A forgotten fortieth: Remembering the SWINTER Aircrew Trial

A forgotten fortieth: Remembering the SWINTER Aircrew Trial

In 1972, Rosemary Park made a life-changing decision: She decided to join the Canadian Forces as the first female candidate for the Regular Officer Training Plan. She joined for patriotism — to fight for Canada. Yet, that was not an option for servicewomen at the time.

In 1972, Park was given only four military occupations to choose from: Personnel Administration, Air Traffic Control, Air Weapons Control, and Nurse. “None of these were interesting to me,” Park shared in a recent interview with the museum. “I had joined to fight and to defend Canada.” 

Today, 49 years later, the opportunities for women in the (now) Canadian Armed Forces are limitless. Servicewomen have access to all military occupations — across all three environments — even the combat arms. However, servicewomen’s history shows us that these changes did not come easily. 

The trials were the military’s response to the Canadian Human Rights Act of 1978, which required the military to produce evidence that the exclusion of women from certain occupations and units was a “bona fide operational requirement.” Research reports written by the military’s Personnel Selection Branch during the trial period called the trials the most “ambitious study of the issue ever undertaken by a Western military.”

The photo gallery below depicts aircraft from the collection at the Canada Aviation and Space Museum, which were similar to aircraft flown by servicewomen during the Aircrew Trial. The SWINTER Aircrew Trial Oral History Project is showing curators at the museum that aircraft in their collection could potentially be used to tell servicewomen’s stories.

Capturing a moment in Canadian history

The Canada Aviation and Space Museum is on a mission to better understand this moment in Canadian history, particularly the Aircrew Trial: the first time the Canadian air force allowed women to train and serve as pilots, air navigators, flight engineers, and traffic technicians (although no women were recruited as traffic technicians during the trial period). 

As Canada’s national aviation museum, curatorial staff handle artifacts of military aviation all the time. In fact, over 60 per cent of the museum’s collection is military. While the museum strives to highlight the achievements of women in Canadian aviation in their exhibition space, there are currently no exhibitions focused on the history of women’s integration into the air force. This is why the museum is embarking on a new oral history project — in partnership with Servicewomen’s Salute Canada — to interview women who were involved in the Aircrew Trial. 

Dismantling the “shelf theory”

It didn’t take long for Park to realize that senior military leadership had other ideas about the trials. “It was motivated to fail and to allow the military to continue unchanged.” The 1979 National Defence Headquarters Directive that launched the trials cast a “wide net” to find evidence that women’s employment should not be expanded. If women were found to perform their jobs well, then other factors were considered such as their impact on the unit socially, the opinions of military spouses, and even the opinions of the Canadian public. 

Military leadership did not easily accept these results at first, but by 1986 the air force had officially opened the occupations of pilot, flight engineer, and air navigator to women. By 1987, the air force opened all occupations, allowing Captain Deanna Brasseur and Captain Jane Foster to earn their wings as the world’s first female fighter pilots in 1988. In 1989, the Canadian Armed Forces followed suit and opened all positions — including combat arms — to women. The research produced during the Aircrew Trial is considered a key factor informing these decisions.

“You see this resistance right up to the highest political level,” said Park, “until you can no longer argue your point. Until somebody says, ‘enough, we have to change.’”