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For more than five decades, the Canadian Forces Snowbirds have been a symbol of pride, precision, and Canadian spirit — and nowhere is that connection stronger than in Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan.
With the city marking the Snowbirds’ last home airshow, former team leader Dan Dempsey joined The Evan Bray Show to discuss their legacy.
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Listen to the full interview, or read the transcript below:
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
EVAN BRAY: What was the difference between the events that you did all over the globe and the one that you did in Moose Jaw?
DAN DEMPSEY: I think that all the current Snowbirds would agree when you join the team with your pilots or ground crew, you’re on the road for about six months in the summer, so when you have the opportunity to come back and actually do a show, it’s pretty special.
The Snowbirds are so dearly loved in Moose Jaw and around the province of Saskatchewan, so it’s just nice to come home. Every show that the Snowbirds fly is special, but this one is kind of extra special because you’re doing it in front of your families and your hometown friends, and that’s been the case for 55 years now.
BRAY: What is the connection with the Snowbirds and the city of Moose Jaw?
DEMPSEY: It grew out of the fact that all of our basic flying training was done on the CT-114 Tutor jets in Moose Jaw starting in 1964, and there had been a smaller team at the school called theGoldilocks, who flew from 1962 to 1964.
Then the Tutor took over, and we had the Golden Centennaires who were based in Portage la Prairie, which was another training base for the tutor at the time. They had a tremendous year in 1967, flying 129 shows across all across Canada and several down in the United States.
The formation of the Snowbirds was because of the former wing commander who commanded the Golden Centennaires, O.B. Philp. In 1969, Philp was posted to Moose Jaw to take over as base commander. He noticed some white Tutors one day, turned out to be his old Golden Centennaires aircraft painted white when they removed the gold and blue paint that had made them so famous, and then that’s where it started.
Philp decided on his own volition, without any authority whatsoever, to start up a formation team in 1971. It was a young boy by the name of Douglas Farmer who named the team after competition run by the base commander secretary.
BRAY: Can you give us a sense of the training as a Snowbird?
DEMPSEY: I think if you could describe the Snowbirds in two words, they would be trust and pride, and that trust is absolutely essential.
The team has traditionally changed about half its number every year. If you’ve got three or four new pilots, and some of them have never flown a jet before.
First of all, they have to get checked out in the Tutor, and then it’s very much a building block process where you start flying with two, three, and then four aircraft, and gradually build up that trust and flying wider formation, and then doing very basic manoeuvres. The best day of all is when you get all nine aircraft up, and all those nine pilots who have been trained individually by their counterparts on the other side of the formation are actually able to go out and do a nine-plane loop or a nine-plane roll.
Every single manoeuvre that you have in the show, the incumbent has to fly with the new pilot, and that’s why the core expertise is so important to the Snowbirds. It still takes over six months from year to year and is a very complicated procedure. It takes a lot of stamina and a lot of desire.
BRAY: Is there any particular performance or moment from your career that stands out for you?
DEMPSEY: In Moose Jaw in 1990 the weather was was looking very challenging with a very bad storm brewing to the west of the base.
We got airborne as that storm came overhead, and we had to cut the show a little bit short and land because this storm was just pelting rain. It turned out to be a tornado that touched down about 13 miles southeast of Moose Jaw, so that’s certainly memorable from from a Moose Jaw perspective.
BRAY: In light of what’s going on with the changing of the planes do we still need an aerial demonstration team like the Snowbirds?
DEMPSEY: We need them more than ever. Pride is at an all-time high in in Canada, and over the last 55 years those Snowbirds have inspired so many young kids, as their predecessors did with me.
The Snowbirds have signed probably about four and a half million autographs over the past 55 years.
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