Pioneers

One of our geocache hunts took RTH and I to Wiarton airport (CYVV). More about the airport in another post.

It was most gratifying to see that the cache had been placed at a location to draw attention to a specific person. The terminal building at the airport is named after Eileen Vollick, Canada’s first female pilot.

I’ll leave you to read about the details of her exploits, but I have to say I was humbled to realise what she’d achieved.

click for bigger image

At 16 hours of training I could barely land a plane, let alone fly cross country on one. She took her flight test at a time when planes suffered from dubious mechanical reliability and one of the main pass criteria was probably surviving the ordeal.

It is mind boggling and people like herself really did open up the skies for people like me but whereas I’m battling fear every time I get in that cockpit, brave women like her ensured that the next generation of female pilots would carry on the legacy.

One of the things I did notice though, reading the text of the memorial; is that while the pioneers of physics like Isaac Newton needed to “stand on the shoulders of giants”, people like Eileen and I settled for sitting on their cushions!