The Flying Seven, Women Piloting into the Future
Unable to join the American ’99s’, because of the small, scattered population, the ‘Flying Seven’ opened in Vancouver, BC, a club for Canadian women pilots.
The Flying Seven, pioneering women pilots at British Columbia. BC Aviation Hall of Fame. http://www.bcaviation.com/flying7s.htm
Meeting members of the American flying club, The 99s, and president Amelia Earhardt in 1935, young Canadian pilot Margaret Fane made an attempt to open an affiliate of the women’s flying club. It was decided that Canadian women were too few in number and too far apart to open a branch chapter. Margaret Fane returned home to Edmonton, Alberta, but had not given up on a Canadian club for women pilots. Moving to Vancouver, BC, she found several other young women with pilot licences. Margaret Fane, Rollie Moore, Betsy Flaherty, Tosca Trasolini, Jean Pike, Alma Gilbert and Elianne Roberge united to form The Flying Seven in 1936, Canada’s first all-women flying club
Dawn to Dusk Flying Patrol
For eleven hours on a chilly day in November of that same year, the women of the Flying Seven took turns in the skies to prove that “a woman’s place is in the air”. Few women were pilots at the time, flying being viewed as more of a man’s interest. With the wind-breaking flying helmet strapped on snugly, the first pilot climbed into her Fairchild biplane and began the Dawn to Dusk Patrol. Completing the first 25-minute stint over the Vancouver area, the pilot landed her small aircraft as the next plane prepared for take-off. The pioneering women flew several different airplanes – two Fleet biplanes, Gypsy Moths, the Fairchild and a Golden Eagle.
When World War Two broke out in 1939, the experienced women pilots attempted to join the Canadian Air Force but were refused. (Fane and Roberge were both also licenced commercial pilots.) Still wanting to help the war effort, the Flying Seven held a “pamphlet raid’, dropping leaflets in the lower British Columbia area with a message encouraging donations, such as “Give Dimes or Dollars to Buy Our Boys More Planes,” said Vancouver History archives. The women raised the huge sum of $100,000, used to purchase eight training aircraft. They also used their knowledge to hold ground school classes for women, teaching the theories of flying and safe packing of parachutes. Many of the graduates, noted BC Aviation, put their new skills to work at the Boeing factory and in the Women’s Air Force.
Never Disbanded Flying Seven
As the number of women pilots grew in Canada, the American club, The 99s, opened several chapters in Canada that are still going strong today. The women never disbanded the Flying Seven even though they went in different directions with their lives, having husbands and families, and moving away. The founder of the Flying Seven, Margaret Fane, married and became a radio operator/dispatcher/do-it-all with an airline, according to Canadian Flight. She was able to pilot a few commercial flights, and as her last flight, flew on a test flight of a new 14-seater Lockheed. She died in 2004 at the grand age of 90.
This article first appeared on March 10, 2009. Copyright Susanna McLeod