its participants have had no detrimental effects on 436 Squadron. At times some of the women were frustrated and dispirited by the lack of information and changing parameters of the trial and the uncertainty of their employment prospects. For a few, the trial limitations and scrutiny has hindered job and personal satisfaction. However, despite this, the burden of extra attention and the initial reservations by male counterparts, most women are glad they became aircrew. They have worked hard for their achievements, are proud of them and consider themselves assets to the Canadian Forces. Although they are optimistic about the future of female aircrew, they caution that total acceptance is a produc[t] of more women and lack of special attention.
Women have done the job, are doing the job, and want to continue to do the job, be it a combat role or not.
*music beings abruptly with shaker, vibraphone and electric guitar, then comes to an end*
Retired Lieutenant Commander Rosemary Park.
So, that was where the contradiction started when that evidence started being reported and senior leadership didn't like it. That wasn't what they wanted to hear. And so you saw in reports that I wrote, that they put on, for the first time that I know, work that I was writing, had caveats written on the front page. And that said, "the views and opinions expressed in this report are those of the author and not necessarily those of the Department of National Defence." And you don't see them in others.
It’s true. The early report on the 1982/1983 survey discussed in Episode Three had no such disclaimer, but the final CFPARU report on the Aircrew Trial, written by Rosemary and another colleague, certainly did.
The Aircrew Trial ended in October 1985. A month later, CFPARU released that final report.
Four of the five trial squadrons had achieved “satisfactory social integration of female aircrew.” At these squadrons, servicemen and servicewomen agreed: female aircrew could do the job, they did not receive preferential treatment and should continue to serve as aircrew. At 436 Squadron, however, it was determined that only partial acceptance was reached. While women at the squadron asserted that they performed their jobs well, a “substantial minority of men” reported that female aircrew were not effective members and did not fully participate in the squadron.
Despite the mixed response at 436 Squadron, a 1985 survey of all the Aircrew Trial squadrons found that 75% of male aircrew and 100% of female aircrew thought that women should continue as aircrew in some capacity.
In the context of the rest of the SWINTER Trials, this was a pretty good result. The only other trial to have a better result was the Isolation Trial up in Alert, Nunavut where women were fully accepted. The Sea Trial in the navy had partial social integration. In the army’s Land Trial, one unit had partial and the other “unsatisfactory” social integration.
CFPARU researchers found that negative rumours, preconceived attitudes about women in non-traditional roles, perceptions of reverse discrimination, and a lack of action from leadership to counter these issues were significant factors in units where partial or unsatisfactory integration was the result. Researchers determined that many of these issues could be dealt with through policy.
*mysterious music begins with drum brush, builds with electric piano and guitar*
They made a number of recommendations, such as:
Make women eligible for all aircrew duties. The majority of aircrew, both male and female, believed that women should be liable for air combat duties on the same basis as men. Some men even stated that they would be more likely to accept women as aircrew if this policy was changed.
Leadership should provide a clear statement on the terms of employment and career progression for female aircrew. The lack of information provided to women about their future careers after the trial created confusion and insecurity, and contributed to a negative environment at some squadrons.
Create clear policy guidelines for pregnancy. Despite only three pregnancies occurring during the trial, there remained concerns amongst male aircrew and at Air Command that maternity leave would harm squadron operational effectiveness. CFPARU said that this perception needed to be countered with clear guidelines for how squadron readiness was to be maintained if a crew member was grounded for an extended period of time due to pregnancy.
And, lastly, CFPARU recommended that leadership make a “proactive effort” to assert the integrity of the aircrew training system and confidence in its aircrew graduates to counter rumours that selection and training standards had been lowered for women.
If Air Command decided to continue to employ women as aircrew in the future, these issues would have to be addressed. However, the social and behavioural science evaluation had concluded that it was possible. Despite the relatively small scale of the study, and the many limitations imposed on the trial and its participants, the majority of female aircrew had been integrated into operational squadrons without harming effectiveness.
*music ends*
And so, with the final social and behavioural science report submitted, along with the views and personal assessments of trial participants, it was time to make a decision on the employment of female aircrew.
And, of course, this decision would have to address the question posed by the Canadian Human Rights Commission in 1978: did the military have bona fide reasons to continue excluding women from certain roles?
Retired Lieutenant Colonel Georgie Jones, air navigator.
You know, we passed the training, we got our operational categories. We were flying as fully accredited members of the Squadron. At the end of the trial, how could they say it was not a success?
*theme music fades in and slowly builds*
Like I could never understand how they would've said, “Oh, the Trial is a failure.” ‘Cause even if 50%, you know, failed their pilot training or their nav training or whatever, there were still the ones that proved that we were capable of doing it. Maybe they didn't do the best selection process that would've resulted in a higher success rate or pass rate or whatever. But I could never understand how they could ever have just arbitrarily said, “Okay, you know, the trial was a failure. We're never gonna recruit women again.”
In our last episode: how did it all end?
What were the lasting impacts of the Aircrew Trial?
And how is it remembered by the women that participated?
*theme music pauses*
This episode is dedicated to retired Brigadier-General Sheila Hellstrom and retired Major Leah Mosher. Their individual contributions to women’s equality in the Canadian air force, and the Canadian military as a whole, will not be forgotten.
*theme music resumes*
This episode was written and produced by me, Camas Clowater-Eriksson.
Script editing by Erin Gregory.
Music by the Blue Dot Sessions.
Voice acting by Dennis Rice, Noah Eriksson, Erin Gregory, Tom Everett, and Emily Gann.
Thank you to the Department of National Defence’s Directorate of History and Heritage for the digitisation and use of their Directorate of Women Personnel Fonds, and to Karen Davis for allowing us the use of her oral history interview with Sheila Hellstrom.
And a very special thank you to the women whose voices and stories you heard in this episode: Robin Camken, Cheryl Tardif, Wendy Sewell, Georgie Jones and Rosemary Park, and to all the women who contributed their oral histories of the SWINTER Aircrew Trial to the national collection at the Canada Aviation and Space Museum.
This project was supported by the Ingenium Research Institute.
Thank you for listening and we hope you tune into the final episode of The Tipping Point.
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END OF EPISODE FOUR
Episode Five: A complicated legacy
*theme music begins; a steady rhythm of cello pizzicato/plucking in a minor key*
The trial employment of Servicewomen in Non-Traditional Environments and Roles, known as the SWINTER Trials, was a Canadian Forces experiment, held between 1979 and 1985, that tested women in roles previously restricted to men. Four military trials were held during this time, across the army, navy and air force and at an isolated communications station in Canada’s north.
My name is Camas Clowater-Eriksson and this is the final episode of The Tipping Point, a five-part Canada Aviation and Space Museum audio documentary about women and one of these trials: the SWINTER Aircrew Trial.
Episode Five: A complicated legacy
*theme music fades out and string music fades in; there is the hum of an aircraft in the background*
Stan Heckstrom had a job of sorts out in Nanaimo, BC. He wanted adventure.
Andre Dequoi had lived all his life in Montreal, Quebec. He wanted to travel.
Bob Mackenzie had just graduated from high school on Cape Breton. He wanted a profession.
This is how they found themselves one sunny morning, all headed in the same direction…
That is a clip from the film Aircrew, an official Royal Canadian Air Force film produced by the National Film Board of Canada in 1954. The direction in which these three men were headed was to aircrew selection in Toronto.
Their reasons for joining the air force sound very similar to those presented by the women we interviewed when they explained why they wanted to participate in the Aircrew Trial.
*steady, thoughtful beat of piano and electric bass begins, builds with melody*
Just like the men in the film, they also wanted to experience the adventure of flying, they yearned to travel, and they imagined for themselves a career where they could make a difference. But, of course, in 1954, becoming aircrew in the RCAF was not an option for a woman.
Thirty years later, the example set by the servicewomen who participated in the SWINTER Aircrew Trial helped change that.
In Episode Four, we ended with the final report of CFPARU’s social and behavioural science evaluation that concluded that women were capable as aircrew. Social integration had been fully achieved at all squadrons but 436, where partial acceptance was reached. Any concerns Air Command had expressed about the impact of female aircrew on operational effectiveness had been countered by Sheila and Frank in 1984, and by 1985 women at the trial squadrons had had a chance to submit their views and assessment of the Aircrew Trial to air force leadership.
The Aircrew Trial was over.
It was time to make a final decision.
Part One: The end
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Retired Master Warrant Officer Christine Krueger, flight engineer.
From what I can remember there was one, I think, one meeting, one interview, I guess, where they gathered all of us who were part of 424, and part of that trial, and said that, "You know, yes‒" I think this was when the trial had come to an end and they had finally decided that, okay, fine, they weren't about to cut us loose, so to speak. That, okay, fine, they were going to keep the women in the trade. And, without saying that the trial was a success, because no one ever did say that, "Oh yeah, this is a resounding success." I think they were sort of resigned to the fact that, "Okay, yes, we've got you in here. No, we're not going to kick you out,” and, “we'll put up with you," so to speak. And it wasn't any great, you know, parade, party, that sort of thing, right?
Shortly after the trial concluded in October 1985, Air Command released an interim employment policy for female aircrew. Recruitment of women was paused, and trial participants were informed that they could keep their jobs until it was determined if women would be employed as aircrew in the future. In the meantime, they would follow the same career progression as men except they would continue to be excluded from combat squadrons and squadrons with a combat-related role.
In November, Air Command submitted its final report on the Aircrew Trial. In an opening statement, the Commander of Air Command, Lieutenant General Donald McNaughton, made the following recommendation. The trial had shown women — “with appropriate qualifications and training” — could do the job of aircrew. However…
There is no hint…that operational effectiveness was improved by the presence of women. On the contrary, there is evidence of decreased effectiveness, largely because of such factors as pregnancy and the restriction on combat employment…Experience gained in the trial leads me to advise against the continued employment of women as aircrew. If the decision is otherwise, then I strongly recommend that no restrictions be placed on their employment.
In the report, women’s good job performance throughout the trial was undermined by three factors: the restriction on their employment to non-combat duties, the potential for family obligations to conflict with aircrew duties, and pregnancy.
These were the same concerns that Air Command had raised less than a year earlier. The same concerns that Colonel Sheila Hellstrom and Lieutenant Colonel Frank Pinch had told them were not problems with women, they were problems with the air force’s own policies and management practices, if they were problems at all.
The air force had no more evidence to support these arguments than it did in 1984. The fear that women would increase conflicts between family commitments and aircrew responsibilities was speculative; they had no examples from the trial to justify the conclusion. Pregnancy was framed as the “most significant difference between male and female effectiveness.” Grounding due to pregnancy was called an “unacceptable operational burden,” despite squadrons having reported no impact to operational effectiveness during the trial period. And while the non-combat limitation did pose a real problem, this could be solved by allowing women to be employed in all aircrew roles.
The report did acknowledge that lifting the non-combat restriction would eliminate many of their concerns. Yet, it did not recommend this as an option outright. Rather, the report concluded — as did the Commander — that only two possibilities existed for the future of women aircrew:
Either women aircrew should be employed in all aircrew missions or they should be employed in none.
‘All aircrew missions’ included combat, and the report cited the many uncertainties that still needed to be examined in regards to opening combat roles to women, such as political will, societal attitudes, physical strength, and women’s motivations towards combat. In this way, Air Command implied that the desirable course of action was to not employ women aircrew at all.
*rhythmic plucking of strings begins, building to a steady upbeat instrumental*
Once again, in response to the report, Sheila and Frank held nothing back.
Sheila pointed out the many inconsistencies in the report, and reminded leadership that they had reported no adverse effects to operational effectiveness until 1984, when, all of a sudden, they had brought forward a number of issues. She reminded them that those issues had never been substantiated and referred them to her and Frank’s previous comments.
The arguments have not changed.
Sheila strongly disagreed with the report’s conclusion that “all women are not as effective as men because individual women become pregnant.” She suggested:
One could just as readily obtain evidence that males are more unavailable than females because of alcoholism.
And reminded leadership that pregnancy was defined as a prohibited ground of discrimination under the Canadian Human Rights Act.
Frank also questioned the validity of the pregnancy argument. If pregnancy created staffing problems, that was the fault of the military system and not women.
Contingency planning for pregnancy, as for any other non-availability issues (loss of medical category of aircrew members, illness, accident, death) is the responsibility of the military system, and, at the local level, the squadron CO...The argument simply cannot be used in support of denying women access to aircrew employment, although it is a concern that requires very clear manning policy and planning.
In contrast to the report’s conclusion that there remained uncertainties about women’s employment in combat aircrew roles, Frank determined that the trial had proved the opposite:
Women are trainable as aircrew, they can fly, navigate and perform as flight engineers. They have not adversely affected the operational readiness of their units and there has been a degree of integration on the social level, which would predictably increase as more women entered aircrew. The logical inference is that, given appropriate training and socialization women would not detract from a combat or a wartime operation.
He advised that “only administrative obstacles remain” to the full integration of female aircrew.
Sheila agreed, and concluded:
*music pauses*
The substantiation for restricting the employment of women as aircrew is tenuous at best. The arguments primarily are the same as those presented whenever women are first introduced into a non-traditional area, will be recognized as such and ridiculed accordingly. Basically, the air force does not have a case.
*music fades back in with electric piano and guitar solo*
Would their advice be heard? Or would Air Command remained entrenched in its position, no matter how untenable it was?
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In April 1985, Section 15 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms came into effect. Section 15 guaranteed the equality rights of Canadians under the law and protection from discrimination based on grounds such as disability, race and sex. Immediately, a Parliamentary Committee was set up to examine areas in Canada that might conflict with Section 15. In October, the committee announced that the Canadian Forces had to lift all restrictions on the employment of women.
The military responded in much the same way as it did to the Canadian Human Rights Act in 1978. National Defence Headquarters established the Charter Task Force on Equality Issues to review the impact of the Charter on Canadian Forces policies, including how it applied to women’s employment.
Much like Air Command’s final report, the task force concluded that the risks to operational effectiveness were currently too high to move forward with opening all roles to women, and recommended that further research be conducted to prove that “such change could be introduced without risk.”
*tense, haunting plucking of strings beings and builds into an instrumental*
In June 1986, informed by the results of the SWINTER Trials and the Charter Task Force’s report, the Chief of the Defence Staff announced that all trades would be opened to women “to the extent that [it] would ensure a certain level of operational effectiveness.” Once again, like the policy changes following the Royal Commission on the Status of Women in Canada in 1970, this new policy opened a number of new employment areas to women, but many remained closed. In the air force, the trial occupations of pilots, air navigator and flight engineer were opened to women, for service in training; tactical and strategic transport; search and rescue; utility; maritime patrol; and maritime reconnaissance squadrons. However, a “minimum male component” was put in place to control the number of women allowed in each unit and fighter, transport, and tactical helicopter squadrons that were assigned combat or near combat roles remained closed to women.
*music ends*
For Aircrew Trial participants, the announcement meant their jobs were safe after years of insecurity. It was a bittersweet victory.
Retired Captain Wendy Sewell, pilot.
I think it was time for women to be allowed. I don't think the trial helped us in any way. I think it should have just been a question of, let's start them and just monitor them. But this whole labeling…and the trial was, in my mind, a very negative thing. Like I said, it didn't help the mentality of the men. It didn't help the women, because of all the reverse discrimination and all the labeling and the emphasis that it put on us. And making us feel very temporary.
I wish it had been different. Because I saw myself as a career military, like my father. To this day I wonder where I would be today if I had still been able to stay in the military and progress. Yeah, I guess we'll never know but…I'm sad that it wasn’t…a natural thing like it was for the men. You felt like you were fighting an organization instead of part of it. And that's a shame because my father loved every minute in the military and we, as a family, grew up that way, with, you know, that kind of feeling of that brotherhood and that being in the military was…you were lucky to be there. You know? Like, it was like an elite club, somehow. That’s how we grew up.
Wendy’s experience of the trial contributed to her decision to retire after her period of obligatory service ended. She took the skills she learned in the Canadian Forces and became the Assistant Defence Attaché for the Dutch Embassy in Canada.
I just, I guess I really wanted the sense of belonging. And I think that's a human nature thing, is wanting to belong, wanting to feel part of something. And that didn't happen.
I wish it had been different but I don't know where I would be today. And I always say, you know, life has a plan, and you never know where you're going to end up and…It made me such a broad person, all the places I've been, the things I've seen, the missions I got, like search and rescue missions, pulling people out of the north that needed medical help, you know? You feel proud of those individual accomplishments and I really have very few regrets.
*funky, warm electric guitar melody begins, builds with harmonics and drums*
Part Two: The aftermath
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In the years following the SWINTER Trials, the Canadian Forces launched another series of trials called the CREW Trials or the Combat Related Employment of Women Trials to assess “if, when and how restrictions on the employment of women in previously all-male occupations and units…should be removed.”
In 1987, the army and navy began posting servicewomen to combat units. The air trial was planned to take place at two squadrons in Cold Lake, Alberta where ten women would be trained as fighter pilots.
But before it even got started, the air force made an unexpected announcement.
Retired Major Robin Camken, pilot.
And the air force just blankly said, "We don't need to do trials for women in combat." Based on our success of the SWINTER Aircrew Trials, they opened all of the occupations to women in the air force.
*thoughtful acoustic guitar music begins*
In the summer of 1987, the Chief of the Defence Staff approved the decision. All air force positions, including combat roles, were opened to women. But what about all the issues that Air Command had raised in their final report? Had they taken Sheila and Frank’s advice?
The air force cited staffing issues as the main justification for the decision. They simply did not have enough female aircrew trained to hold another trial. And, like they had concluded in their final trial report: “either women are employed in all aircrew missions, or they are employed in none.” With the military’s new policy, employing women in no aircrew roles was no longer an option. Air Command stated that they did not see the benefit of training pilots that could only be used in non-combat roles; if time and money was to be invested in training a pilot, then “all must be ready for combat.”
The perceived risks would best be reduced by opening all occupations and units to women…[allowing] training and employment to proceed without interference or restrictions based on gender.
Perhaps Sheila’s recommendation that “they had no case,” hit home.
The army and navy continued with the CREW Trials until 1989, when the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal ordered the Canadian Forces to open all military positions to women within ten years.
The SWINTER Trials, and the air force’s 1987 decision, were cited as evidence in the Tribunal’s ruling. A strategy that had been intended, way back in 1979, to produce evidence to support the Canadian Forces position that it was a bona fide occupational requirement to restrict women’s employment ended up proving quite the opposite. As the Tribunal stated:
In the mid-1980s as the results of SWINTER trials were made available, it became clear on the evidence that a bona fide occupational requirement restricting the employment of women could no longer be sustained.
*music fades out*
The trial results cast doubts on the proposition, essential to the bona fide argument, that cohesion, an essential element in operational effectiveness, could be or was found only among males and in all male groups.
…We believe that women are, with training, capable of combat roles. The experience of women in combat in the Second World War bears this out. The decision of the air force bears this out.
Performance was not an issue as a result of SWINTER trials.
This time, the Canadian Forces complied. It was the law. In October 1989, the military removed all restrictions on the employment of women, with the exception of submarines, which were opened in 2001 after the procurement of more modern vessels.
Retired Lieutenant Commander Rosemary Park.
So, you see this resistance until you can no longer argue your point, until somebody says, "Enough, we have to change."
*music fades back in; featuring banjo solo*
It has been almost forty years since the SWINTER Trials ended. The example set by the 280 servicewomen who volunteered to be trial participants was a significant step towards gender equality in the Canadian military.
The women who served in the Aircrew Trial proved that women were capable as pilots, flight engineers and air navigators. After the air force opened all positions to women in 1987, women went on to prove themselves capable in combat environments, as well. In 1988, Captains Deanna Brasseur and Jane Foster graduated as the first female fighter pilots in the world.
*music ends*
Yet, the SWINTER Trials are not well-remembered in Canada.
Retired Lieutenant Colonel Georgie Jones, air navigator, went on to have a thirty-one year career in the military. She was disappointed that the SWINTER Trials are not well known, but not surprised.
Until, really, Yugoslavia and Afghanistan came along, the majority of people in Canada could have cared less about what the military did. I think it should be acknowledged and remembered and celebrated for what we did and what we accomplished and how it opened doors.
We do have a lot of really, really competent, really exceptional women that came through in those first years, whether as part of the SWINTER Trial or the first batch after the SWINTER Trial, that would not necessarily have been where they are today without having that Trial at that time.
Current servicewoman Major-General Lise Bourgon was part of that ‘first batch’ who entered the military in the aftermath of the SWINTER Trials. She joined in 1987 and went on to become a maritime helicopter pilot. Lise recalled how she didn’t learn about the SWINTER Trials until eighteen years later, when she began to study the history of gender integration in the Canadian Forces at staff college in 2005.
Well, I think it’s important that we remember. Because where you’ve been and the lessons learned will inform how you look forward. Like, I knew nothing about the SWINTER Trial until I really went and did my thesis at staff college. And until that point, I really took stuff for granted.
…Those women were pioneers. And...we're here because of them, honestly. They opened the door. I mean, we're still continuing to open small doors here, but, you know, their doors were thick and they were big and...Yeah, I'm really, really incredibly honoured and humbled in following in their footsteps.
Listening to the experiences of the trial participants who shared their stories for this documentary illustrates the personal impact that the Aircrew Trial had on their lives and careers. We asked them to reflect on the significance of the Aircrew Trial for women in the air force. Here’s what some of them had to say.
Retired Major Robin Camken had to stop being a pilot for medical reasons, but her military career did not stop there. She went on to become one of the first two female intelligence officers in the Canadian Forces. She saw the SWINTER Trials as a turning point.
The SWINTER Trials opened the door for women to be employed in all military occupations and trades. And by the end of the trial, the majority of men that participated in the Aircrew Trial with the women believed that women were capable and effective aircrew and that they should continue to serve in that capacity. So, yes, it was a significant time period. And, I was told that, or I've actually read it in reporting, that the trials were started hoping that they would prove there was an occupational requirement not to have women in the non-traditional roles. And to their surprise, *laughs*, they actually proved the opposite, that they were capable of carrying out the duties.
Retired Master Warrant Officer Christine Krueger, flight engineer, decided to stay in the military after the trial. In fact, she only just retired in 2020. Over her 42 year career, she amassed over 7,594 flying hours. An impressive number.
Like Wendy earlier, she was critical of the trial.
In all honesty, that Aircrew Trial is something that shouldn't have been. There was no need to actually have a trial to see whether women could actually do the job…Because, if you check back in the history, and especially the air force history, of women within the air force and World War Two, the women have always been doing the job.
We tend to do this to ourselves. We have trials where, what are you trying to prove where it’s already been proven before? Just get on with the job, do the job and if the women can't do it then, fine, then we can't. But we have proven that we can and I honestly don't think that to have a trial and to, you know, have the women put on a pedestal, it was not required. My thoughts only.
Retired Lieutenant Colonel Karen McCrimmon also chose to stay. She became the first woman to command a squadron in 1998 and retired in 2006. She went on to serve in Ottawa as a federal Member of Parliament. Karen wondered if the trial was a necessary step, despite its flaws.
…SWINTER opened the door and I think you had to do it that way. There really…wasn't enough support for women in the military at that time. That actually calling it a ‘trial’...I think actually reined in some people: "Oh it's just a trial, so that's all right. We can be nice to them, it's just a trial."
*thoughtful piano music begins*
Their answers reveal the complicated legacy of the Aircrew Trial. It became a turning point for women in the air force, “opening the door,” as Robin said, for women to prove that they were able to do the job of aircrew. Yet, the trial scenario placed women in a difficult environment in which their failure was assumed.
It is entirely to the credit of the participants that the Aircrew Trial had such a different outcome.
*music ends*
Retired Sergeant Cheryl Tardif, flight engineer, got her chance to fly. She saw parts of Canada not many people get to see while flying search and rescue, and eventually got to see the rest of the world while serving as a flight engineer on the Hercules. But her frustration over the military’s lack of mental health support led her to leave the Forces in 1995 and become a hypnotherapist.
Actually, I wanted to fly. Which really is all I wanted to do. The trial part, you know, to me the military doesn't tend to do great things when it comes to that. Just, the communication wasn't there for me to approach anybody. And it's like talking with other women that have been the first, you know? You just, you don't want to rock the boat. You just want to make it so that it's open for other women that want to do it.
And I do notice your question here, which was on the last page, it was, and which I do know: “The Canadian military struggles with recruitment and retention of servicewomen. What do you still think needs to be done to support women.” And it was like, certainly, having other people you can communicate with.
Retired Corporal Mary Lou Ellan, flight engineer, retired from the military shortly after the trial concluded in 1986. She discovered while flying on the Buffalo that she got airsick due to it being an unpressurized aircraft. She took her skills to the civilian aviation industry, first doing inspections on the Hercules and later joining Canadian Helicopters overhauling helicopter engines.
I would say overall it was a very positive experience, and I enjoyed my time in the military. But I felt it was time to, when I left the military, besides, you know, being air sick, it was just time to get on with life. So, you know, I didn't see it as a…a commitment to do until I retired.
You know, I think I was the third year of where they started accepting females as aero engine technicians, and then being part of the SWINTER Trials…I just…just kind of get tired of being a trailblazer and you just want to be like, *laughs*, a regular person.
Retired Master Corporal Bev Beale decided not to be a flight engineer after earning her wings. Instead, she requested to return to her old trade of airframe technician — much to the chagrin of her superiors. She had graduated at the top of her class but, among other things, the design features of the Buffalo created a barrier she knew wasn’t going to change any time soon. She took her release from the military in 1988. Bev became a social worker, a teacher, and, like Mary Lou, she worked in the civilian helicopter industry.
Well, I do look back and I'm pretty happy for all the stuff I was able to do. I know my dad didn't want me to join, but I remember my mom saying a lot when I was at home and Dad and I were talking, she would say, "Would you close the hangar doors?" 'Cause we'd always be talking about aircraft and stuff, *laughs*.
And my favorite part? I liked, and I still do, fixing things. Taking things apart, putting them back together again...Like, when there was a snag and everybody's trying to figure out, "Why is it doing this? Why is it doing this?" And then you figure it out. It's just very satisfying. And then, like, my dad was right. At three o'clock in the morning in the middle of a snow storm, you're outside changing a tire on an airplane and that's when you're thinking, —
*uplifting music fades in, leading with shaker and electric piano and building to an instrumental climax*
— "Yeah, Dad was right." And I'm wondering, what are the ordinary people doing? But...it was fun. And it was satisfying. I really enjoyed it.
Part Three: From integration to inclusion
*music ends*
Wendy.
…I can remember them worrying that there were going to be so many women that wanted to do this. And to this day, they can't fill their quota of women.
The military remains a male-dominated organisation. For an organisation to no longer be considered male-dominated, a threshold of 25% women must be reached. As of 2020, women make up 15.8% of the Regular Force, and 19.8% of the air force.
And that number is too small to change culture and attitude.
That is Robin. She had a unique perspective on why the military has struggled with gender integration. After she became an intelligence officer, she worked with the Minister’s Advisory Board on Gender Integration, created to oversee the “full integration” ordered by the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal.
…there's not enough visibility or experience working with women. So, if someone has this attitude, you'll lose it if you're working with people and you're seeing that they're able to do the job. So, now, I can't believe it's forty years since I started the SWINTER Trials and gender integration is still not complete in the military. It's a Catch-22 situation, that in order to change culture you need greater numbers of women in the military, but the attitudes towards the servicewomen make it less likely that these numbers will increase. And, also, I just think that society in general does not encourage women to join the military. It's still seen as a "man's job."
*warm electric piano chord progression begins*
The experience of the Aircrew Trial gave participants a number of insights as to what needs to be done to change military culture and encourage women to stay.
*music ends*
Retired Major Micky Colton, pilot, saw that retaining women was necessary to transform culture.
We civilized the air force. I have people fight me on that when I say that, but we totally did. We professionalized it and we made it better for the people after. I mean, it's still not, it still has issues. I mean, you hear about that all the time, which is just, that's…soul destroying for me to hear that there's still that kind of stupid predator stuff that goes on. I mean, when I first started flying, what the guys would talk about in the cockpit on headset was pretty, you know…
But overtime, Micky saw the conversation in the cockpit change.
…the men evolved and they became, they talked about their families. They talked about their spouses and their spouses careers. They talked about their kids, they talked about education. They talked about politics and world views and stuff. It really changed. So, I think women had a huge impact, us beginners, on those attitudes. The zero tolerance and no harassment, you know, all that stuff came into play because of us. So, did we have an impact? Yeah. We had a huge impact.
The topic of cultural change brought up one memory in particular for Karen: a deployment with 436 Squadron to Canadian Forces Base Lahr, in Germany.
We would do three weeks at a time to Lahr, Germany to man the operations desk in Lahr. It was called "Lahr Ops." The expectations were that when you flew into Lahr you would go to what's called the ‘Pflegerhoff’ and you would drink your face off. That's what the culture demanded…And most people…it was very strong, that kind of current about doing just that. Some men, of course, sidestepped it, thankfully, but it was hard to do. When you're a newbie in a new organization and then that organization tells you that this is part of the expectations, well, most of the time you go along with it. 'Cause, you know, you don't want to stand out, right? You want to fit in.
So, I remember being over there on Lahr Ops. And when you were on Lahr Ops, you get a vehicle, a little van. And so, I had a day off on Lahr Ops. It’s three weeks solid and I had an afternoon off. So, a new crew had just come in, friends of mine, people I knew. And I said, "Well, you know, I'm going to take the Lahr Ops vehicle and I'm going to go to this little town in the Black Forest. Go out and have…lunch somewhere and go explore a little bit around the local area." And so...people [were] all, "Rah, rah, rah," all that. Complaining, you know? "Stupid girls," and stuff like that. "You're supposed to stay here and drink." Right after that, two of the young male pilots who came in on this airplane said, "Well, we'd better go with Karen and make sure she stays out of trouble." They didn't want to sit around and drink either! They wanted to go and explore and have a look around if they had some time off. But because I was there and I was able to say, "Well, I don't care. I'm not sitting around here and drinking."
And that was the start of the cultural change. Maybe... maybe we don't want to go to Lahr and sit in the Pflegerhoff and drink for hours on end. And I think that having the women say, "Yeah, no, I'm not interested," and it giving men an excuse to go and accompany the women who wanted to do something different, you know? Not just sit around and drink. So, that's also something that stands out to me. I remember that day. And then it got better and better.
Karen had experienced a culture while posted to 436 that was difficult to bear at times, but she also saw that change was possible.
Well, I saw during SWINTER that you could make it work. It wasn't going to be easy, but you could make it work. And I saw some of my girlfriends actually make it and succeed, and some struggled.
And when the day came that I became a squadron commander my experiences at 436 squadron actually convinced me that there's a better way of doing this. There's a better way of leading these brilliant people that fly these airplanes and go all over the world and do the amazing work that they do, than the way it was chosen to do at 436 Squadron. So, I think very early on, right at 436, specifically, that's probably when I decided I wanted to be a squadron commander. I just went, "This isn't right." You know? This needs to be done better.
*steady, thoughtful beat of piano and electric bass begins*
The Aircrew Trial may have been the beginning change, but Karen says she didn’t see a real difference until later. For her, new leadership was key to changing culture.
After, once women and younger men got into positions of influence.
*music fades out*
Once they got promoted to captain and then captain to major then you could start seeing a difference. I mean, leadership is all about setting an example and the more people you have setting a good example the more likelihood that that's going to stick.
*music fades back in*
And leadership is changing in the Canadian Forces. Albeit slowly.
*music ends*
The number of women who have advanced to positions of higher rank has increased since the SWINTER Trials. The first female Brigadier-General was Sheila Hellstrom in 1987; the first female Major-General was Wendy Clay in 1994; and in 2015 Christine Whitecross became the first Lieutenant-General, the second highest rank in the military before General. Thirty-three women have been promoted to the rank of general since Hellstrom. Currently there are fourteen serving female generals and flag officers, out of the 110 positions in the regular force. That’s 13%. The military’s current leadership crisis — in which a number of the military’s highest ranking leaders have been forced to step down or retire due to allegations of sexual misconduct — may mean that this number will start to increase more rapidly.
Reflecting on the current state of the Canadian Armed Forces, Major-General Lise Bourgon argued that a shift in approach is needed.
Yeah, well, I mean, it’s been incredible in the last 30 years. You know? Initially we came in because we were, you know, the military was forced to let us in. Okay? So, that's kind of how I arrived in the military, 'cause the military had no choice and they had to take women. So, we were there. We were tolerated as pilots. Accepted, too, but, you know, I can't really say that we were welcome. We were accepted, okay? And I think now as the years have passed, we really understand that diversity is important and that, you know, strength and weaknesses, but that the more people, the more different people, that you have around the table, the more mature and complete is the decision, the operation, and everything else.
So, I mean, we're not completely there, but we're gonna get there eventually. So, I always say that, you know, the last thirty years have been about integration and the future is about inclusion. So, I think right now we're at the turning point where we're moving from integration to inclusion and, really, women have to be included. And ‘including’ meaning that, you know, they're valued and they're accepted because of who they are. They're just not allowed to be there. They're welcome. And we will use them, the maximum of their strength and weakness, same as men. So, I think that's the turning point as we go forward, because we need to go above the 16% that we have. We need to go to twenty-five and it's going to be very, very difficult. And that's what is missing, is that paradigm from integration to inclusion where I think we're going to get to 25%.
Wendy and Karen agreed and provided their thoughts on what needs to change to make the shift to inclusion happen.
Wendy.
It's very hard. I think being supportive, treating women as normal and part of the team would be two of the biggest things that I would hope would help. That they would not be singled out.
And I think the other thing is just making it possible for women to have children and still be a valuable part of an organization without fighting the battles that I tried to fight to get posted with your husband or, to…you know? We have to be a bit more flexible, I think, in the organization, if you want to retain. Because there'll be a point where everybody reaches a breaking point of, "I'm getting out, this is just not worth it. I can find employment outside and my life would be a lot easier," *laughs*. So, yeah. I just think that those are some of the areas that they have to keep working on.
Karen.
I think the number one thing is support for families. I think we need ways where women can step away from the job to raise young children and then come back. Childcare is key. And, you know, some kind of control over their lives. In the military, at the beginning, I couldn't get a posting together with my husband. “No, no, not a chance. You're not going to the same place your husband is." And we're still happily married after thirty-five years, but that kind of...it was intentional..."No, no, no, no. Sorry. That's too bad." Where, they could have just said, "Yes, we can post your husband." There's lots of ways to post husbands and wives together. But there was that kind of, “No, you're not welcome here. So we're not going to do anything."... But that's what we need to do. We need to value women and that's...that's what we have to work on.
To remember the Aircrew Trial is to remember that women did not enter aircrew roles easily.
Retired Colonel Cheryl Lamerson began her career as an air weapon’s controller in 1975, but she went on to play a key role in the CREW Trials and eventually to command the Canadian Forces’ Directorate of Military Gender Integration and Employment Equity in the 1990s. She saw the SWINTER Trials as part of an evolution.
It wasn't a revolution. No, there was no sudden drastic change. It was an evolution.
I have this quote…I don’t know where I got this quote from. So, here's the quote, and I love this, “From the viewpoint of employment equity, the Canadian Forces consistently exhibited lethargic, reactive, incrementalism in response to powerful body blows delivered by external legislation.”
That, to me, was the description of the evolution. So, you know, the Royal Commission on Status of Women says, you know, “You should do these things.” And we did them a little bit and then a little bit more and a little bit more. And then we have the Canadian Human Rights Act in ‘78 and SWINTER, so we do a little bit more. ‘85 the Charter of Equity Rights and ‘87 to ‘89, I guess, we come out with CREW.
And I think this quote is right, it was lethargic. In some ways, I think maybe it had to be, but I think I can understand this quote is pretty negative. It's not using at least kind terminology when it says it's lethargic, reactive incrementalism in response to powerful body blows. But it's true. It was evolving over time and I think not only was SWINTER important as part of that evolution but it's important for Canadian society to realize the evolution that was going on.
And that evolution continues.
For some, it feels like even the Aircrew Trial is on-going.
(Erin)
…Okay, so that’s towards the end of the trial anyways.
(Micky)
No, the trial went on forever, *laughs,* It’s still going on isn’t? Somewhere deep in the recesses of NDHQ, *laughter*.
(Erin)
Yes, you’re probably right about that, *laughs*, I guess there’s a formal end to things…and then there’s…
(Micky)
…then there’s the black magic in the basement with the witches stuff.
*Erin and Micky laugh together, then Micky sighs and stops laughing*
*optimistic, upbeat drum and electric piano instrumental begins, builds with shaker and electric guitar*
This episode was written and produced by me, Camas Clowater-Eriksson.
Script editing by Erin Gregory.
Music by the Blue Dot Sessions.
Voice acting by Dennis Rice, Erin Gregory, and Tom Everett.
The film clip you heard was from Aircrew by the National Film Board of Canada.
Thank you to the Department of National Defence’s Directorate of History and Heritage for the digitisation and use of their Directorate of Women Personnel Fonds.
And a very special thank you to the women whose voices and stories you heard in this episode: Christine Krueger, Wendy Sewell, Robin Camken, Rosemary Park, Georgie Jones, Lise Bourgon, Karen McCrimmon, Cheryl Tardif, Mary Lou Ellan, Bev Beale, Micky Colton and Cheryl Lamerson, and to all the women who contributed their oral histories of the SWINTER Aircrew Trial to the national collection at the Canada Aviation and Space Museum.
This project was supported by the Ingenium Research Institute.
Thank you for listening to The Tipping Point.
*music fades out*
THE END
Integration: Women in the Canadian Air Force
Following the end of the Second World War, women had limited opportunities in the Royal Canadian Air Force (RCAF). By the mid-1970s, a number of traditionally male roles were open to women.
Integration is a three-part audio documentary exploring the history of women in the RCAF through the stories of three women who joined the military between 1979 and 1990. Each chose to serve in one of the trades that were opened to women in the 1970s. Meet Anke, an Aero-Engine Technician; Suzanne, an Airframe Technician; and Shelley, an Air Weapons Controller. Their stories illuminate some of the obstacles women have faced in their military careers, but also their joys, commitments, and triumphs.
Audio transcripts available below.
PART 1
We serve so that men may fly
*music: theme song beings*
The Canadian air force has achieved a great deal when it comes to the employment of women in the Canadian military. It was the first service to establish a women’s division during the Second World War, the first to recruit women in the post-war years, and the first to open all trades and officer classifications to women in 1987.
Gender equality was achieved.
Or was it?
Even as employment restrictions were removed, there were other barriers to the participation of women in the Canadian air force.
The voices of three servicewomen who joined the air force between 1979 and 1990 illuminate some of the complexities of women’s integration into the military. Their stories reveal the obstacles women have faced in their military careers, but also their joys, commitments, and their triumphs.
My name is Camas Clowater-Eriksson and you’re listening to “Integration,” a three-part audio documentary exploring the lives of three women in the Canadian air force.
Part 1: We serve so that men may fly.
*music: theme song fades out*
*music: Stayin’ Alive by the Bee Gee’s fades in*
It was 1978. Pierre Elliott Trudeau was the Prime Minister of Canada, the Bee Gees’ hit Stayin’ Alive was at the top of music charts across North America, and in Kitchener, Ontario, Anke was in her last year of high school.
*music: Stayin’ Alive fades out*
Anke had three sisters and was the first born in Canada, her parents having emigrated from Germany in 1958. As a child she helped her father – a tool and die maker – work on his cars:
…I was supposed to be the boy so I, um, I got to help him. I got out of doing dishes and things like that by being down in the garage with my dad changing spark plugs or engines, or building things, fixing things…that’s how I spent a lot of my childhood.
As her school days were ending, Anke began to consider her next steps.
I remember looking for jobs. I’d had a few jobs, working for a delicatessen; I was an elf for Santa Claus. *laughs* And I saw this add in the paper and it said, “lots of travel, paid vacation,” and it caught my eye. It was the recruiting center, and I went down, and I wrote the tests and before I knew it they called me…It was quite quick, actually.
They said, “which one do you want,” because they give you three choices after your testing…They sort of try to direct you…The Aero Engine was the one that really, was something I thought I would really like to do…I did *laughs*.
Anke was 17 years old. She was going to be an Aero Engine Technician in the Canadian air force.
A year later, in a small town in Quebec, Suzanne was also considering her future.
So, my name is Suzanne Lessard. I was born in Montmagny, Quebec, a small town, about 11,000 people living there…For whatever reason, I cannot explain, I always would look at the sky, and I like aircraft, specifically fighter jets, they have a very slim line. Anyways…Just to see if military would be…if I would be good with that I did join the air cadets. I had lots of fun with that and that was kind of what tipped the scales that I should go for it. I wanted to pursue education at the university level, and be able to become an engineer. However, I could not do that because I was not speaking English at that time and the engineering portion, as far as designing aircraft, was only offered in English.
In 1979, she applied to join the air force as an officer to become an Aero Space Engineer, but her application was denied.
Not to be dissuaded, a year later, in 1980, Suzanne tried again. This time, she applied to be an Airframe Technician, a non-commissioned trade.
This time she was accepted.
*music: theme song fades in*
Suzanne was 20 years old.
As Aero Engine and Airframe Techs, Anke and Suzanne were members of the ground crew, the people in charge of maintaining the aircraft and making sure it gets up in the air safely.
As an Aero Engine Tech, Anke was an aircraft engine mechanic. Going from repairing cars with her Dad to repairing aircraft was a big change.
*music: theme song fades out*
…it was a whole new world, I just ate it up. It was so great, it was something totally different.
After completing basic training at Canadian Forces Base Cornwallis, Nova Scotia, and completing her Aero Engine trade course at CFB Borden, Ontario, Anke arrived at CFB Trenton (also in Ontario) in 1979, where she began her first job maintaining the Boeing 707 engine.
Oh, yeah. I remember going, “wow, that plane’s big!” Because, when you’re in it, you get in it and you fly and you don’t really think. But when you go down and you put on the white coverall – they’re more like grey - and then they take you around and you’re like “wow, this is big!” I was impressed. I was like, “I’m going to work on those!”
And then the very first day the first thing they do is pull it in and take off the cowlings and they’re big, huge things…They’re quite heavy, but there’s two of you to take them off….And I remember we took those off and they’re all covered in black soot and you’d have to take them over, we had to wash them all, and we just looked like chimney sweeps…*laughs*
Interviewer: Did you enjoy that?
Oh, I did. I didn’t care; I really liked all of it.
As a francophone, Suzanne attended basic training and English language school in St. Jean, Quebec. Like Anke, her trade course was also at CFB Borden, but instead of learning how to maintain engines, as an Airframe Technician, Suzanne learned how to fix basically everything else. Her specialty was jet aircraft.
So the Airframe Technicians would take care of the landing gear, the flight controls, the hydraulic system. It was pretty much all of the aircraft, you know, minus the engine and the electronic portion of it…Yeah, so…there was a lot to learn.
For Suzanne, ground crew had the added attraction of being on the ground. As much as she loved maintaining jets, she wasn’t fond of being inside them.
No, I’m not much of a flyer…I like traveling but as far as flying itself...no, I never had the urge. I would do run-ups sometimes, in the back seat and…*sighs* It’s very… I’m not claustrophobic but it’s a very enclosed space, sitting in the cockpit. I mainly work on jet aircraft so, yeah, there’s not much room. No, I did not like that at all.
Ground crew play an essential role in the Canadian air force, but they don’t attract much public attention. If you asked the average person to name a job in the air force, chances are they would give you an answer like “pilot” or “navigator,” the people who actually go up in the air. Aircrew, the glamorous jobs.
But if you think about it, without the ground crew…not a lot of aviation would happen.
As Suzanne says:
When you mention planes, aircraft, whatever type…people think air crew. That’s…uh…yeah. Maintainers? What? What do you mean by maintainers? What is that? *laughs*
*music: Campfire Rounds by the Blue Dot Sessions begins*
You know, the aircraft flies because *laughs* we maintain it. Otherwise, I don’t care how good the pilot is, if you can’t start the aircraft you aren’t going to do anything.
Listening to Anke and Suzanne speak about their careers, we are reminded that an air force is made up of more than just pilots.
We are also reminded that, sometimes, those people are women.
Women have a long history with military aviation in Canada. During the First World War, over 1,200 civilian women worked in airfields across Southern Ontario, as part of the British Royal Air Force’s air training scheme. Some worked as drivers and clerical staff, but as many as 600 were aircraft mechanics.
During the Second World War, over 17,000 women were employed in the Royal Canadian Air Force’s Women’s Division. They worked in a variety of traditionally male roles, including as aircraft mechanics, but also as welders, airframe technicians and radar operators. Out of the 102 trades available at the time, 69 were open to women.
But the Women’s Division was always meant to be a temporary wartime force, established to free men up for combat. As the WD’s motto went: women “served so that men may fly.” The end of the war meant the end of the Women’s Division, and the last airwoman was discharged in 1946.
Anke and Suzanne remind us that women’s participation in the Canadian air force did not end with the Women’s Division. Yet it was not until 1971 that women returned to the air force as aircraft mechanics and airframe technicians.
*music: Campfire Rounds fades out*
Why did it take twenty-five years for this to happen? And how did it come about?
*music: Comin’ in on a Wing and a Prayer by the Song Spinners fades in*
*music: Comin’ in on a Wing and a Prayer fades into CBC clip*
*sharp whistle*
Male voice: Women!
Mr. Macdonald: I think our simplest way of breaking into the subject tonight is to get a few personal reactions. Here I am surrounded by a whole bevy of beautiful girls, anyone of whom would tell you more about women after the war than I, another mere male, would dare to suggest.
Suppose we start with you, Phillips. You’re in the air force now but what about after the war?
Phillips: Well Mr. Macdonald, when I’m discharged I hope to get into the field of social work for a period of four or five years and then get married and have 10 children and stay at home and raise them all myself!
*laughter ensues*
Male voice: They give medals to people like you Phillips.
*CBC clip fades out*
What you just heard was a CBC broadcast from March 22nd, 1945. And while you may detect a hint of sarcasm in Leading Airwoman Alex Phillip’s voice, her plans reflected the options available in 1945, when women were encouraged to return to pre-war domestic roles. After the war, the Canadian government cut funding for childcare, denied married women tax exemptions, and urged companies to hire male veterans over women, making it harder for women to work outside the home.
Yet, many did.
In fact, by 1960, the participation of Canadian women in the civilian work force had risen above wartime levels.
*music: Walking Shoes by the Blue Dot Sessions begins*
This was not the case in the military. During the five years after the war, the size of the Canadian military was dramatically reduced and women were employed only within the medical profession.
But as Cold War tensions heightened, circumstances changed.
In 1951, Canada and the United States agreed to establish a network of radar stations to defend North American air space against a potential Soviet attack. To staff these stations, the air force needed personnel. But because Canada was also involved in the Korean War, the military had to look beyond men to satisfy Canada’s defence commitments.
So the air force decided to recruit women.
Almost 2,600 women joined that year. Many of them were recruited to staff a new trade that was vital to the successful operation of the radar defence system: the trade of Fighter Control Operator. “Fighter COps,” as they were called, monitored Canadian airspace for aircraft, watched for potential threats, and directed aircraft on their courses.
Historian Karen Davis has argued that this step was the “first of many changes” that would “close the gap” between the conditions of service of men and women in the Canadian military.
*music: Walking Shoes fades out*
The 1956 National Film Board short, Frontiers to Guard, celebrated the new status of women in the air force:
*Frontiers to Guard fades in*
Meet leading Aircraftwoman Harrington, Royal Canadian Air Force. Elaine Harrington is one of almost three thousand women who serve in the RCAF. She works alongside the men of the air force, receives the same rate of pay, is entitled to the same privileges, and shares the same responsibilities.
Elaine is a Fighter Control Operator, stationed somewhere in eastern Canada. She has an added interest in her trade, perhaps, because her brother is a fighter pilot in Germany.
*Frontiers to Guard fades out*
Yet -
*music: Purple Lights by the Blue Dot Sessions begins*
- the reality was that women were not treated as equally as the film would have audiences believe.
The initial engagement of a woman in the air force was set at three years, compared to five years for men. Women were released from duty if they became pregnant. Until 1953, they were also released if they married. And afterwards, they could only marry if this did not interfere with their job.
Training was also different. Men received weapons and ground defence training and participated in active exercises, while women were required to take courses in “morality” and “personal hygiene.”
These policies were not out of step with assumptions in the 1950s about the place of men and women in Canadian society.
Within this context, the highly technical training, the opportunity to travel and the social freedoms gained by living away from home made the air force a promising option for women at the time.
And many women took the air force up on their offer. By 1953, the number of women serving in the air force peaked at 3,133. Many of them were Fighter COps.
Yet, in the same year, the air force stopped actively recruiting women and over the next 10 years the number of women serving in the air force gradually declined. In 1962, the air force instituted a policy that there would be no more than 1,000 women in the service at any given time. And in 1963, the number of trades open to women was reduced from 63 to 13.
The reason for this may be surprising.
*music: Purple Lights fades out*
Queen’s University historian Allan English has been studying this period in Canadian military history. His research suggests that the air force found itself struggling to retain women in the 1950s. A large part of the retention problem stemmed from the fact that the air force recruited personnel to staff radar stations before facilities were completed. This was especially true at Station Edgar, north of Toronto, where, in 1953, eighty percent of the operational staff were women.
Allan explains:
They’re in such a rush to get this air defence system up that they’re posting people in before the facilities are complete. And so, the accommodations are crowded, people are getting sick, the food’s not so good, there are no recreational facilities. People are generally really unhappy. In fact, the commanding officer, in his report to air force headquarters, says that the living conditions are “intolerable.”
But servicewomen had an out. If a woman declared her intention to marry, the air force regulations required that she be released from service.
They were given all this technical training, they were given all this recruiting propaganda about how good things were. And they get to a terrible place and the radar’s not working. So everybody, men and women, were mopping floors, cleaning dishes, because there’s nothing for them to do…You can hardly blame them for wanting to get out.
Over fifty percent of servicewomen at Station Edgar applied to be released for marriage in their first year. And considering that the technical training to be a radar technician was, on average, 18 months, and the length of engagement was 36 months, this meant that women only worked a year and a half at best before their term was up.
Employing women had become an expensive proposition for the air force.
*music: Li Fonte by the Blue Dot Sessions fades in*
Yet their services were needed.
That is, until new technology made it possible for computers to carry out much of the work performed by women in radar stations across Canada.
And in June 1964, the Chief of the Air Staff asked the Ministry of Labour for permission to phase women out of the air force completely.
But that is not where this story ends.
For, the next month, the Minister of National Defence paused the Minister of Labour’s decision until a proper study could be done to examine the employment of servicewomen.
This choice may have been in response to the growing participation of women in the Canadian workforce. But it was more likely influenced by a developing plan to unify the army, navy and air force into a single service. The main question of the study was this: Should women have a place in the unified military?
The study, released in 1965, concluded that “biological sex by itself no longer constituted sufficient grounds for barring women from the armed services.” The study further stated that such an action would be “out of step” with the economic and social trends in Canada’s civilian workforce.
With that, the air force’s request to phase out the recruitment of women was rejected. Not only did the government reject the request, but in the summer of 1966, the Minister of National Defence announced that servicewomen would be a “permanent” part of the future unified “Regular Canadian Forces.”
For the first time in Canadian history, women could pursue a career in the military without the fear of being “phased out.”
The 1950s were an unprecedented moment in women’s air force history. Never before had women served in such numbers and in such non-traditional, technical roles during peacetime.
But after the 1966 Ministry of National Defence announcement, the military greatly reduced the opportunities available to women. The military capped the number of women who could be recruited into the armed forces at 1,500 and restricted them to low-skilled trades with short training periods.
*music: Li Fonte fades out*
It would be another five years before the military re-examined its position and allowed women to once again serve in non-traditional trades, such as Aero Engine and Airframe Technicians.
*music – Comin’ in on a Wing and a Prayer fades in*
*music – Comin’ in on a Wing and a Prayer fades out and theme song begins*
That story is up in Part 2.
This episode was written and produced by me, Camas Clowater-Eriksson.
Special thanks to Anke Berndt, Suzanne Lessard and Allan English.
Sound engineering by Richard Able.
Script editing from Susan Whitney, Norman Hillmer, and Ann Eriksson.
The radio clip you heard came from CBC Archives, the film clip was from the National Film Board short Frontiers to Guard.
Theme song is Hedgeliner by the Blue Dot Sessions. The other music you hear was Stayin’ Alive by the Bee Gee’, Comin’ in on a Wing and a Prayer by the Song Spinners, and Campfire Rounds, Walking Shoes, Purple Light and Li Fonte by the Blue Dot Sessions. Music curation by me.
This project was supported by Ingenium and the Canada Aviation and Space Museum and funded by the Social Science and Humanities Research Council and the Department of National Defence’s Mobilizing Insights in Defence and Security Scholarship Initiative.
Thank you for listening and don’t forget to tune into Part 2 and Part 3 of Integration.
*music: theme song fades out*
END OF PART 1
PART 2
It’s the subtle things
*music: theme song begins*
My name is Camas Clowater-Eriksson and you’re listening to Integration, a three-part audio documentary exploring the lives of three women in the Canadian air force.
Part 2: It’s the subtle things.
*music: theme song fades out*
Shelley was no stranger to workplace discrimination.
She was working in the banking industry in Ottawa, Ontario and had just been rejected for a position in management. Apparently she didn’t have the leadership qualities required for the job, and it was implied she never would. Shelley was 25.
So, she decided to join the military.
Being told that I had topped out in my career at the age of 25 and that I was already at the top of my salary base so I wasn’t going to be getting an awful lot more raises, I decided it was time to look elsewhere. I had a friend at the time who was in the military and he had talked an awful lot about his job. It sounded like something I could do.
Shelley decided to apply as an officer in the position of Air Weapons Controller, the modern day equivalent of the 1950s Fighter COps.
I was in the recruiting center in the summer of 1989 and February of 1990, I got a call from the recruiting center asking if I was still interested in having a position in the military. They were offering my first choice as Air Weapons Controller and if I was interested I needed to be at the basic officers training school in Chilliwack, BC for the first of April 1990.
Only a few months before Shelley walked into a recruiting office in Ottawa, the Canadian military had been instructed to deal with a discrimination issue of its own. On February 20th, 1989, the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal ordered the military to “fully integrate” women into all trades and occupations within 10 years.
*music: theme song fades in*
In response, the military removed all legal barriers to women’s employment. By the summer of 1989, women like Shelley were free to serve in all positions, except those on submarines owing to inadequate facilities.
The events of 1989 were the culmination of a long legal battle between the military and the Canadian government which began in the years following the 1966 Ministry of National Defence announcement that had made women permanent members of the Canadian military.
Although these events did not factor into Shelley’s decision to join the air force, the years between 1966 and 1989 certainly shaped the military she entered.
Part 1 explored the unprecedented service of women in the Canadian air force during 1950s and the events leading up to the 1966 National Defence decision.
But what happened next? Why did the military resist pressure to remove restrictions on women’s employment between 1966 and 1989? And how did Anke and Suzanne, who joined the military during this period of transition, experience the military environment?
But first, some history…
*music: theme song fades out*
After the milestone of 1966, it was not long before the question of women’s status in the military was again brought to public attention.
In 1967, the Royal Commission on the Status of Women in Canada was launched. It was chaired by Florence Bird….
*CBC clip fades in*
Male reporter: Why a Royal Commission on the Status of Women? Don’t women have a pretty good status in Canada now, Mrs. Bird?
Florence Bird: Well, I think that they have very good status but they’re not quite sure what it is yet. A great many women feel that, perhaps, they are being discriminated against when they go to work because they aren’t paid as much as men, or because they don’t get the promotions even though they work just as hard, you know, sometimes more, than the man that is put ahead of them.
*CBC clip fades out*
In 1970, the Royal Commission made 167 recommendations, six of which were directed at the Canadian military. The Royal Commission recommended that all non-commissioned trades and officer classifications be opened to women, that women be allowed to serve if pregnant or married, that they be allowed to attend military colleges, and that the pensions and length of service be equalized for men and women.
Throughout the 1970s, the military made changes to its policies. It opened a variety of trades and classifications to women, among these the ones that Anke, Suzanne and Shelley would train in, those of Aero Engine Tech, Airframe Technician, and Air Weapon’s Controller. The military removed the 1,500 person cap on the recruitment of women. It abolished restrictions on women serving while married or pregnant and made pensions equal for men and women.
Yet‒
*music: Softly Villainous by the Blue Dot Sessions begins*
‒the military continued to limit the opportunities open to women. Women could not serve in combat positions or near combat positions and in remote locations or at sea. In the air force, women could not train as aircrew, including as pilots. The military also placed multiple restrictions on the type of deployments women could participate in, arguing that certain deployments did not have the facilities to accommodate women.
The year 1978 brought another milestone for the employment of women in Canada, including in the Canadian military. That year, the Canadian Human Rights Act forbade employment discrimination based on “race, national or ethnic origins, colour, religion, age, sex, marital status, family status, pardoned conviction and disability,” unless it could be proven that an exclusion on these grounds was an occupational requirement.
The Human Rights Act forced the military to justify its policies, and the military spent the next ten years trying to prove that the exclusion of women from certain occupations was indeed an occupational requirement.
One strategy was the “Service Women in Non-traditional Environments and Roles,” or SWINTER trials. The trials were held by the military from 1979 to 1985 to study the performance of women in near combat units, in semi-remote locations, and on ships. According to Karen Davis, the trials were “intended to support resistance” toward expanding the role of women in the military. If women were found to perform their jobs well, then other assessment factors were considered, such as the social and cultural impacts of their presence in the unit.
What lay behind this long-term resistance? And have the attitudes that caused it gone away?
*music: Softly Villainous fades out*
Up until Canada’s involvement in the Afghanistan war in the early 2000s, the dominant culture subscribed to by senior leadership in the Canadian military had been a “traditionalist culture.”
Here again is Allan English:
This was based on the idea, some writers have said, that saw the military as being separate from civil society and they had a heroic masculine view of warfare in the military.
*music: Lamprey by the Blue Dot Sessions begins*
Traditionalists have been generally opposed women entering the forces in large numbers, as they pose a threat to the masculine status quo and have been seen as a detriment to the military’s ability to be operationally effective. While not all members of the Canadian military subscribed to these beliefs, traditionalist attitudes affected how the military responded to legislation like the Canadian Human Rights Act and how they developed policy regarding female members.
The employment of women was also viewed as an administrative burden. Administrators resented the extra work that would be needed to retrofit a system that had been established around the needs of men. Employing women meant different uniforms, separate bathrooms and sleeping quarters, as well as new protocols to deal with concepts like maternity leave.
Throughout the 1970s and 1980s, military traditionalists saw demands to reintroduce women into non-traditional roles, during peacetime no-less, as a government imposed “social experiment.” However, as time progressed government legislation made it more and more difficult for traditionalists to outwardly oppose policies that improved the status of women in the military.
That did not mean the attitudes disappeared.
*music: Lamprey fades out*
On the ground, Anke and Suzanne were finding they had generally positive working relationships with the men around them.
In 1979, Anke was working in Boeing Maintenance at CFB Trenton and for the first time since basic training, she had a room to herself.
*music: Boogie Wonderland by Earth, Wind and Fire fades in*
That year she got her first credit union loan, purchased her first stereo, and bought the recently released Earth, Wind and Fire album, “I am.” She would listen to it in her room on repeat. Her favourite track was “Boogie Wonderland.”
*music: Boogie Wonderland fades out*
Working as an Aero Engine Technician, Anke recalled there being a real sense of camaraderie amongst her and the male techs.
The guys, most of them, I mean, there’s always exceptions, but most of them really appreciated someone who worked as hard as they did. They would always…be happy to work with you, I find, ‘cause you had to work with everybody.
I mean, they’d like to goof around and somebody would have a really dumb joke…there were awful jobs we had to do like when we had to sweep the hanger floors. But we would all get in a line and then we’d be chatting while we do it…we’d get all the work done.
Even when she was a Sergeant and supervising a component shop of nine men in Bagotville, Quebec, she didn’t recall having any issues.
I had two Master Corporals and, in total, usually around nine…Like I’d lose one and get another one…always all males. I had no females in my shop. They uh – they put up with my French *laughs*. I really actually enjoyed the work. It was a good place to be.
Suzanne spent the 1980s at CFB Cold Lake working on fighter jets and the 1990s at CFB Trenton working with air transport aircraft. She preferred Cold Lake.
…Cold Lake deals with fighters so everything goes fast. Whereas when you’re in Trenton, in air transport, those aircraft, when they take off in the morning, they might not come back for a week. Whereas fighter jets can go up three times a day.
I preferred the fast pace.
Suzanne recalled experiencing some negativity from her first supervisor at Cold Lake, but not from her fellow technicians.
When I first got to Cold Lake, being Francophone, I was speaking English but I was…I needed more practice. My immediate supervisor was pretty mean about it…He was always, every other day, “so when are you going to Bagotville?”, and blah, blah, blah, blah… He didn’t want me on the crew. He was not pleased, huh? But the rest of the guys were. There were no women on the crew, I was the first one and yeah…*laughs* Like I said, the guys, they had no issue whatsoever. But him? Yeah…he didn’t like that.
I was pretty lucky with the people ‘cause they never made you feel less, or anything….It was not the same for everyone, but as far as I’m concerned, it was good.
But the two servicewomen did not deny that there were systemic problems, particularly in the area of promotion.
In that, Suzanne was certain. She felt she had to do more than the men to be noticed and recognized by her supervisors.
I’m not saying I didn’t have issues. I know I’ve been passed on by promotions because, “you’re a woman.”
Anke, on the other hand, was less sure if her slow progress through the ranks had been due to her gender.
And I remember for a few years there I did feel it had to do with the fact I was a female. But I’m not certain. Now that I look back at it I know many males who stayed Corporals and Master-Corporals, you know, so maybe it wasn’t because I was a female.
Anke worked at Trenton for 8 years. Over that time, she moved through a few different units; for four years she worked in Boeing Maintenance, then she moved on to do emergency engine repairs, and then she performed engine overhauls in Engine Bay.
I was a Corporal through that whole time, well Corporal is automatic after four years. So, I became a Corporal and I was…one even though I moved around…And that’s the problem. And I don’t think that’s because I was a female, I think it happens to a lot of people. They get moved around. So, every time you get moved around it’s almost like starting over again. So, I never got anywhere close to a promotion while I was in Trenton. That was…it’s not the end of the world but it would have been nice, you know?. That’s where I do think the males had a bit of an advantage, they tended to not get hurt as much when they moved.
They tended to have…there were promotions, not a whole lot, but there were.
At the time Anke was serving, promotions were determined by a performance review, also known as a PER. It was a point based system, but the military kept changing the criteria by which points were awarded.
You get an assessment every year. So it was always the joke right before PER time (that’s the report you get) that that’s when everyone would start working hard. Which isn’t true, because you should be doing it all year long.
And they would change it. I’ve seen so many different ways…just the system they used to decide if you’re going to get promoted or not had been changed so often. So, when they go from one way to another then you can’t really…See there’s the things, if your PER doesn’t improve, or, you know, even if it stays the same and you think you could deserve better, you could redress it. But it’s very hard to prove anything when they’ve changed the system. It’s like you’re trying to compare oranges to apples.
I wasn’t fortunate that way, but I was happy doing what I was doing.
Anke’s slow promotion rate may have been due to the military’s haphazard PER system. It most certainly made it hard to redress reviews she suspected were unfair.
In his research, Allan English has come across examples of military traditionalists using the promotion system to resist change.
I mean, the thing to keep in mind is that promotion is very competitive and it only takes a couple of marks to miss out on a promotion.
*music: Lamprey fades in*
You just have to knock them down a tiny but in three or four categories and that’s enough to take their report.
‘What happens is each unit goes through all the reports and then they rank them and they send them up and they get ranked again. So, everybody goes through them, but they’re still using these numbers. So, you can say, “Corporal Sarah Jones is a very good tech and works very hard but her rating is 85/100 and Corporal John Smith is a very good tech and works very hard but his rating is 87/100.” That’s enough. You know, the senior people all know what the numbers are. They know what it takes to be promoted or not and they just work it down a couple points. Nothing obvious, nothing that could be redressed, you know, no “I refuse to promote women.” It’s all very subtle.
Even so, the 1980s did see important progress made for women in the air force.
In 1986, the results of the SWINTER trials contributed to a new employment policy that officially opened many previously restricted roles to women. In the air force, women were now free to train as pilots, air navigators and flight engineers. However, the military argued that it was still necessary to bar women from serving in units classified as combat or near combat.
But in 1987, the air force changed its mind. If it was to put time and money into training personnel, it wanted to be able to put them anywhere. So the air force opened all trades and officer classifications to women. Two years later, after the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal ruling, the rest of the military followed suit.
By the end of the 1980s, Anke and Suzanne were established in their careers, and Shelley’s was just beginning. But as the experiences shared by Anke and Suzanne make clear, prejudices did not necessarily disappear as policies restricting women’s employment were removed. These prejudices led to systemic and cultural barriers that were much more difficult to legislate away. One barrier was the problem of military traditionalists expressing their disapproval of women via the promotion system.
*music: Lamprey fades out*
*music: Every Breath You Take by the Police fades in*
Another barrier was the problem of sexual harassment.
That story up in Part 3.
*music: Every Breath You Take fades out*
*music: theme song begins*
This episode was written and produced by me, Camas Clowater-Eriksson.
Special thanks to Anke Berndt, Suzanne Lessard, Shelley Colter, and Allan English.
Sound engineering by Richard Able.
Script editing from Susan Whitney, Norman Hillmer, and Ann Eriksson.
The radio clip was from CBC Archives.
Theme song Hedgeliner by the Blue Dot Sessions. The other music you hear was Boogie Wonderland by Earth, Wind, and Fire, Every Breath You Take by the Police, and Softly Villainous and Lamprey by the Blue Dot Sessions. Music curated by Anke Berndt, Suzanne Lessard, and me.
This project was supported by Ingenium and the Canada Aviation and Space Museum and funded by the Social Science and Humanities Research Council and the Department of National Defence’s Mobilizing Insights in Defence and Security Scholarship Initiative.
Thank you for listening and don’t forget to tune into Part 3 of Integration.
*music: theme song fades out*
END OF PART 2
PART 3
A bitch, a slut, or a wall flower
*music: theme song begins*
My name is Camas Clowater-Eriksson and this is the final installment of Integration, a three-part audio documentary exploring the lives of three women in the Canadian air force.
Part 1 explored the unprecedented service of women in the Canadian air force during the 1950s and the events leading up to the 1966 Ministry of National Defence decision that made women permanent members of the Canadian military.
Part 2 outlined the roots of the Canadian military’s resistance to women’s employment in the decades prior to the 1989 Canada Human Rights Tribunal Decision ordering the military to “fully integrate” women over the next 10 years. But as the stories shared by Anke and Suzanne reveal, the experience of women during this period was complicated. Anke and Suzanne fondly remembered their time as Aero Engine and Airframe Tech in the 1980s. Yet, they did not deny that they may have been treated differently by their superiors due to their gender, particularly in the area of promotion.
Systemic issues, such as inequalities within the promotion system, directly affected the military’s ability to achieve full integration by the deadline of 1999. Another barrier to integration came to public attention in the 1990s, the prevalence of sexual harassment and assault within the ranks.
How did the military respond to these allegations?
How did women navigate the military environment in light of these realities?
And are there signs that change is occurring?
Part 3: A bitch, a slut, or a wallflower.
*music: theme song fades out*
At the time Shelley started her career, she knew that things weren’t perfect for women in the Canadian military.
The only thing that I was really told was by my friend who told me that women in the military usually get labeled one of three things: you’re either a bitch, a slut or a wallflower, and it was up to me by my actions and behaviours to determine which one I was going to be. I found it rather….off putting. That those were the three boxes you got put in…I decided to do it anyways.
I’m sometimes ‘Pollyannic’ in that I believe that I can push on through and I will determine my own way and not have anybody else decide what my career is going to look like and what labels will be put on me.
In April 1990, as Shelley was on her way to start her basic officers training course in Chilliwack, British Columbia, the military was still grappling with how to adapt to women within its ranks. Shelley recalled learning that sexual harassment and assault were a problem as early as basic training.
At the start of the course, we did have a female instructor sit with the female recruits and explain that you’re working in a world that’s dominated by men so you need to be aware of the potential for sexual assault so keep yourself safe, don’t do anything stupid. Ironically the male recruits didn’t have any lectures about not committing sexual assault and how it was as much their responsibility to make sure didn’t happen as it was the female recruit’s responsibility.
*music: Oriel by the Blue Dot Sessions beings*
I was disappointed that in 1990 we still had to have this discussion.
The Canadian military had actually instituted its first anti-harassment policy in 1988, but by the early 1990s there existed no effective programs to educate members on the issue of sexual harassment, nor were there trustworthy protocols by which a member could report abuse.
Further action was only taken in 1992, after it came to public attention that the Canadian Human Rights Commission had received 13 complaints of sexual harassment from members of the military. Later that same year, the military conducted its first survey amongst both male and female members to assess rates of harassment. The survey found that 26.2% of women had experienced sexual harassment in the previous year, 32.6 had experienced personal harassment, and 31.5% said they had experienced an abuse of authority. Two percent of men said they had experienced sexual harassment, 19.4% personal harassment and 28.9% an abuse of authority.
Harassment was clearly a problem that was affecting both women and men.
In 1993, the Globe and Mail released a story called “Sex and the Military: Battling Harassment” that brought the problem to public attention.
*music: Oriel fades out*
It was a few years after this that Shelley remembers encountering a strategy to help members navigate harassment. It was called the “three light system.”
It was the initial attempt by the military to deal with harassment by giving everybody training so that everybody understood when somebody said ‘yellow light’ you were being told that you were approaching something that was bothering them, or offending them, or they were feeling harassed, and if you were told ‘red light’ you had to stop right away. The inherent problem with that is that the idea of having a yellow light implies that there is room for an action being acceptable.
It took another public scandal in 1998 for the military to enforce its first official anti-harassment training program.
In the spring of 1998, Maclean’s magazine published a series of stories reporting thirty-one allegations of sexual misconduct, including charges of rape, within the Canadian military. And it was not just an army or navy problem, women in the air force had spoken out as well. Not long after, the military instituted the Sexual Harassment and Racism Prevention Program, known as SHARP. As the name indicates, SHARP differed from past polices in that it acknowledged the problem of sexual harassment and racism. The program was developed in 1996, but not made mandatory until 1998. Unfortunately, it wasn’t very effective.
Allan English explains why:
This was a program that was meant to be taken by all members, or most members, of the Canadian Forces. But again, because no one was monitoring it, no one’s career was held up if you don’t complete it, it was given by civilians who were often seen to be out of touch with the military and, a number of reports have said, [it] became a became a laughing stock in the end.
The problem was that it was voluntary and nothing happened if you didn’t’ take it and people did everything in their power to avoid it because it was just seen to be a waste of time.
The failure of SHARP training coincided with the failure of “full integration.” As of 1999, the Canadian military had increased the representation of women in its ranks by a mere 1%.
Why the lack of progress?
Allan:
Remember the Forces never ignores the issue. It’s just that…whenever something comes along – whether it’s the Royal Commission or the Status of Women, anything – they pay attention to it immediately because it’s in the press. You know, “yes we’re going to do something,” and they set up some bodies, but they’re all internal. So what happens is they work along, they’re doing the staff work, the research branch of the military do all these studies and they have findings that, generally, women should come in and there are discussions and trials and back-and-forth…But there’s no one saying, “at the end of year one, where are we?”
*music: Trailrunner by the Blue Dot Sessions begins*
One key problem with the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal order was that it did not impose a system of external monitoring to keep the military on track.
Without external monitoring, the military prioritized operational activities over institutional initiatives. And the 1990s were a busy time for the military. There were major operations going on in former Yugoslavia throughout the ‘90s; the Oka Crisis of 1990; Canada’s involvement in the Iraq War starting in 1991; and, in 1993, the murder of a Somali teenager by two soldiers serving overseas with the Canadian Airborne Regiment, as part of a United Nations mission. This became known as the Somalia Affair and it resulted in a Royal Commission, the disbanding of the Airborne Regiment, and a series of organization-wide reforms from 1997 until 2003.
But there was more behind the military’s failure to address sexual harassment and integration issues.
Allan:
*music: Trailrunner fades out*
Underlying all these prejudices, and misogyny, and the warrior culture – they all contribute – is the systemic inability of the Canadian Forces to deal with complex problems that require a sustained engagement by the organisation following a plan, unless there is external oversight to hold them to account.
The lack of an effective anti-harassment policy was both a symptom of the military’s systemic problems and a barrier to its ability to increase the participation of women by 1999.
For Shelley, the absence of effective policies impacted her experience in the military environment.
It was still very much…felt like an old boy’s club. So, as a woman I felt that I needed to walk a fine line between holding onto my own identity as a woman and be accepted by the guys. So at times, it was, I felt like I had to give up a part of my integrity in order to fly below the radar and not stick out, not cause…waves, because at that time I felt that there was still not an awful lot of ways to approach harassment of any type of minor.
*music: Shout by Tears for Fears begins*
*music: Shout fades out*
Despite the challenges, Shelley loved her job. As an Air Weapon’s Controller, Shelley monitored Canadian air space, using a radar system to control fighter aircraft, tankers, and recognisance in support of maintaining air sovereignty.
Like the Fighter COps of the 1950s, but with much more advanced technology, Shelley’s job was to paint a picture of Canadian air space. She would take information from her radar screen, use intelligence reports to identify which aircraft were friend, and which were foe, and then relay this information to pilots in the air.
I would be in a ground based location using a radar that could see out farther than radar platforms on the aircraft and I would provide them a picture of where all the aircraft were. I might do it based off a specific location on the ground (what we call ‘bull’s eye control’), or I might do it based off of where a specific group of aircraft that I was talking to, off of their location.
*music: Step In Step Out by the Blue Dot Sessions fades in*
The idea is to keep providing them with enough description that the pilot finally sees in his head, and on his screen, the same thing that I see.
And she was good.
In 1993, Shelly became one of the first women trained in Tactical Flight Control. As an Air Weapon’s Controller, Shelly had learned how to control about six aircraft at a time, but with tactical training she could handle situations involving as many as 60 to 80 aircraft.
Shelley recounted one experience that perfectly described the challenges that many women faced in the military, and may still face, no matter how skilled they might be.
At least once a year, the air force holds a massive training exercise called Exercise Maple Flag.
*music: Step In Step Out fades out*
For a month, air forces from around the world congregate at CFB Cold Lake, where they participate in simulated, real fly, operations to train for air-warfare.
Because of the wide unrestricted airspace in northern Alberta and northern Saskatchewan it’s an opportunity for pilots of all different types of airframes to fly in a real-fly simulated wartime scenario without fear of encroaching on civilian air space.
This was built out of lessons learned from the Korean War and the Vietnam War. When pilots went back to Vietnam after flying in Korean ten, fifteen, twenty years before, they found that a lot their proficiency had been lost and new pilots flying in Vietnam, that was the first time that they were flying in any type of a combat or simulated-combat environment.
The air forces are split into two teams: the “blue,” or allied forces, and the “red,” or enemy forces.
Each side is provided with enough types of airframes, on the red side, to simulate what an enemy force would look like in the First Gulf War or the former Yugoslavia, trying to maintain or achieve air sovereignty in an air space.
In 1994, only days before that year’s Maple Flag was set to begin…
I was asked to go out and augment the controlling facility out in Cold Lake.
She would be controlling for the Red Force.
As a Red Force controller, my job was to provide a large air picture to aircraft, specifically fighters, that were to defend against the invading Blue Force, the force that was going to try and gain air sovereignty in the air space.
The next thing Shelley knew she was on her way to Cold Lake, Alberta
*music: All I Wanna Do by Sheryl Crow fades in*
It was a short notice request so I traveled out there and arrived a few days after the exercise had started.
*music: All I Wanna Do fades out*
I arrived late afternoon and decided that I would go over to the mess and introduce myself to one of the leaders of the Red Force. So, I found out the name of the senior officer that was in charge of the Red Force and went over to the mess and asked somebody to point him out to me. He was off in a corner, telling a story…so I waited until he was finished and went over and went to introduce myself. I asked if he was the Air Boss for the exercise and he looked at me, and he looked at me up and down, and said “yes he was” and asked if I going to be his “Maple Flag Queen” for the exercise. That’s a slang term for a woman that is sleeping with one of the fighter pilots. I looked at him – I was quite upset – and I looked at him and I said actually, no sir, I’m your GCI – which is Ground Control Intercept – for tomorrow. I guess your exercise tomorrow is going to suck. And I turned and left.
*music: Sledgehammer by Peter Gabriel begins and then fades out*
The next morning Shelley was still angry, but she was determined not to let the incident affect her performance.
That day probably was one of my best controlling days in my career. Because I was angry, my adrenaline was rushing, I was spot on with my calls…
Shelley had aced the exercise, but the incident in the mess still bothered her.
Which made what happened after the exercise even more surprising.
Everyone who participated went to a series of debriefs, culminating in a mass debrief led by the same Colonel who had assumed Shelley was his “Maple Flag Queen.”
And he got up and he said, “This was a good flight, there’s some lessons learned, but I want to start with my own personal lesson learned. I want to apologise to Lieutenant Colter. I made a horrible assumption yesterday and insulted her. I want to apologise for that. I should know better than to assume that a woman in the mess is anything other than an officer and a member of the military…I got provided with some fantastic GCI today and I want to thank her for teaching me an important lesson.”
In Shelley’s experience, this was an extraordinary outcome. A senior officer had apologised and not only that, had turned it into a lesson for others.
If I was cocky before I was going to be insufferable then.
*music: Sledgehammer begins*
*music: Sledgehammer fades into theme song*
Shelley’s unexpected tale of reconciliation at Exercise Maple Flag is one example that change is occurring in the Canadian military.
*music: theme song fades out*
…if I were only to have had an experience in Canadian military, I would say it’s not enough….we still have an awful long way to go. But from my experience, and I can only speak to my experience, with the multinational forces that I’ve worked with – UN, NATO, and NORAD – I didn’t see the advancement that Canada has made. There’s still lots of room for us to work on, there’s still a lot of room to grow. But we, in my opinion, are leading the effort on the military-side.
*music: theme song fades in*
History shows us that the road to the integration of women into the Canadian air force was neither straight nor smooth, and the stories shared by Anke, Suzanne, and Shelley remind us of the role individual women played in this history. Whether it was mastering the mechanics of the giant Boeing 707 engine, maintaining the complex hydraulic systems of a fighter jet, or successfully managing the flight paths of 80 aircraft at once, women took advantage of all the air force has to offer.
When I asked what Anke, Shelley, and Suzanne have taken away from their military experience, this is what they had to say:
*music: theme song fades out*
Shelley:
I still have it as part of my identity now as a veteran. A lot of how I behave and react to things now is because of what I was taught and what I experienced in the military. Right down to the way that I carry myself.
*music: theme song fades in*
…It was the toughest 24 years of my life to date, being in the military. It was the best 24 years, as well.
Anke:
I think it was the greatest thing.
*music: theme song fades out*
I would not have changed it, really. Not that I can, anyway. Sure, there’s ups and downs but I think I made a really good choice. There’s problems, I’ve seen them. Not happening to me, but I’ve had friends and stuff…so I know they’re out there, but they’re everywhere. I worked really hard but I was treated really well too.
*music: theme song fades in*
Suzanne:
I think I finished on a high note.
*music: theme song fades out*
I’ve been out for almost six years so I can only speak to when I left. You know? I think we’re doing great, actually. You see more and more women…being a Chief. Before…just go back fifteen years, I mean, a woman chief was unheard of! But now there are plenty of them. No, I think the air force is doing good. As a whole.
You know, even to this day but it’s still a man’s world. It’s not as bad…the dinosaurs are gone, but it’s still a man’s world.
I always had in my thoughts that if you get a job it’s not because you’re a female or a male it’s because you’re the best person to do it.
*music: theme song fades in*
The stories of these three servicewomen have shown us that the military has come a long way since the days of the Women’s Division, but work remains to be done.
*music: Roundpine by the Blue Dot Sessions begins*
Recent stats show that the Canadian Armed Forces has made some progress in the recruitment of women. Between 1999 and 2020, the representation of women in the military has risen from 10.8% to 15.9%, although this number has hovered around 14-15% for the past five years.
Since 2014, the military has made efforts to bring awareness to the problem of sexual harassment and other gender-related issues but their actions have so often followed the familiar pattern.
Take Operation Honour, for example, the military’s most recent anti-harassment and integration initiative.
In 2014, the Quebec magazine, L'actualité, reported on the prevalence of sexual violence in the military.
The story prompted the military to commission an External Review of Sexual Misconduct and Sexual Harassment in the Canadian Armed Forces. The review, conducted by retired Supreme Court Justice Marie Deschamps, condemned the military for having an “underlying sexualized culture…that is hostile to women and LGBTQ members.” She further stated that the problem was wide spread, across the army, navy, and air force, and that it was inhibiting the ability of the organisation to achieve the full integration of women.
Operation Honour was the military’s response to these findings and was launched in 2015 with the goal to “eliminate harmful and inappropriate behaviour within the Canadian Armed Forces.” And it pledged to do so within 2 years.
Since it began, Operation Honour has increased awareness of the problem among military members through educational campaigns and workshops, and established a more effective reporting system for members. But it did not meet its 2 year deadline. And in 2019, a Statistics Canada survey showed that a reduction in the prevalence of sexual assault did not take place between 2016 and 2018.
Operation Honour has been criticized for having no external monitoring and no strategic plan. And today there are fears that the military’s attention has shifted to other priorities.
*music: Roundpine fades out*
Other problems persist too. In conversations with servicewomen in active service today, one hears concerns that the promotion system remains susceptible to prejudice.
Shelley:
The military is and should be seen as a genderless job. It’s our society and the way that we’re brought up that places stereotypes on us, and specifically on the military. When we get to a point where we are not identifying a specific colour, a specific job, a specific word as being male or female, then we are going to get to a point where there is going to be full equality of genders in the military….
*music: Gambrel by the Blue Dot Sessions begins*
Until that point in time, until we stop seeing blue a boy’s colour and pink as a girl’s colour, we are going to continue to struggle with gender roles in the military, and equality.
It is not only gender equality that requires attention.
We must not forget that women have faced discrimination for more than just their gender in the military.
Women have experienced discrimination for their gender, but also for their sexuality, their culture, and the colour of their skin?
What are their joys, commitments, and triumphs?
There is much that remains unsaid in the history of the Canadian military.
In recent years, the history of gay and lesbian servicemembers has begun to receive some public recognition.
But what of the stories of servicemembers who identify with trans and two spirit communities?
What of the stories of First Nation, Inuit, and Métis servicemembers?
What of the stories of black servicemembers?
Has integration occurred for them?
These are only some of the experiences that are absent from this history. Listening to these stories will be vital if the military is to ever address inequalities within its ranks.
And if we, as the public, are to gain a full understanding of Canada’s military history.
The last word to Anke:
*music: Gambrel fades out*
Quite a few times – quite a few times, lots of times! You know, I’ve been given an aircraft, “okay, go fix it.” So you go and sometimes it doesn’t get fixed right away, sometimes you have to do a number of things, but when you finally get it done it’s like, “alright, I did that.” And it’s not because I’m a female, it’s just because that’s what I like to do.
*music: theme song begins*
This episode was written and produced by me, Camas Clowater-Eriksson.
Special thanks to Anke Berndt, Suzanne Lessard, Shelley Colter, and Allan English.
Sound engineering by Richard Able.
Script editing from Susan Whitney, Norman Hillmer, and Ann Eriksson.
Theme song: Hedgeliner by the Blue Dot Sessions. The other music you hear was Shout by Tears For Fears, All I Wanna Do by Sheryl Crow, Sledgehammer by Peter Gabriel and Oriel, Trailrunner, Step In Step Out, Roundpine, and Gambrel by the Blue Dot Sessions. Music curated by Suzanne Lessard, Shelley Colter, and me.
This project was supported by Ingenium and the Canada Aviation and Space Museum and funded by the Social Science and Humanities Research Council and the Department of National Defence’s Mobilizing Insights in Defence and Security Scholarship Initiative.
Thank you for listening to Integration.
*music: theme song fades out*
END OF PART 3
Archives
Oral history interviews with women who served in the air force and participated in these projects are available through Ingenium and Canada Aviation and Space Museum Archives. The projects are ongoing and content will be added as it is produced.
- SWINTER Aircrew Trial Oral History Project
- Women in the Royal Canadian Air Force, 1946 to Present
Acquisitions
The Hellstrom Collection
(more information to come)
Collaborator
Contributor
Camas Clowater-Eriksson
Camas Clowater-Eriksson is an independent researcher at Ingenium. In 2020, she earned her MA in Public History from Carleton University. Her research interests include feminist oral history, podcasting, gender and technology studies, material culture, and servicewomen’s history.
Award
- National Council on Public History Student Award 2021
Project lead
Erin Gregory
Curator, Aviation and Space
egregory@ingeniumcanada.org