 Page One Page Two Page Three History Main Page  "I was supposed to be the
radio op-
erator but
I also dispatched,
did the waybills
for the freight,
tied up and
fuelled aircraft,
and herded loggers
and miners on
and off the
planes". |
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Story by Tom Hawthorn ...continued from page one As the 21-year-old woman prepared to join her family in moving to Vancouver later that year, the male members of the aero club presented her with an engraved watch acknowledging her achievement. Pleased to discover six other licensed women pilots in Vancouver, Miss Fane travelled to Burbank, Calif., to meet Lauretta Schimmoler, a pilot from Ohio and one of the founders of the Ninety-Nines. The group, which took its name from the 99 licensed women pilots who attended its inaugural meeting, decided Canada had too few pilots to permit a chapter.  The journey was not an entire bust for Miss Fane, however, as she did get to meet the famed Amelia Earhart.Rejected in the United States, Miss Fane returned to Vancouver determined to organize her own informal club. The Flying Seven, formed on Oct. 15, 1936, captured the imagination of Vancouver by staging a dawn-to-dusk flight the following month. A Golden Eagle and a pair each of Fleets, Fairchilds, and Gypsy Moths took 25-minute spins in the air, a member taking-off as another landed. The stunt began precisely at 6:59 a.m. when Tosca Trasolini took off without a hitch despite drizzle and a dangerous ground fog at Sea Island Airport, today the site of Vancouver International Airport. Over time, the Flying Seven adopted a smart-looking uniform of culottes with a silk blouse worn beneath a wool jacket, topped by a distinguished Glengarry hat, all in gray. After the outbreak of war, some of the women were rebuffed in their attempt to join the Royal Canadian Air Force as pilots or instructors. Instead, they appealed for "dimes or dollars to buy our boys more planes" as part of a Vancouver Air Supremacy Drive. On a sunny midweek day in June, 1940, the Flying Seven staged a "bomphlet" raid over the city, dropping 100,000 "Smash-the-Nazis" pamphlets. As it was, a brisk southeast wind, combined with a city ordinance forbidding flight lower than 3,000 feet, swept many of the handbills into the waters of English Bay and Burrard Inlet. |
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Shortly before the outbreak of war, Miss Fane's skills won her a small measure of fame. Ginger Coote hired her to handle reservations and operate the radio for his Bridge River & Cariboo Airways. She was posted to Zeballos, an isolated gold-rush town on the west coast of Vancouver Island where she was one of three unmarried women in a rambunctious town otherwise populated by 1,500 miners. Grant McConachie, who owned Yukon Southern Air Transport, and on whose recommendation Miss Fare had been hired, had a flare for publicity. He leaked word of the unusual job and its circumstances. Newspapers across the continent ran an article on her duties, some including a photograph portraying the no-nonsense operator posed in front of a large console. A believe-it-or-not headline in the Chicago Daily Tribune was typical: Canadian woman pilot is operating a radio station. "I was supposed to be the radio operator but I also dispatched, did the waybills for the freight, tied up and fuelled aircraft, and herded loggers and miners on and off the planes," she told Ms. Render. "I took a dunking more than once while trying to push a drunk logger onto a plane." She described her reservation duties as simply counting the number wishing to leave. If three or less, she ordered the airline's Waco to Zeballos. If 10 or less, she called for the Norseman, although a full load meant the seats would be removed and passengers would sit atop their luggage. |
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